A Child is Humble––It is not possible to enter fully into so large a subject, but it may be worth while to characterise two or three of the landmarks of this child’s estate; for how shall we safeguard that which we do not recognise, and how recognise that to which we have failed to give deliberate attention? The note of childhood is, before all things, humility. What we call innocence is probably resolvable into grace––repellent to the nature of man until he shall embrace it, and then disclosing itself to him as divine. An old and saintly writer has a luminous thought on this subject of humility.
‘There never was nor ever will be, but one humility in the whole world, and that is the humility of Christ, which never any man, since the fall of Adam has the least degree of but from Christ. Humility is one, in the same sense and truth that Christ is one, the Mediator is one, Redemption is one . . . There are not two Lambs of God that take away the sins of the world. But if there was any humility besides that of Christ, there would be something else besides him that could take away the sins of the world.’ [William Law.] Now, if there be but one humility in the whole world, and that humility be the humility of Christ, and if our Lord pronounced the little child also to be humble is it not because of the indwelling divinity, the glory in the child which we call innocence?