The child prophet


Was he a miracle--this little Samuel? No--in the view characteristic of the Bible he is the real and normal aspect of humanity. So normal is he that Christ says we must all return to his state before we can become seers. What, think you, does Jesus mean when He declares that we can only realise the beauty of the Kingdom through the eyes of a little child? Is it not simply this, that to see the beauty of anything we require a first eye? Take the Bible itself. To see the beauties of the Bible, one would require to say to us what the prophet said to Hezekiah, “Let the shadow go back ten degrees.” We should need to be transported back into life’s morning, to divest ourselves of all preconceived opinions, to imagine that we were reading the record for the first time. That is precisely the standpoint which Christianity promises to create. It professes to make old things new, in other words, to let us see the old things as they looked when they were new, and so to give us a true sense of their power and beauty. What is this but to recreate in us the life of Samuel l What is this but to say that the true seer must ever be a child, that, however grownup he be, it is by the survival of his childhood that he sees the Kingdom of God. Little Samuel is no miracle. He reveals the normal law of faith.

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