contained in the passage.

For it must be confessed that there are children who are not childlike.
One of the saddest and not least common sights in the world is the face
of a child whose mind is so brimful of worldly wisdom that the human
childishness has vanished from it, as well as the divine childlikeness.
For the _childlike_ is the divine, and the very word "marshals me the
way that I was going." But I must delay my ascent to the final argument
in order to remove a possible difficulty, which, in turning us towards
one of the grandest truths, turns us away from the truth which the Lord
had in view here.

The difficulty is this: Is it like the _Son of man_ to pick out the
beautiful child, and leave the common child unnoticed? What thank would
he have in that? Do not even the publicans as much as that? And do not
our hearts revolt against the thought of it? Shall the mother's heart
cleave closest to the deformed of her little ones? and shall "Christ as
we believe him" choose according to the sight of the eye? Would he turn
away from the child born in sin and taught iniquity, on whose pinched
face hunger and courage and love of praise have combined to stamp the
cunning of avaricious age, and take to his arms the child of honest
parents, such as Peter and his wife, who could not help looking more
good than the other? That were not he who came to seek and to save that
which was lost. Let the man who loves his brother say which, in his
highest moments of love to God, which, when he is nearest to that ideal
humanity whereby _a man_ shall be a hiding-place from the wind, he
would clasp to his bosom of refuge. Would it not be the evil-faced
child, because he needed it most? Yes; in God's name, yes. For is not
that the divine way? Who that has read of the lost sheep, or the found
prodigal, even if he had no spirit bearing witness with his spirit,