that would speak as
the oracles of God use harder words than are to be found here?' Such
words from such a source are like apples of gold in pictures of silver,
and I am thankful that I chanced to come upon the great man that hot
July night in Dublin, and gather this distilled essence of wisdom as it
fell from his eloquent lips.

I have often wondered why we teach children to pray that their
simplicity may be pitied.

Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,
Look upon a little child!
Pity my simplicity!
Suffer me to come to Thee!

Why 'pity my simplicity'? It is the one thing about a little child
that is really sublime, sublimity and simplicity being, as we learned
at Dublin, everlastingly inseparable. Pity my simplicity! Why, it is
the sweet simplicity of a little child that we all admire and love and
covet! Pity my simplicity! Why, it is the unspoiled and sublime
simplicity of this little child of mine that takes my heart by storm
and carries everything before it. And, depend upon it, the heart of
the divine Father is affected not very differently. This soft, sweet
little white-robed thing that kneels on my knee, with its arms around
my neck, lisping its

Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,
Look upon a little child!
Pity my simplicity!
Suffer me to come to Thee!

shames me by its very sublimity. It outstrips me, transcends me, and
leaves me far behind. It soars whilst I grovel; it flies whilst I
creep. That is what Jesus meant when He took a little child and set
him in the midst of the disciples and said, 'Whosoever shall humble
himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of
heaven!' The simplest, He meant, is always the sublimest. And it was
because the great Methodist had so perfectly caught the spirit of his
great Master that he declared so confidently that night at Dublin,
'Simplicity and sublimity lie here together!'

It is always and everywhere the same. In literature sublimity is
represented by the poet. What could be more sublime than the inspired
imagination of Milton? And yet, and yet! The very greatest of all our
literary critics, in his essay on Milton, feels it incumbent upon him
to point out that imagination is essentially the domain of childhood.
'Of all people,' he says, 'children are the most imaginative. They
abandon themselves without reserve to every illusion. Every image
which is strongly presented to their mental eye produces on them the
e