nor all manly:  there must have been a period, extending over some years, in which they were gradually becoming the one less and less, and the other more and more.  And as it suited the purposes of his comparison to look at the change in himself only when it was completed, so it will suit our object here to regard it while in progress, to consider what it is, to ask the two great questions, how far it can be hastened, and how far it ought to be hastened.

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”  It will be seen at once, that when the Apostle speaks of thought and understanding, ([Greek:  erronoun elogizomeaen],) he does not mean the mere intellect but all the notions, feelings, and desires of our minds, which partake of an intellectual and of a moral character together.  He is comparing what we should call the whole nature and character of childhood with those of manhood.  Let us see, for a moment, in what they most strikingly differ.

Our Lord’s well-known words suggest a difference in the first place, which is in favour of childhood.  When he says, “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye can in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven,” he must certainly ascribe some one quality to childhood, in which manhood is generally deficient.  And the quality which he means is clearly humility; or to speak perhaps more correctly, teachableness.  It is impossible that a child can have that confidence in himself, which disposes him to be his own guide.  He must of necessity lean on others, he must follow others, and therefore he must believe others.  There is in his mind, properly speaking, nothing which can be called prejudice; he will not as yet refuse to listen, as thinking that he knows better than his adviser.  One feeling, therefore, essential to the perfection of every created and reasonable being, childhood has by the very law of its nature; a child cannot help believing that there are some who are greater, wiser, better than himself, and he is disposed to follow their guidance.

This sense of comparative weakness is founded upon truth, for a child is of course unfit to guide himself.  Without noticing mere bodily helplessness, a child knows scarcely what is good and what is evil; his desires for the highest good are not yet in existence; his moral sense altogether is exceedingly weak, and would yield readily to the first temptation.  And, because those higher feelings, which are the great check to selfishness, have not yet arisen within him, the selfish instinct, connected apparently with all animal life, is exceedingly predominant in him.  If a child then on the one hand be teachable, yet he is at the same time morally weak and ignorant, and therefore extremely selfish.

It is also a part of the nature of childhood to be the slave of present impulses.  A child is not apt to look backwards or forwards, to reflect or to calculate.  In this also he differs entirely from the great quality which befits man as an eternal being, the being able to look before and after.