[Footnote 2:  Matt. xxi. 15, 16.]

He lost no opportunity of repeating that the little ones are sacred beings,[1] that the kingdom of God belongs to children,[2] that we must become children to enter there,[3] that we ought to receive it as a child,[4] that the heavenly Father hides his secrets from the wise and reveals them to the little ones.[5] The idea of disciples is in his mind almost synonymous with that of children.[6] On one occasion, when they had one of those quarrels for precedence, which were not uncommon, Jesus took a little child, placed him in their midst, and said to them, “Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven."[7]

[Footnote 1:  Matt. xviii. 5, 10, 14; Luke xvii. 2.]

[Footnote 2:  Matt. xix. 14; Mark x. 14; Luke xviii. 16.]

[Footnote 3:  Matt. xviii. 1, and following; Mark ix. 33, and following; Luke ix. 46.]

[Footnote 4:  Mark x. 15.]

[Footnote 5:  Matt. xi. 25; Luke x. 21.]

[Footnote 6:  Matt. x. 42, xviii. 5, 14; Mark ix. 36; Luke xvii. 2.]

[Footnote 7:  Matt. xviii. 4; Mark ix. 33-36; Luke ix. 46-48.]

It was infancy, in fact, in its divine spontaneity, in its simple bewilderments of joy, which took possession of the earth.  Every one believed at each moment that the kingdom so much desired was about to appear.  Each one already saw himself seated on a throne[1] beside the master.  They divided amongst themselves the positions of honor in the new kingdom,[2] and strove to reckon the precise date of its advent.  This new doctrine was called the “Good Tidings;” it had no other name.  An old word, “paradise,” which the Hebrew, like all the languages of the East, had borrowed from the Persian, and which at first designated the parks of the Achaemenidae, summed up the general dream; a delightful garden, where the charming life which was led here below would be continued forever.[3] How long this intoxication lasted we know not.  No one, during the course of this magical apparition, measured time any more than we measure a dream.  Duration was suspended; a week was an age.  But whether it filled years or months, the dream was so beautiful that humanity has lived upon it ever since, and it is still our consolation to gather its weakened perfume.  Never did so much joy fill the breast of man.  For a moment humanity, in this the most vigorous effort she ever made to rise above the world, forgot the leaden weight which binds her to earth and the sorrows of the life below.  Happy he who has been able to behold this divine unfolding, and to share, were it but for one day, this unexampled illusion!  But still more happy, Jesus would say to us, is he who, freed from all illusion, shall reproduce in himself the celestial vision, and, with no millenarian dream, no chimerical paradise, no signs in the heavens, but by the uprightness of his will and the poetry of his soul, shall be able to create anew in his heart the true kingdom of God!