THE LOST ARTS OF CHILDHOOD CHAPTER 8

Except ye be converted and become little children ye shall not enter into kingdom of heaven.—Matthew 3.

For of such is the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 19,14.

THE more deeply the man of science studies the sayings attributed to Jesus, the Seer of Judea, the more profoundly is he impressed not only by the brilliant intellect and wonderful oratory of Jesus, but by his marvelous insight into subjects which were in his time unknown even to the most lucid thinkers of ancient times.

In the history of the race two thousand years is not a very long time, and previous to the beginning of the Christian era there had been accomplished along lines of philosophical, physical, and cosmological research much more than, with all our boasted erudition, has been done since. In fact, some of our most striking discoveries are merely corroborations of knowledge of the Brahmins, the Chinese, the Phoenicians, and other of the ancient peoples who lived thousands of years before the alleged appearance of Jesus of Nazareth.

How much of this ancient knowledge Jesus possessed it is impossible to say--probably most if not all. One thing is certain: Some things he knew and said, which, so far as we know, were entirely original and iconoclastic. And one of these things, entirely new then (and almost entirely new now, for that matter) was to the effect that in child study we should find the key to the kingdom of heaven.

Now as I have explained elsewhere in these Sermons of a Scientist, the Kingdom of Heaven (or the Kingdom of God) is not a place where good people go when they die. The Kingdom of Heaven is a state of mind, of Spirit--that state in which spirit, therefore mind, therefore body, are all three in harmony with the Great Oversoul, and with His laws.

For us who are adults, who for three, four, or five decades have been guilty of the thousand, thousand crimes, physical, mental, spiritual, incidental to commonplace living for us it is necessary to be reborn to be radically changed in spirit, therefore in mind and body, before we can enter the Kingdom of Heaven, the physical realm of peace, rest, and power. So Jesus said to the disciples: "Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." By which He meant exactly what He did when He said to Nicodemus: "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God."

Of the many millions that have, with close attention and deep reverence, read the words I have quoted, few, if any, have seen the clear, profound, practical wisdom of the statement of Jesus that only the man, the woman, who became as a little child, could enter into the realm of peace and power.

And now let us analyze a little. What is there about the child which we should emulate? What characteristics has the child, unpossessed by the adult which when developed in the adult will give entrance into the kingdom of God?

Mind you, it is not stated that children are in the Kingdom of Heaven. Nor can they be. They lack the actual knowledge, the experience, the poise. But it is in the experience, the hard and bitter experience which develops poise and power, that man loses the

simplicity, trustfulness, and tenderness of childhood. It is when, in addition to his adult powers, he achieves the lost arts and powers of childhood, that he enters the Kingdom of Heaven.

What Are the Lost Arts of Childhood?

Let us consider first some of the physical characteristics of normal childhood. The healthy child is remarkable for his erect body, his up-turned face, his clear and far-reaching voice, the ease and grace of his movements, his wonderful endurance. That these are among the normal powers of the average healthy child may be determined by a few minutes of close observation upon any playground. A moment's thought will show how rare are such powers among adults.

The healthy child is erect. Therefore the chest is high and expanded, the body is carried like an erect column and the breathing is slow and deep. This gives the only conditions under which the normal tone of voice in song or speech can be reproduced. The erect carriage means that the joints and muscles of the body are in their normal and mechanical relation to each other.

So we have in the normal child movements which are at once rapid, graceful, and economical--so economical of vital force that the child's endurance has passed into a proverb. Children will keep on romping for hours at a time without fatigue. But an adult who joins in their play will usually be tired out in ten or fifteen minutes. Why is this? Because the child moves properly and the adult does not move properly. Because bodily movement is one of the lost arts of childhood.

And then the ability to rest. The tired child throws himself down on the couch or floor or ground and rests. The tired adult, on the other hand, often fidgets, tosses, fumes, and worries because he can't sleep. Then his sleep, when it comes, is not restful; and he awakens after eight or more hours quite as fatigued as when he went to bed. Few adults have retained from childhood the power to rest. For the power to rest is another one of the lost arts of childhood; and he who would enter the Kingdom of Heaven, the realm of peace, must be a master of the difficult art of rest.

The world is full of men and women whose most ardent ambition is to succeed in some art--music, painting, acting, writing. And out of the multitude who drudge laboriously, unrestingly at their chosen task how few succeed?

But--study the little children. Watch them at play, when they believe themselves unobserved. They are playing "house," "school," "church," and so on. On no stage in the world will you find acting so true, so finished, so perfect an exposition of the actor's conception of his part. From a purely technical standpoint, the dramatic work of the average healthy, intelligent child is beyond criticism--it is simply perfect.

And then the child's moral and spiritual qualities. By nature he is absolutely truthful- truthful both in the sense of seeing the truth and of telling it--until he is seduced into lying by fear and bad example.

Michelet, that deep and tender philosopher, has said: "No consecrated absurdity of mankind would have survived one generation had not the man silenced the objection of the child."

Do you remember the first lies they told you? How strange it seemed for people, people whom perhaps you loved and feared and worshiped with the pure, white hot intensity of the child--how strange for them to do that!

Soon, however, you learned to do it yourself, learned the fatal utility, the convenience of the lie. And so the angel with the flaming sword waved you away from the Eden of Unconquerable Innocence, and only after many years of wandering in waste places, only by being born again, may you re-enter Eden, the Kingdom of Heaven.

And, with the truthfulness of childhood, the simplicity, the kindliness, the democracy, the independence—all of these are among the lost powers of childhood and all of these we must achieve if we would possess the highest powers of body, mind, and spirit.

"Except ye become as a little child" no true power, physical, artistic, intellectual, spiritual, is possible. To him or her who in simplicity accepts the teaching, the kingdom is close at hand; and "a little child shall lead them." The truly great of earth are not the ones most highly polished by conventional educational methods. On the other hand, they are often the lonely and the neglected. They have starved in garrets and dreamed in hovels; from squalid prison cells they have sent forth "thoughts that breathe"; under the silent stars they have conceived thoughts as high as the stars themselves. They are those who "through great tribulation" have been born again, and who, as little children, have entered into the realm of peace, wisdom, love, and power, the mystic Kingdom of Heaven.