The Dwarf

“A child, if he should co7itimie a child and an zn/anf still, woidd be a moiisterr However pleased the parents had been with the little one when it was a babe, they would soon be deeply distressed if year after year it still remained a tiny thing: indeed, they would consider it a great calamity to be the parents of a dwarf. What, then, shall we say of those in our churches who never grow? They are no forwarder after fifty years! Infants at sixty years of age!

I have in my house a singular picture which is made up of the portraits of my sons, taken on their birthdays for twenty-one years. They begin in the perambulator, and end as full-grown young men. This is interesting and according to nature; but, alas, I have spiritual children whom I wheeled about in the perambulator of tender comfort twenty years ago, and they are babies still, needing as much care as ever, and are as little able to run alone. Ah me, that so many who ought to be warriors are weaklings, that those who should be men of six feet high are so stunted as to be mere Tom Thumbs in grace.

O for grace to grow in grace, and especially in the knowledge of my Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. God save us from a life which does not grow, and from a growth which is not healthy.