Sermons for the Christian Year - 1870 Author:W. H. Lewis Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SERMON V. Innocents' Day. GOD GLORIFIED IN LITTLE CHILDREN. "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings Thou hast perfected praise."—Matt. xxi. 16. GOD... more » is glorious in the smallest, as well as in the greatest of His works. We have occasion to notice this in the natural world, where the least plant or flower exhibits creating wisdom and goodness, and awakens our admiration almost in an equal degree with suns and planetary systems. And thus it is in the moral world. In regard to the lowest of His intelligent creatures, as well as the highest, God's ways are perfect; and the little infant shows forth His praise as truly as the believer of years, or the angel of light. We are often called upon to acknowledge the goodness of God in respect to ourselves, and to those who have arrived at years of accountability; may it not be profitable to consider for a few moments the various ways in which God glorifies Himself in little children ? They constitute a large and important part of His creatures,and in seeing how God perfects His praise in them, the Christian will find new motives to love and adore. If the subject awaken one emotion of gratitude, it will not have been presented in vain. 1. It is to the glory of God, then, in the first place, that there is such a state as that of infancy and childhood. There would be but a gloomy prospect to those who desire to do good to their fellow-men, and to instruct and elevate them, if there were no more inviting field of labor than is presented by the mind and heart of the matured. What men are, both in an intellectual and moral view, when they have attained to manhood, they generally are through life; and there is comparatively little hope of effecting any great change after that period, except through the influence of earlier i...« less