Pray, gentle stranger, tell me, if you know,
Is this the spot where Jesus stopped to rest,
Where heaven and earth met centuries ago,
And little children were divinely blest?

I'd like to stand where little ones were brought
To Him who, sitting, sandals in the dust,
The sweetest lesson of the Bible taught:
That hope of heaven is born of childlike trust.

There comes from all that sacred history
No sweeter picture to the human mind
Than when, with little children on his knee,
Deity, set in jewels, crowned mankind.

The trusting mother brought her infant there
What though the wise disciples oft reviled?
Since man's redemption took them in his care,
Divinity doth always hedge a child.

And when the Saviour held them to his breast,
Each babe looked in the face of God and smiled.
That blessing gained comes down to all the rest:
Eternal benediction on the child!

The Saviour loved them, even though he knew
Each one by sin might some time be defiled;
'Twas nothing more than Heaven ought to do,
For He was once a helpless, homeless child.

The mother clasps her baby to her heart,
With Heaven's glory on its little face;
Earth cannot furnish her its counterpart,
Not though an angel came to take its place.

The babe comes hither from the great unknown;
Yet no immortal secrets with him come.
In age, with that same muffled monotone,
He journeys back again as sweetly dumb.

When drowsy age sits nodding to the grave,
The deeds of many years together piled,
It claims the blessing which redemption gave
In being once again so like a child.