The Visit to Philadelphia

167:6.1That evening Je­sus’ mes­sage re­gard­ing mar­riage and the blessed­ness of chil­dren spread all over Jeri­cho, so that the next morn­ing, long be­fore Je­sus and the apos­tles pre­pared to leave, even be­fore break­fast time, scores of moth­ers came to where Je­sus lodged, bring­ing their chil­dren in their arms and lead­ing them by their hands, and de­sired that he bless the lit­tle ones. When the apos­tles went out to view this as­sem­blage of moth­ers with their chil­dren, they en­deav­ored to send them away, but these women re­fused to de­part un­til the Mas­ter laid his hands on their chil­dren and blessed them. And when the apos­tles loudly re­buked these moth­ers, Je­sus, hear­ing the tu­mult, came out and in­dig­nantly re­proved them, say­ing: “Suf­fer lit­tle chil­dren to come to me; for­bid them not, for of such is the king­dom of heaven. Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you, whoso­ever re­ceives not the king­dom of God as a lit­tle child shall hardly en­ter therein to grow up to the full stature of spir­i­tual man­hood.”

167:6.2And when the Mas­ter had spo­ken to his apos­tles, he re­ceived all of the chil­dren, lay­ing his hands on them, while he spoke words of cour­age and hope to their moth­ers.

167:6.3Je­sus of­ten talked to his apos­tles about the ce­les­tial man­sions and taught that the ad­vanc­ing chil­dren of God must there grow up spir­i­tu­ally as chil­dren grow up phys­i­cally on this world. And so does the sa­cred of­ten­times ap­pear to be the com­mon, as on this day these chil­dren and their moth­ers lit­tle re­al­ized that the on­look­ing in­tel­li­gences of Neb­a­don be­held the chil­dren of Jeri­cho play­ing with the Cre­ator of a uni­verse.

167:6.4Woman’s sta­tus in Pales­tine was much im­proved by Je­sus’ teach­ing; and so it would have been through­out the world if his fol­low­ers had not de­parted so far from that which he painstak­ingly taught them.

167:6.5It was also at Jeri­cho, in con­nec­tion with the dis­cus­sion of the early re­li­gious train­ing of chil­dren in habits of di­vine wor­ship, that Je­sus im­pressed upon his apos­tles the great value of beauty as an in­flu­ence lead­ing to the urge to wor­ship, es­pe­cially with chil­dren. The Mas­ter by pre­cept and ex­am­ple taught the value of wor­ship­ing the Cre­ator in the midst of the nat­u­ral sur­round­ings of cre­ation. He pre­ferred to com­mune with the heav­enly Fa­ther amidst the trees and among the lowly crea­tures of the nat­u­ral world. He re­joiced to con­tem­plate the Fa­ther through the in­spir­ing spec­ta­cle of the starry realms of the Cre­ator Sons.

167:6.6When it is not pos­si­ble to wor­ship God in the taber­na­cles of na­ture, men should do their best to pro­vide houses of beauty, sanc­tu­ar­ies of ap­peal­ing sim­plic­ity and artis­tic em­bel­lish­ment, so that the high­est of hu­man emo­tions may be aroused in as­so­ci­a­tion with the in­tel­lec­tual ap­proach to spir­i­tual com­mu­nion with God. Truth, beauty, and ho­li­ness are pow­er­ful and ef­fec­tive aids to true wor­ship. But spirit com­mu­nion is not pro­moted by mere mas­sive or­nate­ness and over­much em­bel­lish­ment with man’s elab­o­rate and os­ten­ta­tious art. Beauty is most re­li­gious when it is most sim­ple and na­ture­like. How un­for­tu­nate that lit­tle chil­dren should have their first in­tro­duc­tion to con­cepts of pub­lic wor­ship in cold and bar­ren rooms so de­void of the beauty ap­peal and so empty of all sug­ges­tion of good cheer and in­spir­ing ho­li­ness! The child should be in­tro­duced to wor­ship in na­ture’s out­doors and later ac­com­pany his par­ents to pub­lic houses of re­li­gious as­sem­bly which are at least as ma­te­ri­ally at­trac­tive and ar­tis­ti­cally beau­ti­ful as the home in which he is daily domi­ciled.