Is there anything in this that is blasphemous? One of the best pictures I ever saw of the Virgin and Child was painted by the Spaniard, Murillo. Christ appears to be a truly natural, chubby, happy babe. Such a picture takes nothing from the majesty, the beauty, or the glory of the incarnation.
I think it is the best thing about the Catholic Church that it lifts up for adoration and admiration, a mother,—that it pays what it calls "Divine honors" to a woman. There is certainly goodness in that, and where a Church has so few practices that are good, I am willing to point this one out. It is the one redeeming feature about Catholicism that it teaches the worship of a woman.
The defendant says more about the childhood of Christ. He goes so far as to say, that
"He was found staring foolishly at his own little toes."
And why not? The bible says, that "he increased in wisdom and stature." The defendant might have referred to something far more improbable. In the same verse in which St. Luke says that Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, will be found the assertion that he increased in favor with God and man. The defendant might have asked how it was that the love of God for God increased.
But the defendant has simply stated that the child Jesus grew, as other children grow; that he acted like other children, and if he did, it is more than probable that he did stare at his own toes. I have laughed many a time to see little children astonished with the sight of their feet. They seem to wonder what on earth puts the little toes in motion. Certainly there is nothing blasphemous in supposing that the feet of Christ amused him, precisely as the feet of other children have amused them. There is nothing blasphemous about this; on the contrary, it is beautiful. If I believed in the existence of God, the creator of this world, the being who, with the hand of infinity, sowed the fields of space with stars, as a farmer sows his grain, I should like to think of him as a little dimpled babe, overflowing with joy, sitting upon the knees of a loving mother. The ministers, themselves, might take a lesson even from the man who is charged with blasphemy, and make an effort to bring an infinite God a little nearer to the human heart.
The defendant also says, speaking of the infant Christ, "He was nursed at Mary's breast."
Yes, and if the story be true, that is the tenderest fact in it. Nursed at the breast of woman. No painting, no statue, no words can make a deeper and a tenderer impression upon the heart of man than this: The Infinite God, a babe, nursed at the holy breast of woman.
You see these things do not strike all people the same. To a man that has been raised on the Orthodox desert, these things are incomprehensible. He has been robbed of his humanity. He has no humor, nothing but the stupid and the solemn. His fancy sits with folded wings.
Imagination, like the atmosphere of Spring, woes every seed of earth to seek the blue of heaven, and whispers of bud and flower and fruit. Imagination gathers from every field of thought and pours the wealth of many lives into the lap of one. To the contracted, to the cast-iron people who believe in heartless and inhuman creeds, the words of the defendant seem blasphemous, and to them the thought that God was a little child is monstrous.