The Angel which is a Little Child
Reprinted without permission from
The Angels of the Earth by Wilson Macdonald
The Angel which is a Little Child
The Angel which is a Little child said unto me one day, when I was looking sadly at a portrait of the Lord of Creation :
"Whose portrait is that ?"
And I replied : "It is the likeness of the Lord of the Creation, who is my father and thy father."
"I have seen the Lord of Creation" said the Little Child, " and he does not look like this picture at all."
Then I remembered who had painted the portrait - that it was not the work of one hand but of countless painters who had lived in the past.
The brush of a poetic painter named Moses and the many emendations of another limner named Paul were upon it. So I placed my microscope over the work of art and learned that it had been subject to countless erasures, some of which improved and others which changed almost entirely the spirit of it. A daub by Calvin obliterated the smile on the portraits face, which, under my microscope revealed numerous wrinkles and moles which had been placed upon the features by the brushes of contradicting theologians who knew nothing about the spirit of Him they were painting.
So I took the picture from my wall and cast it into the darkness of night and said to the Angel which is a Little Child : "Will you draw for me the face of the Lord of Creation ?"
And the Child did not hesitate, nor look up theological rules on Art, nor consult the mode of painting of that particular period, but she looked into my eyes, her Earthly father's eyes, and painted the Love and the sorrow and the joy which she saw in them, and she caught the curve of tenderness in my mouth, a curve which had become perfect through my love for her, and she painted the brow just as it looked unto her through the eyes of her deep affection.
I took up the finished painting in my hands and saw it was the face of what I would have been in my noblest moment of yearning, for that was the face which the Child saw.
Then I lifted my brush and drew my own conception of the Lord of Creation an as I did so I followed the methods of my Child, for I did not borrow my pigments from theologies, nor from creeds, but I took them from the storehouse of love.
My portrait of the Lord of Creation is on every page of this book, but you will never be able to behold it until you have torn from your wall that conception of God which ten thousand contradictory painters have defaced with their daubing brushes.
And I said unto the Angel which is a Little Child : "Thank you for this key with which you have unlocked for me the doors of the Kingdom of Love |
