This suggests the conclusion that the narrative of the blessing of the children was important for the early Church not only on other grounds, but because the Church took it as authority for the practice of infant baptism.1 We may conclude from this that in Rome at the time when the Gospel of Mark was written the children of Christian parents were baptized. In so doing, appeal was made to the example of Jesus, who had forbidden that children should be turned away from him, and had explicitly promised