To receive the child because God receives it, or for its humanity, is
one thing; to receive it because it is like God, or for its childhood,
is another. The former will do little to destroy ambition. Alone it
might argue only a wider scope to it, because it admits all men to the
arena of the strife. But the latter strikes at the very root of
emulation. As soon as even service is done for the honour and not for
the service-sake, the doer is that moment outside the kingdom. But when
we receive the child in the name of Christ, the very childhood that we
receive to our arms is humanity. We love its humanity in its childhood,
for childhood is the deepest heart of humanity--its divine heart; and
so in the name of the child we receive all humanity. Therefore,
although the lesson is not about humanity, but about childhood, it
returns upon our race, and we receive our race with wider arms and
deeper heart. There is, then, no other lesson lost by receiving this;
no heartlessness shown in insisting that the child was a lovable--a
childlike child.

If there is in heaven a picture of that wonderful teaching, doubtless
we shall see represented in it a dim childhood shining from the faces
of all that group of disciples of which the centre is the Son of God
with a child in his arms. The childhood, dim in the faces of the men,
must be shining trustfully clear in the face of the child. But in the
face of the Lord himself, the childhood will be triumphant--all his
wisdom, all his truth upholding that radiant serenity of faith in his
father. Verily, O Lord, this childhood is life. Verily, O Lord, when
thy tenderness shall have made the world great, then, children like
thee, will all men smile in the face of the great God.

But to advance now to the highest point of this teaching of our Lord: