probably intended here. The lesson will be found to lie not in the
_humanity_, but in the _childhood_ of the child.

Again, if the disciples could have seen that the essential childhood
was meant, and not a blurred and half-obliterated childhood, the most
selfish child might have done as well, but could have done no better
than the one we have supposed in whom the true childhood is more
evident. But when the child was employed as a manifestation, utterance,
and sign of the truth that lay in his childhood, in order that the eyes
as well as the ears should be channels to the heart, it was essential--
not that the child should be beautiful but--that the child should be
childlike; that those qualities which wake in our hearts, at sight, the
love peculiarly belonging to childhood, which is, indeed, but the
perception of the childhood, should at least glimmer out upon the face
of the _chosen type_. Would such an unchildlike child as we see
sometimes, now in a great house, clothed in purple and lace, now in a
squalid close, clothed in dirt and rags, have been fit for our Lord's
purpose, when he had to say that his listeners must become like this
child? when the lesson he had to present to them was that of the divine
nature of the child, that of childlikeness? Would there not have been a
contrast between the child and our Lord's words, ludicrous except for
its horror, especially seeing he set forth the individuality of the
child by saying, "this little child," "one of such children," and
"these little ones that believe in me?" Even the feelings of pity and
of love that would arise in a good heart upon further contemplation of
such a child, would have turned it quite away from the lesson our Lord
intended to give.

That this lesson did lie, not in the humanity, but in the childhood of
the child, let me now show more fully. The disciples had been disputing