divine that will show the disciple how vain the strife after relative
place or honour in the great kingdom.

For it is _In my name_. This means _as representing me_; and,
therefore, _as being like me_. Our Lord could not commission any one to
be received in his name who could not more or less represent him; for
there would be untruth and unreason. Moreover, he had just been telling
the disciples that they must become like this child; and now, when he
tells them to receive _such_ a little child in his name, it must surely
imply something in common between them all--something in which the
child and Jesus meet--something in which the child and the disciples
meet. What else can that be than the spiritual childhood? _In my name_
does not mean _because I will it_. An arbitrary utterance of the will
of our Lord would certainly find ten thousand to obey it, even to
suffering, for one that will be able to receive such a vital truth of
his character as is contained in the words; but it is not obedience
alone that our Lord will have, but obedience to the _truth_, that is,
to the Light of the World, truth beheld and known. _In my name_, if we
take all we can find in it, the full meaning which alone will harmonize
and make the passage a whole, involves a revelation from resemblance,
from fitness to represent and so reveal. He who receives a child, then,
in the name of Jesus, does so, perceiving wherein Jesus and the child
are one, what is common to them. He must not only see the _ideal_ child
in the child he receives--that reality of loveliness which constitutes
true childhood, but must perceive that the child is like Jesus, or
rather, that the Lord is like the child, and may be embraced, yea, is
embraced, by every heart childlike enough to embrace a child for the
sake of his childness. I do not therefore say that none but those who
are thus conscious in the act partake of the blessing. But a special
sense, a lofty knowledge of blessedness, belongs to the act of