the old families of America are
rather young affairs. And as he pushes on into the East, some of the old
families of Europe sometimes seem fairly recent. I remember in the
Orient running across a family where the father had been a Shinto
priest, father and son successively, through forty-five generations; and
another where the father of the family has been successively a
court-musician for thirty-eight generations. I thought maybe I had run
into some really old families at last.

I come of a rather old family myself. It runs clear back without break
or slip to Adam in Eden. I've not bothered much with tracing it, for
there are some pretty plain evidences of ugly stains on the family
escutcheon, running all through, and repeatedly. And then even more than
that I've become intensely interested in another family, an older
family, the oldest family of all. Arrangements have been made whereby I
have been taken into this oldest family of all with full rights and
privileges. My claims to aristocracy are now of the very highest, with
all the noble obligations that go with it. That's what John is talking
of here. _As many as received Him, He received into His family, the
oldest family of all._

These people refused Jesus because He didn't belong to their set. In
their utterly selfish prejudice and wilful ignorance, these leaders shut
Him out from the circles they controlled. But with great graciousness He
received into His circle any, of any circle, high or low, who would
receive Him into their hearts. To as many as received Him into their
hearts He opened the door into His own family. He gave them the
technical right of becoming children of His Father.

Their part of the thing is put very simply in two ways. They _believed_.
They were told, they listened and thought, they accepted as true, they
risked what they counted most precious, they loved. So they believed.
And so they _received._ The door opened, the inner door, the heart door.
He went in. That settled things for them. When He graciously entered
their hearts, the inner citadel of their lives, that settled their place
in this oldest family of all.

How We Don't Get In, and How We Do.

It is of intensest interest in our day to have John go on to tell, in
his own simple taking way, just how we get into this God-family. First
of all, he tells us how we _don't_ get in. Listen: "_not of blood_,"
that is, not by our natural generation; "_nor of the will of the
flesh