of parents, emotions and sympathies, new-born and never before experienced; cords in the heart, before untouched, now begin to thrill with new joy; sympathies, before unfelt, now swell the bosom. Sleep on, thou little one, in thy "rosy mesh of infancy," in the first buddings of thy being! These hours of thy innocence are the happiest of thy life. Thou art "the parent's transport and the parent's care." Blessings are fondly poured upon thy head. Rest thee there in thy little bed, thou happy emblem of the loved and pure in heaven' "Visions sure of joy Are gladdening his rest; and ah, who knows With babes like this!" imparting to his infant soul unutterable things, whispering soft of bliss immortal given, and pouring into his new-born senses the dreams of opening heaven. What charms and momentous interests surround the cradle of infancy! When the first wailing of dependence reaches the listening ear, what new-born sympathies spring up in the parent's bosom! What a thrill of rapture the first soft smile of her babe sends to the mother's heart! It is this, the parents' likeness unsullied by their faults and cares; it is this, their living love in personal being,—their love breathing and smiling before them, lisping their names; it is this, their new-born hope and care,—that gives to infancy such a charm, such a never-dying interest, and causes the parent to cling to it with such fond tenacity. "Can a mother forget her sucking child?" Never, while she claims a mother's heart! The couch of her babe is the depository of all those fond hopes and joys and cares and memories to which a mother's heart is sacred. The infant is the most interesting member of the Christian home. It is the first budding of home-life, disclosing every day some new beauty, "the father's lustre and the mother's bloom," to gladden the hearts of the family. "As the dewy morning is more beautiful than the perfect day; as the opening bud is more lovely than the full blown flower, so is the joyous dawn of infant life more interesting than the calm monotony of riper years." It is the most interesting, because the purest, member of the household. It is the connecting link which binds home to its great antitype above. "Ye stand nearest to God, ye little ones," nearer than those who have tasted the bitter cup of actual sin. They are the budding promises, the young loves, the precious plants of home; they are its sunshine, its progressive interest, its prophetic happiness, the first link in the chain of its perpetuity. Like the purple hue of the wild heath, throwing its gay color over the rugged hill-side, they cast a magic polish over the spirit of the parent, causing the home-fireside to glow with new life and cheerful ness. Infants are emblems of the loved and sainted ones in heaven. "Of such is the kingdom of heaven." "Except ye become as this little child, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven." This is based upon proper principles. The heart of the child is purely devotional and confidential. It is a helpless dependent upon the parent. It abdicates its self-will with joy; silently do the laws of home control it; its reverence and love are the melody of its being; its life is an exchange of obedience for protection. Its path is chosen for it by the lamp of parental experience, and the calm pure light of a mother's love. How close it keeps to the heart that loves it, and to the hand that leads it! It looks without doubt or suspicion in the parent's eye, and makes the par ent's home and interest its own. Here is a picture of the true child of God in his tent-home on earth, and in his eternal home. in heaven. For this they are given to us. As they are to us, their parents, so should we be to our Father in heaven, and so are all those loved and sainted ones who have gone before us. "Little children, flowers from heaven, Earnest emblems to us given, From the fields of angel-land!" Hence it was that Jesus loved little children, took them in His arms, blessed them, and regarded them as "the lambs of His flock." "He shall gather the lambs with His arm." He gazed with pleasure into their sweet faces, invited their par ents to bring them unto Him, and held them up as the type of the spirit and character of the admitted into heaven. And the aged John, having in view this typical character of children, addressed his followers as his little children! Infants are helpless dependents upon others for subsistence and protection. If abandoned at their birth, their first breath would soon be succeeded by their last. Hence they demand all the attention which maternal love and tenderness can bestow. They live like the tender bud or the opening blossom, exposed to the blight of a thousand fortuitous events. Hence their existence is very precarious; in a moment they may sink like the frosted flower in its lovely blush. This may be said of the soul as well as of the body and mind. What an argument, therefore, we have here for parental diligence and promptness in duty to the eternal as well as to the temporal well-being of the child. The infant is the first prophecy of the man. It is the germ of manhood. It is the man in a state of involution. It is the undeveloped man. Infancy is the twilight of life,—the first morning of an endless being, the age of germ and of mere sense. As the first dawn of spring is the season of the undeveloped harvest, so childhood is manhood in possibility. The infant is the vernal bud of life; it is a being of promise and of hope,— the prophecy of the future man. Hence the age of education. The mother, in the nursery, is ever evolving into the strength of maturity those powers of her child which will be wielded for happiness or for misery. Her babe is an "embryo angel, or an infant fiend.” We behold in that fragile form, the bud of the strong man,the possibility of one who may in a few years arouse with his thrilling eloquence a slumbering nation, or with the torch and sword of revolution, overturn empires and dethrone kings, or with his feet upon the walls of Zion, and the words of life upon his lips, overthrow the strongholds of Satan, and bring the rebel sinner in penitence to the feet of Jesus. Yea, we see in that wailing infant of a week, the outspringing of an immortal spirit which may soon hover on cherubpinion around the throne of God, or perhaps, in a few years, sink to the regions of untold anguish. Oh, it is this which gives to the cradle of infancy such a thrilling interest. The star of those newborn hopes, which hangs over it, will set in eternal night, or rise with increasing splendor, till it is lost in the full blaze of eternal day! Infants are a great, a dangerous and responsible trust. They are the property of God,—" an heritage from the Lord," given to their parents as a loan, a "talent of trust to be rendered back with interest." The infant is especially the mother's trust. "Though first by thee it lived, on thee it smiled, For God's it is, not thine !" Given by its Creator in trust to her, it is her task |