Woe to him who smiles not over a cradle, and weeps not over a tomb. He who has never tried the companionship of a little child, has carelessly passed by one of the greatest pleasures of life, as one passes a rare flower without plucking it or knowing its value. The gleeful laugh of happy children is the best home music, and the graceful figures of childhood are the best statuary. We are all kings and queens in the cradle, and each babe is a new marvel, a new miracle. The perfection of the providence for childhood is easily acknowledged. The care which covers the seed of the tree under tough husks, and stony cases provides for the human plant, the mother’s breast and the father’s house. The size of the nestler is comic, and its tiny, beseeching weakness is compensated perfectly by the one happy, patronizing look of the mother, who is a sort of high-reposing Providence to it. Welcome to the parents the puny struggler, strong in his weakness, his little arms more irresistible than the soldier’s, his lips touched with persuasion which Chatham and Pericles in manhood had not. His unaffected lamentations when he lifts up his voice on high; or, more beautiful, the sobbing child— the face all liquid grief, as he tries to swallow his vexation— soften all hearts to pity, and to mirthful and clamorous compassion. The small despot asks so little that all reason and all nature are on his side. His ignorance is more charming than all knowledge, and his little sins more bewitching than any virtue. His flesh is angel’s flesh, all alive. “ Infancy,” said Coleridge, “ presents body and spirit in unity; the body is all animated.” All day, between his three or four sleeps, he coos like a pigeon-house, sputters and spurs, and puts on his faces of importance, and when he fasts, the little Pharisee fails not to sound his trumpet before him. By lamplight, he delights in shadows on the wall; by daylight, in yellow and scarlet. Carry him out of doors— he is overpowered by the light and by the extent of natural objects, and is silent. Then presently begins his use of his fingers, and he studies power — the lesson of his race.
Not without design has God implanted in the maternal breast that strong love of their children which is felt everywhere. This lays deep and broad the foundation for the child’s future education from parental hands. Nor without designs has Christ commanded, “ Feed my lambs,”— meaning to inculcate upon his church the duty of caring for the children of the church and the world at the earliest possible period. Nor can parents and all well-wishers to humanity be too earnest and careful to fulfill the promptings of their very nature and the command of Christ in this matter. Influence is as quiet and imperceptible on the child’s mind as the falling of snowflakes on the meadow. One cannot tell the hour when the human mind is not in the condition of receiving impressions from exterior moral forces. In innumerable instances, the most secret and unnoticed influences have been in operation for months and even years to break down the strongest barriers of the human heart, and work out its moral ruin, while yet the fondest parents and friends have been unaware of the working of such unseen agents of evil. Not all at once does any heart become utterly bad. The error is in this: that parents are not conscious how early the seeds of vice are sown and take root. It is as the Gospel declares,