REESE LIBRARY 
 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/childitsspirituaOOIewirich 
 
THE CHILD 
 
 ITS SPIRITUAL NATURE 
 
THE CHILD 
 
 ITS SPIEITUAL NATUEE 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY KING LEWIS 
 
 II 
 
 COMPILER OF " SONGS FOR LITTLE SINGERS IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL AND HOME 
 
 gonbon 
 MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
 
 New York 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. 
 
 1896 
 
Ik 
 
 "If religion cannot accommodate itself on the one side to the capacity 
 of children, or if on the other side it fails to satisfy the requirements of 
 men, it has lost its vitality, and it becomes mere superstition or mere 
 philosophy."— Max Muller. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 It is unnecessary to say more here than that the 
 tracing of the mental and physical aspects of child- 
 hood, intensely interesting and highly important as 
 they are, must be regarded as quite subordinate to 
 the point of view from which the child is contemplated 
 in these pages, namely, the Spiritual. The mental, as 
 well as the corporeal, are now receiving deserved in- 
 vestigation, but the Spiritual has been almost exclu- 
 sively in the hands of those whose special purpose 
 has been the classification of the various qualities 
 of spirit according to the theological system whose 
 claims they accept, usually as a theoretical assump- 
 tion. 
 
 But the question is not one of theory or theology 
 only, but is of intense practical importance, for as is 
 the child so will the man become. 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 A few illustrations have been introduced of typical 
 children, and of some of these stories are given under 
 their respective headings in the following pages. 
 
 Grateful acknowledgments are due to many parents 
 who have kindly assisted the author with trustworthy 
 facts from their own family records, besides which 
 many illustrative instances are selected from historical 
 sources which are generally available. 
 
 H. K. L. 
 
 y^une, 1896. 
 
UKIVERSITY. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction . . . . . . . . i 
 
 CHAPTER H. 
 
 The Human Mind in Infancy and Childhood . 6 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The Seamy Side of Child-Nature ... 75 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 The Child of Heathendom 103 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 The Child of Art 153 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 The Children of Israel . . , . , 159 
 
viii CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Child of Christendom ..... 165 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 The Voice of the Professing Church through 
 
 ITS Children's Hymns 186 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The Unit of the Kingdom of Heaven — A Little 
 
 Child . . 191 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 The Child as Portrayed by Jesus . . . 204 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 Conclusion 209 
 
 Index 219 
 
FRONTISPIECE. 
 
 These three children of one family express a common 
 hereditariness, and a striking evolution of mental capacity, 
 in the power of appreciation of the photographic process 
 through which they are passing. The youngest is excited, 
 the next is characterised by a quiet appreciation, and the 
 eldest is more quiescent and satisfied. 
 
 Some stories of the children depicted in the frontispiece 
 are incorporated in the text of the book. The illustration 
 is introduced specially for the representation by the three 
 children of the phases of mind and character in the same 
 family, and the growth of the faculties of body, soul and 
 spirit, which are gradually unfolding in expressiveness and 
 power. 
 
 By the kind permission of Mr. Arthur Reston, Photographic Artist, Stretford, near 
 Manchester. 
 
universitt! 
 
 THE CHILD 
 
 ESPECIALLY CONSIDERED WITH REFERENCE TO ITS 
 SPIRITUAL NATURE AND POSSIBILITIES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Of all the promising and only partially-developed 
 fields of human enquiry, none is more remarkable 
 than that of Childhood. Till within a comparatively 
 recent date, but little had been done by science in the 
 investigation of the subject. Physiology and medi- 
 cine took cognisance of childhood mainly for the light 
 their researches might throw on the adult and his ail- 
 ments. The modern humane and rational treatment 
 of mental disorders gave a great impetus to the study 
 of Psychology, a study in which childhood has come in 
 for a considerable share. 
 
 To the philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome a 
 child, for its own sake, was of no particular value as a 
 subject of serious inquiry. Yet what the embryo is to 
 the new-born babe, that essentially is the infant child 
 to the full-grown man. The axioms of heathen 
 
 B 
 
2 THE CHILD 
 
 philosophy were derived from far too narrow an in- 
 duction, and human wisdom never dreamt of putting 
 a Httle child in the midst of the ancient sages. 
 
 With uncultured peoples children becanje a species 
 of property, and would be dealt with according to the 
 kind and degree of civilization to which they had 
 attained. 
 
 In comparison with the life and history of surround- 
 ing nationalities, Judaism sustains a position of marked 
 superiority — a fact which may surely be regarded as a 
 demonstration of the Being and attributes of God. 
 For He, through Moses, was the Teacher and Law- 
 giver of Israel. 
 
 In the claims of parental authority, and in the rever- 
 ence enjoined on their children, the legislation of Israel 
 set up an ideal of which other civilizations gave 
 scarcely a hint. The domestic affections were fos- 
 tered ; and from Abraham onwards, we see how life 
 shaped itself, in the interests of the children and es- 
 pecially the sons. Discipline was maintained by very 
 severe enactments, such as capital punishment for the 
 striker or reviler of a parent, though not at the inde- 
 pendent will or caprice of that relative. 
 
 But when we come to the study of the life of Jesus 
 Christ, we have reached a new departure. The claims 
 of the woman, the mother, as well as the child, receive 
 recognition, and to them is assigned a position they 
 never before occupied ; and the primary object 
 throughout this book is to follow the great Teacher 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 in His estimate of a little child; to trace its spiritual 
 possibilities in the light of His doctrine, and to en- 
 courage the preparation of the ground for that higher 
 training of children, which a true appreciation of the 
 subject demands. 
 
 It is proposed, then, first, to discuss the child in his 
 essential attributes, mental, moral, and spiritual ; and 
 the physical only as it stands in subordinate relation 
 to, or affects the higher faculties of the child's nature. 
 Perez, Sully, Ferrier, Herbert Spencer, Houzeau and 
 others, have supplied minute and most valuable in- 
 formation on the early stages of childhood and make 
 it unnecessary to go over ground they have so w^ell 
 occupied. 
 
 As education, both in its principles and methods, 
 has assumed the character of a modern science, so the 
 study of the creature to be educated or developed 
 grows more intensely interesting. Educational prac- 
 tice will be brought more closely into harmony with 
 the accepted principles, as the requirements of the 
 nature to be developed are recognized. 
 
 We want to handle the child, as we find him, with 
 his ascertainable limitations, and his actual possibili- 
 ties. For the discovery of these limits and possibilities 
 can we adopt a more satisfactory course than that 
 which the inductive method supplies ? 
 
 We must protest, most vigorously, against beginning 
 with theory, whether philosophical or theological. 
 Living, healthy specimens are always to be had, 
 
 B 2 
 
THE CHILD. 
 
 until tampered with by quacks. The most promising 
 samples, therefore, if the most reliable results are to be 
 secured, will be those that are taken from the earliest 
 moment possible. 
 
 Let these be studied, analysed, compared and classi- 
 fied. A fairly sound generalization will then be pos- 
 sible. 
 
 He who would obtain satisfactory results, must come 
 to the consideration of the subject with an open mind, 
 free from any foregone conclusions. We do not seek 
 an acquaintance with Egyptian life and character 
 within the folds of a mummy cloth, nor is the attempt 
 to ascertain and describe the qualities of a living child 
 of to-day likely to be a successful one, if we conduct 
 our investigations on a child full of hereditary taints, 
 any more than among the dry specimens in some old 
 theological museum. 
 
 We shall first put aside all a priori theories, and 
 proceed at once to trace, in the dawn of intelligence, 
 perception, emotion, volition, &c, those attributes with 
 which this marvellous little creature— a child — is en- 
 dowed. 
 
 We shall then consider some of the more general 
 conditions under which the child's character is modi- 
 fied, though in its essential attributes it must remain 
 unaltered. These conditions will include the question 
 of evolution, heredity, nationality, climate, and not 
 least, religion. 
 
 The influence of a child on parent and the family 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 generally, in the development of human affection, self- 
 denial, and refinement of manners, may be briefly dis- 
 cussed in a supplementary section. 
 
 But where there is no light, the habitations of 
 cruelty reveal the hardness of heart, which leads to 
 the brutal sacrifice of children, or their gross ill-treat- 
 ment. Thanks to the Rev. Benjamin Waugh, for his 
 valuable and successful efforts in our own country, to 
 expose and correct this crying evil. 
 
 The ultimate purpose of the book is Christian life. 
 In Christ, the boy, we have the ideal child ; and in 
 His teaching we are furnished with the laws of a 
 Kingdom which is based upon true childhood. His 
 words contain enough, and more than enough, to cor- 
 rect the misconceptions which for ages have tended to 
 obscure or pervert the " simplicity that is in Christ." 
 
THE CHILD. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE HUMAN MIND IN INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD. 
 
 The new-born babe is the most helpless creature that 
 comes into the world. Hence it is that, to the earnest 
 inquirer, its earliest years are watched with the most 
 fruitful results. Of all the arts of restraint, or disguise, 
 or exaggeration or simulation, to the practice of which 
 the temptation is so strong in later years, the infant is 
 in guileless and blissful ignorance. You approach the 
 child as a discoverer, and if your specimen be a poor 
 one, be sure it is due to no fault of the child. The 
 child offers no discouragement to the fullest inquiry. 
 
 Nevertheless the child is not idle. Its receptive 
 faculties begin to open w^ith its earliest breath ; and 
 though at first all movements must be automatic, it 
 is wonderful how soon a motive for action may be dis- 
 covered. It strikes out right and left, with all its four 
 limbs. It is stimulated to give expression to its feel- 
 ings, by the contact of the surrounding air with its 
 breathing apparatus ; and its inarticulate cries awaken 
 the solicitude of the mother. Nutriment and repose 
 on the mother's breast are at hand. 
 
 As a rule, visual perception of objects takes place 
 after three or four weeks. Tiedemann recorded the 
 
This picture shows the same boy at various ages. 
 
 The baby reveals the active nature of the child in the 
 exercise of the prehensile powers over the feet, while there 
 is as yet scarcely anything more than automatic action. 
 There is an intermediate stage in the left side picture 
 of the child which impresses with its intelligence, and 
 strongly foretells the coming man. In the central figure 
 the boy has developed physically in active energy and 
 strength, and makes good promise of being at the top 
 of his class, and foremost at boating or cricket. 
 
UNIVERSITT 
 
HUMAN MIND IN INFANCY. 
 
 almost incredible observation that movement? of the 
 eyes have been observed the second day after birth. 
 The action could be simply reflex, due to the vibration 
 of light. But just as we are struck with admiration at 
 the first successful experiment in the use of a deli- 
 cately-constructed bit of mechanism, so do those who 
 watch the complex organization of a newly-born babe 
 mark with delight and satisfaction the evidences of 
 healthy function. 
 
 The slow progress of development in a child, in 
 comparison with other animals, is illustrated in the 
 fact that in a month a kitten will make as much pro- 
 gress in physical development as a child accomplishes 
 in two years. 
 
 An infant is susceptible of great enjoyment. Fresh 
 surprises are continually opening up with its expanding 
 powers : and it is remarkable how many and how 
 varied are its pleasures, acquired through sight and 
 hearing and touch, with a rapidly increasing capacity 
 through their use. 
 
 The study of the phenomena of mind in child- 
 hood is very interesting to parents ; and love and 
 thoughtfulness often record the original remarks of 
 their children from year to year. 
 
 These observations are most valuable, as affording . 
 illustrations of the discrimination of facts, the mode 
 of reasoning, and the conclusions — often strange and 
 unexpected — at which the infant arrives. 
 
 As supplying the psychologist with the means of 
 
THE CHILD. 
 
 appreciating the character and state of mental pro- 
 gress of the child, these recorded phenomena are 
 exceedingly useful. Not less important are they as 
 disclosing the data of moral consciousness, and their 
 influence in the formation of character. 
 
 Comparison of one period with another in the pro- 
 gress of a child's life, furnishes the opportunity for 
 tracing the growth of the child's mind, a practice 
 which parents have sometimes wisely adopted. 
 
 Before v/e pass on to some more special considera- 
 tions, we may observe how facts to be adduced tend 
 to illustrate or to oppose certain general conclusions 
 current among us as to child-nature. 
 
 Of all the phenomena of nature, in the heavens or 
 on the earth, that call forth our wonder and admira- 
 tion, that stimulate our interest and warm our affec- 
 tions, or that awaken our anticipations for the future, 
 or that afford scope for the imagination, nothing is 
 comparable to the little child. 
 
 Perhaps Wordsworth is unsurpassed as the poet of 
 childhood, when he sings : — 
 
 Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting ; 
 The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, 
 
 Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
 And Cometh from afar : 
 
 Not in entire forgetfulness. 
 
 And not in utter nakedness. 
 But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
 
 From God, who is our home ; 
 
HUMAN MIND IN INFANCY, 
 
 Heaven lies about us in our infancy, 
 Shades of the prison house begin to close 
 
 Upon the growing Boy, 
 But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, 
 (" He sees it in his joy. 
 
 The Youth, who daily farther from the east 
 
 Must travel, still is Nature's priest, 
 
 And by the vision splendid 
 
 Is on his way attended ; 
 At length the Man perceives it die away 
 And fade into the light of common day. 
 
 Nor have the poets failed to perceive wherein the 
 strength of a Httle child is found. In the babe we 
 have before our eyes continually a form of omni- 
 potence. The infant's strength is its weakness — *' the 
 weakness of God is stronger than men." 
 
 This is prettily embodied in some verses by John 
 Dennis : — 
 
 THE MASTER OF THE HOUSE. 
 
 He cannot walk, he cannot speak. 
 
 Nothing he knows of books and men, 
 He is the weakest of the weak. 
 
 And has not strength to hold a pen ; 
 He has no pocket, and no purse. 
 
 Nor ever yet has owned a penny, 
 But has more riches than his nurse, 
 
 Because he wants not any. 
 
 He rules his parents by a cry, 
 
 And holds them captive by a smile, 
 A despot, strong through infancy, 
 
 A king, from lack of guile. 
 
10 THE CHILD. 
 
 He lies upon his back and crows, 
 
 Or looks with grave eyes on his mother, 
 What can he mean ? But I suppose 
 
 They understand each other. 
 
 Indoors or out, early or late, 
 
 There is no limit to his sway, 
 For wrapped in baby robes of state. 
 
 He governs night and day. 
 Kisses he takes as rightful due, 
 
 And, Turk-like, has his slaves to dress him. 
 His subjects bend before him too, 
 
 I'm one of them. God bless him ! 
 
 The following observations and original facts, some- 
 what roughly classified, include the sayings of small 
 children, and the childhood of persons who became 
 remarkable ; together with some of the conclusions 
 arrived at by careful and earnest investigators. 
 
 Many of these facts especially afford illustrations of 
 the qualities and tendencies of the child, as a spiritual 
 being. 
 
 They are selected primarily as foreshadowing the 
 mature individual as he would be, unbiassed by undue 
 social influences, wise or otherwise, and untrammeled 
 by the artificialities of modern education. 
 
 Ineffaceableness of early impressions. 
 
 The earliest impressions on the mind of a child, 
 whether sensuous, mental, or spiritual, are very deep, 
 
EARLY IMPRESSIONS. 11 
 
 and not seldom ineffaceable. As a striking' illustration 
 of the fact we take the following summary gathered 
 from Hodder's " Life of the Earl of Shaftesbury," and 
 having read the account, let the reader look at a good 
 portrait of the late Earl and he will see the early life 
 quite vividly depicted in his expressive face. 
 
 " Although not yet seven years of age, there was in 
 his heart a distinct yearning for God." Maria Miller 
 had been his mother's nurse, and she was now house- 
 keeper. She formed a strong attachment for the 
 gentle, serious child, and would take him on her knee 
 and tell him Bible stories, especially the sweet stories 
 of the Manger, of Bethlehem, and the Cross of Calvary. 
 It was her hand that touched the chords and awakened the 
 first music of his spiritual life. At the age of seven, 
 young Ashley went to school — Manor House School, 
 Chiswick — now an Asylum for the Insane. It was a 
 dreadful school ; it might almost be called a school for 
 making insane boys. '* The young days of his life, 
 instead of being full of brightness, and sunshine, and 
 merriment, were made utterly wretched. Even in old 
 age he would say : — ' The memory of that place makes 
 me shudder ; it is repulsive to me even now. I think 
 there never was such a wicked school before or since. 
 The place was bad, wicked, filthy ; and the treatment 
 
 was starvation and cruelty.' " He clung to his 
 
 old friend, for she was the only grown-up person in the 
 world he really loved ; the only one to whom he had 
 dared to speak of the misery of his school life, the only 
 
12 THE CHILD. 
 
 one with whom bright and beautiful memories of his 
 earher years were associated. In her will she left him 
 her gold watch, and until the day of his death, he 
 never wore any other. He was fond even to the last 
 of showing it, and would say, "that was given to me 
 by the best friend I ever had in the world." 
 
 That early impressions are deep, has been accounted 
 for, at least in part, by Mrs. Child, Mass., U.S., who 
 says : — " The mind of a child is not like that of a 
 grown-up person, too full and too wordy to observe 
 anything. It is a vessel always ready to receive and 
 always receiving," or it is like "wax to receive and 
 marble to retain." 
 
 Intuitive Discrimination of Character. 
 
 Children are not slow in the detection of character. 
 Their sympathies are as readily drawn out to some, as 
 their antipathies are aroused towards others. As in 
 the vegetable world a young and sensitive plant yields 
 itself to the tender and silent attraction of the sun- 
 shine, so will a responsively loving heart of a child 
 be drawn out even before a word has been spoken, or 
 the critical faculty has had a chance of asserting its 
 authority; and,, as a rule, the intuitive response to a 
 kindly attractive face or touch will be a truthful one. 
 
 James Hogg, the Ettrick shepherd, says : — " It is a 
 curious fact that children are the best judges of charac- 
 ter at first sight in the world. There is an old Scotch 
 
DISCRIMINATION OF CHARACTER. 13 
 
 proverb, * they are never cannie, that dogs' and bairns 
 dinna like ' and there is not a more true one in the 
 whole collection." 
 
 Assuming the spirituality of child-nature, ought we 
 to be in the least surprised at such an indication as 
 this? 
 
 " The spirit of man that is in him," precedes intel- 
 lectual processes in the development of mind. Child- 
 hood has been misunderstood, mainly because its 
 spirituality has been ignored. St. Paul's profound 
 proposition that ** he that is spiritual discerneth all 
 things, while he himself is discerned of no man " 
 (I. Cor. ii. 15), finds striking illustrations in many 
 a child's observations. 
 
 Percy (nine years old) hopes he shall grow up like 
 papa, both in face and character ; he thinks his father 
 as near perfection as possible. (And those who know 
 papa, admire Percy's discrimination). 
 
 A little child lives by faith, before the perceptive 
 faculties of the mind are awakened to anything in the 
 shape of a creed in its most elementary form. Of this 
 fact we have a remarkable illustration in the personal 
 recollections of George Sand. 
 
 " I walked at ten months. I talked pretty late, but 
 when once I had begun to say a few words, I learnt all 
 the words very quickly, and at four I could read very 
 well. I was also taught prayers ; I remember that I 
 said them, without stumbling, from beginning to end, 
 and without understanding a syllable, except these 
 
14 THE CHILD. 
 
 words when I and my cousin Clotilde, were laying our 
 heads on the same pillow, ' My God, I give you my 
 heart.' I don't know why I understood that more 
 than the rest, for there is much that is metaphysical 
 in these two words ; however I did understand them, 
 and it was the only part of my prayers in which I had 
 some idea of God, and of myself. As to the Pater, the 
 Credo, and the Ave Maria which I knew very well in 
 French, except * Give us this day our daily bread,' I 
 might just as well have said them in Latin like a 
 parrot, they would not have been more unintelligible 
 tome." 
 
 The Essential and the Accidental, 
 
 It is necessary to distinguish between what is essen- 
 tial, and what is accidental in this as in every other 
 subject proposed for our consideration. A jewel in the 
 diadem of a queen is essentially the same as a jewel on 
 a dungheap. 
 
 In his diary, Lord Shaftesbury writes : — " At Man- 
 chester, I perambulated the town on Saturday night 
 in company with two inspectors, and passed through 
 cellars, garrets, gin-palaces, beer-houses, brothels, 
 gaming-houses, and every resort of vice and vio- 
 lence Saw a darling little girl, seven years old, 
 
 in the very depth of dirt and uproar. Never did I 
 witness such beauty of natural, untaught affection 
 towards its rough and unkind mother." 
 
CLOTHES. 15 
 
 Freedom. 
 
 The love of liberty is early manifested in a babe, and 
 one of the first things to which it awakes is a sense of 
 restraint. The struggle for freedom is perhaps the 
 earliest effort it puts forth. " The heart may be a 
 free and fetterless thing," but the heart is quickly en- 
 gaged in conflict with its environment. 
 
 It comes into the world under a system of Law, and 
 more often than not, it learns obedience through the 
 things it suffers, especially at the hands of stupid and 
 ignorant mothers and nurses. Coming from the land 
 of liberty— Heaven itself — it soon discovers that it is 
 cabined, cribbed, confined. 
 
 Clothes. 
 
 Children are often compelled to think of their clothes 
 as of greater importance than themselves. 
 
 Admiration for the dress is often sought by a fond 
 mother ; or of a pretty child, for its face, as though 
 either were of primary importance. Children catch 
 the idea, and learn to measure themselves and others 
 by this merely outward standard. 
 
 " Happy he who can look through the Clothes of a 
 Man (the woollen, and fleshly, and official Bank-paper 
 and State-paper Clothes), into the Man himself; and 
 
16 THE CHILD. 
 
 discern, it may be, in this or the other Dread Poten- 
 tate, a more or less incompetent Digestive-apparatus ; 
 yet also an inscrutable venerable Mystery, in the 
 meanest Tinker that sees with eyes ! "* 
 
 There is that in clothes which little children are 
 decidedly opposed to. Clothes with their bands and 
 buttons are a restraint. They rejoice to get out of 
 them and to feel unfettered. The mother strips the 
 child for bed. Escaped from its last garment, the little 
 elf dashes off, dances, runs round the room, exulting in 
 a sense of freedom in God's air. 
 
 The soul has been sometimes put into old folks' 
 clothes. How ludicrous they are felt to be ! Calvin- 
 istic buckram that chafes the skin ; small clothes that 
 are much too small for the little soul. Can the souls 
 of grown up men and women be really smaller than the 
 souls of their babes ? Yea, quite possible. 
 
 Cloaks, 
 
 A cloak seems to be more tolerable to a little child 
 than clothes, it does not so largely deprive it of its 
 sense of freedom. But when, by wrong-doing, it has 
 ceased to be a little child, its spiritual nature is hurt, 
 and it seeks to conceal the self-inflicted wound by any 
 fig-leaf it can lay its hands on. 
 
 • Carlyle's Sartor Resartus. 
 
HE A VEN. 17 
 
 Heaven. 
 
 We cannot help associating an infant with heaven. 
 If we accept the Christ, we must believe the connec- 
 tion is a very real one. 
 
 Heaven is a revelation of God. God makes Heaven. 
 It is a thought of His mind ; it is an unfolding of His 
 love. It is an expression of His will. Our loved ones 
 gather there, and in joining the heavenly throng the 
 divine idea acquires wider expansion, the divine pulse 
 throbs through the ever-growing body, and the divine 
 will attains deeper and fuller significance. 
 • But God has revealed Himself in our sunny skies, 
 our rolling seas, and our flower-adorned earth ; in all 
 the wonderful changes and developments of nature — 
 in human life — with its joys and sorrows — its splendid 
 careers and heroisms ! 
 
 And the most beautiful aspect of the revelation of 
 God comes to us in childhood, untouched by tempta- 
 tion, untarnished by sin. The revelation of God in 
 Heaven may never be clouded by imperfect vision, or 
 obscured by sin ; on earth it is different, but the mani- 
 festation is the same for all that. 
 
 If the world of humanity in its origin and destiny is 
 not of God whence can it be ? " The Earth is the 
 Lord's, and the fulness thereof." 
 
 " The (to us) unknown future world is but a mani- 
 festation of God Almighty's will, and a development of 
 
18 THE CHILD. 
 
 nature neither more nor less than this in which we are, 
 and an angel glorified or a sparrow on a gutter, are 
 equally parts of His Creation."* 
 
 Yet the conception of heaven as brought before the 
 mind of a little child, is commonly so materialistic, 
 and the occupations of the redeemed so utterly be- 
 yond anything a child can make out, that an honest, 
 healthy boy can hardly be got to express a willingness, 
 much less a longing to go. And should he ? 
 
 But here is the candid utterance of a little boy whose 
 notion of heaven was acquired in a well-known school. 
 Tom's aspirations are rather languid; he thinks heaven 
 must be a dull place. His conclusion that it must be 
 so, is based on the observations he has made at church. 
 Faces solemn, and often sad ; surely heaven must be 
 worse than school. With heaven on the brain, he said 
 one day to his mother : — " Mother, I hope when I go 
 to heaven, they will let me have a Saturday half-holiday 
 that I may go and have a game in hell." 
 
 Pity, 
 
 Pity — ** akin to love " — this is a profound spiritual 
 affection, whose root is sympathy. "Thine eye pitied." 
 
 How readily it is evoked towards those who have 
 the care of children. The nurse-girl's *' Ah, poor ! " 
 and the tender feeling aroused towards herself; or it 
 
 * Thackeray's Letters. 
 
BLISSFUL IGNORANCE OF CHILDREN. 19 
 
 may be, as she strokes the fur of the cat, thd same feel- 
 ing is called forth from a very little child indeed. 
 
 How opposed to cruelty is this divine virtue. St. 
 Paul uses the phrase *' bowels of compassion," expres- 
 sive of this divine element of pity. 
 
 Many of our affections bring with their exercise un- 
 mitigated pleasure ; but pity for the sufferings or mis- 
 fortunes of others evokes a sympathy whose tender- 
 ness is sad if not positively distressing. Hence there 
 can be no self-seeking here. It is not a seeking of self- 
 gratification (which the exercise of a feeling of benevo- 
 lence may be) and therefore must rank very high as a 
 divine faculty of the soul. We know how distressed 
 a little child may be when the function of pity is ex- 
 cited. 
 
 Mabel (four) in the garden would call, "Come, pretty 
 birds, we won't hurt you. Do come." Catching a 
 butterfly, she was so grieved at the injury inflicted 
 on the fragile thing, that she determined that she 
 would never try to catch another. 
 
 One day Muriel, when three years of age, was found 
 kneeling on her bed looking intently at a picture of our 
 Lord's Crucifixion, and when asked by her mother 
 what she was doing, replied with tears in her eyes, "Oh 
 mother, why don't they take out the nails ? " 
 
 The blissful ignorance of little children, 
 " Bacon openly taught, as a fundamental principle 
 of his method, that men must enter the Kingdom of 
 
 C2 
 
20 THE CHILD. 
 
 Science, as Christ taught His disciples to enter the 
 Kingdom of Heaven, by becoming as Httle children."* 
 
 " But it was impossible that Science should make 
 any progress, while every fact of every-day life, almost, 
 was explained by false theories and erroneous assump- 
 tions. All these things had to be ignored. Just so, 
 also, the true knowledge of God and Jesus Christ was 
 rendered almost impossible, through the traditions and 
 theological assumptions of priests and teachers. All 
 this had to be ignored. "t 
 
 Little children are happily ignorant, and when light 
 shines on them, they find it pleasant, and in the light 
 they can walk. Knowing nothing at all is the very best 
 condition for revelations from the Father. *' I deter- 
 mined to know nothing," &c., says St. Paul ; and he 
 would have his converts "wise concerning that which 
 is good and simple (ignorant) concerning that which is 
 evil." 
 
 Contentment, 
 
 Bacon, in his Advancement of Learning, says: — "In 
 divine truth a man cannot endure to become a little 
 child " ; but a healthy child feels it no degradation to 
 be a child. It is content with its natural condition. 
 
 At first, a child cannot endure to be made what he 
 is not ; but he soon learns to give himself airs, and 
 alas ! he is no longer a little child. 
 
 * Strutt's Inductive Method, p. 5. 
 f Ibid, p. 6. 
 
ORDERLINESS. M 
 
 Orderliness, 
 
 Order, as distinguished from confusion, is hardly to 
 be expected in a child. Discrimination of the ever- 
 increasing number and variety of its facts, their rela- 
 tive importance, and the multiplicity of things a child 
 can handle, are not likely at a very early date to fall 
 under any orderly arrangement. 
 
 But here is an instance of an orderly mind : — Edith 
 (before two) would have all the doll's clothes folded 
 and put away exactly in their right places. 
 
 A still more remarkable example we have in the 
 boyhood of Mr. Gladstone, whose daughter, Mrs. 
 Drew, mentions that his first well-authenticated words 
 were : — " Take it away ; how can I do two things at 
 once ? " He was then a small boy doing his lessons, 
 when he was interrupted by the entrance of the nurse 
 bringing him a dose of physic. "The words," remarks 
 Mrs. Drew, " will seem to some foreshadowing of the 
 astuteness of the old parliamentary hand who finds an 
 escape out of any situation, but to those who know 
 Mr. Gladstone more than superficially they contain 
 one of the secrets of the assurance of his convictions 
 and the success of his work." 
 
 As boys. Cavendish and Sir Humphrey Davy were 
 remarkable contrasts. The former was retiring in dis- 
 position, and studious ; escaping from society where 
 he might be brilliant. The latter would fancy himself 
 
22 THE CHILD. 
 
 a lecturer, before a vast gathering of eager listeners, 
 and would carefully arrange his imaginary auditorium. 
 Before we leave the more spiritual aspects of the 
 child-nature, to discuss the development of the intel- 
 lectual faculties, many instances of the practical indi- 
 cations of religious principles may be adduced. 
 
 Prayer and practice — faith and works. 
 
 Dr. Hamilton, of Regent Square Church, in his 
 interesting Memories, relates a prayer uttered by one 
 of his infant children. *' O Lord, open pussy's eyes, 
 and make her tail grow" — a prayer which in due time 
 was answered. 
 
 It would indeed be strange if in a little child no 
 trace could be discovered of his origin as the offspring 
 of the great Father in Heaven. We are not surprised 
 at such a story as this, related by Mrs. Cadby, of a 
 child's faith in God. 
 
 Children at a very early age are able to appreciate 
 God's loving care and protection, and their pure, un- 
 sullied trust has often helped the waning faith of their 
 elders. This was seen in the case of a little boy eight 
 years of age who had just lost his father after a linger- 
 ing illness. The mother in her heart-breaking grief 
 and desolation said to the child : — '' Oh ! my boy, we 
 are alone now,'' But the boy's faith was unshaken, 
 and he replied with an emphasis which astonished and 
 
GODLINESS, 
 
 almost reproved the mother : — " No, Mamma, we are 
 not alone, for God is with us ! '' 
 
 A little girl told a friend who was visiting her father 
 that her brothers set traps to catch the birds. He 
 asked her what she did. She replied, " I prayed that 
 the traps might not catch the birds." "Anything 
 else ? " " Yes," she said, " I then prayed that God 
 would prevent the birds getting into the traps ; " and, 
 as if to illustrate the doctrine of faith and works, she 
 added, " I went and kicked the traps all to pieces." 
 
 " The most perfect prayers are those of Saints and 
 of little children, because in both there is the same 
 freedom from the hard, unconcerned, self-contempla- 
 tive habit of mind which besets the common sort of 
 Christians, and the same presence of awe, tender- 
 ness of conscience, simplicity and truth." — Cardinal 
 Manning. 
 
 When he was only four years old Father Damien 
 was missed from home, and was found alone in the 
 church of a neighbouring village where a fair was 
 going on, praying under the pulpit. 
 
 Godliness, 
 
 Harold (seven) speaking of what he would choose to 
 be when a man, said " I don't mean to choose any- 
 thing, I am going to do what God pleases." 
 
24 THE CHILD. 
 
 Holiness. 
 
 ** The holiness of children is the very type of saintli- 
 ness ; and the most perfect conversion is but a hard 
 and distant return to the holiness of a child." — Cardinal 
 Manning. 
 
 Atonement and reconciliation. 
 
 A packet of sweets was given to a child, and his 
 mother wisely took charge of it, since the child did not 
 and could not know that to eat them all at one time 
 would be injurious. Unfortunately the packet was 
 left on a shelf within reach of the little one, and he 
 knew it. Two hours afterwards — a long interval for 
 a child who has set his heart upon a sweet — the little 
 boy was heard calling for his mother or anybody who 
 would give him a sweet, one of his own sweets. Every- 
 body was busy and no one could listen to the poor 
 little fellow. He got upon a chair and reached the 
 packet of sweets, and then went about the house seek- 
 ing someone to give him permission to gratify his 
 longing. Nobody was within call. What was he to 
 do ? They belonged to him ; he had not had one, and 
 he took one. It was an act of disobedience and he 
 knew it. When his father saw him a few minutes 
 later, he had popped the tempting candy into his 
 mouth. The little fellow had now realised the terrors 
 of broken law. His heart was quickly broken. He 
 
RESTRAINT AND LIBERTY. 25 
 
 went about the house crying piteously. He came to 
 his grandmother. She tried to comfort him. He 
 told her without hesitation of his offence. She en- 
 deavoured to divert his mind to something else, a very 
 wise and proper thing to do had it been a case of physi- 
 cal suffering ; but he would not be comforted. His 
 heart was broken ; there was a temporary break in the 
 sacred relationship of child and parent. Was it right 
 to attempt to stop the crying by diverting his attention 
 from the more serious spiritual hurt ? No, the child 
 felt that it would not do. He must be healed, and 
 he could not be healed by looking the other way. The 
 child was truer to his nature than was the grand- 
 mother. In his heart he was saying " I want atone- 
 ment ; I must be reconciled." He slipped off his 
 grandmother's knee, he could not wait ; he sought and 
 found his parents. The reconciliation was effected. 
 The equilibrium of his moral life was restored. The 
 tears were wiped away. The smile of peace soon 
 flitted across his countenance and his strength was 
 renewed. He took no more sweets. They ought not 
 to have been left within his reach. " Lead us : not 
 into temptation, but deliver us from evil." But how 
 intensely spiritual was this moral evolution ! 
 
 Restraint and liberty. 
 
 You walk with a child of three or four years. You 
 take its hand, to ensure its keeping your pace. The 
 
26 THE CHILD. 
 
 child drags behind. You feel that he wants to break 
 away ; to take his own steps, so different from yours — 
 yours, proper to you, but not to the child. He 
 struggles to be free, and at length you relax your grasp 
 of his hand. He is free ; he drags no more now ; 
 there is no hanging back ; he rejoices in his freedom, 
 and he shows it by trotting along quite ahead of you, 
 and you have to quicken your pace to keep up with 
 him. 
 
 Are there not often enforced on little children re- 
 straints as foolish as they are unnatural ? Keep the 
 child on the lines of nature, for these are the ways of 
 grace. " Then shall I run in the ways of Thy com- 
 mandments when I am enlarged," i.e., set at liberty. 
 
 Intelligent appreciation and sympathy are suggested 
 by the divine promise, " I will guide thee with mine 
 eye " — not by force, but by loving sympathetic wisdom. 
 
 The shadow of a father's guilt on an innocent child. 
 
 William Whittam — one of a gang of burglars — wrote 
 a long letter to his wife, detailing several attempts he 
 had made to escape from prison. The letter was inter- 
 cepted by the jailor. It was of considerable length, and 
 well expressed. It contained the following : — ". . . Kiss 
 dear little Nellie. I can't get her out of my thoughts. 
 She seems to know there is something wrong, the funny way 
 she looks at me,''' 
 
lUNIVERSITT} 
 
 A BOrS SELF-SACRIFICE. 27 
 
 The scape-goat I 
 
 A Story of Sir Edward Burne-Jones. — Sir, then 
 Mr., Burne-Jones had so far recovered from the effects 
 of a recent fall that he was able to paint for several 
 hours during the period of his convalescence. One of 
 the earliest exercises of his art after his recovery was 
 characteristic. Being at the house of a friend, he 
 found himself in the nursery, and there the child- 
 daughter of the house was for some nursery offence 
 undergoing solitary confinement in a corner. When 
 the authorities came to release the tiny prisoner they 
 found the walls of her cell covered with beautiful pencil 
 drawings of flights of birds, and all sorts of scenes of 
 "faery lands forlorn." Half frightened and half proud, 
 the little one explained, quite unnecessarily : — " Please, 
 it wasn't I ; 'twas Mr. Burne-Jones that did it." 
 
 A boy's self-sacrifice, 
 
 " An orphan boy and his hungry mongrel dog were 
 the objects of universal dislike and ridicule in the 
 house of his uncle, a Scotch farmer. The lad always 
 sat of an evening far back from the circle of the fire- 
 side, with his crouching dog under his stool lest it 
 should be kicked. One day the little son of the house, 
 of whom the farmer and his wife were dotingly fond, 
 went out with the boy and dog, and a snow-storm 
 
28 THE CHILD. 
 
 coming on they were all lost on the hills. Next morn- 
 ing the dog returned to the farm, making wild signs 
 that the farmer should follow him, which he and his 
 wife did at once, in great anxiety. At last the dog 
 brought them to a spot where they found the boy stiff 
 and cold, but their own child still alive. The boy had 
 taken oif his own coat and wrapped it round the child, 
 whom he laid on his breast, and then, lying under him 
 on the snow, he died."* 
 
 Another illustration of self-sacrifice. It is Christ- 
 mas weather, and if you pull aside the curtains and 
 look out into the street you can see two little boys, 
 just outside the window. The younger one is sitting 
 upright in the hand-cart, and his big brother — who 
 must almost be able to write his age with two figures — 
 is pushing him along. Is it a colder blast than usual, 
 or why do they pull up for a talk together ? You 
 notice them, with their patched and darned clothes, 
 and then, as you watch, you see the elder take off his 
 poor little coat, and in the tenderest way begin to 
 wrap it round his little brother. He is in his shirt 
 now, and the wind blowing through the thin ragged 
 cotton, but he does not seem to care — one at any rate 
 shall be warm. And sure that his little brother is now 
 well protected, he stoops over and gives him a kiss ; 
 aud then, lifting the handles of the barrow, pushes off 
 manfully through the snow. 
 
 " No idea of ' effect,' no martyr-spirit or taking up 
 
 * Scientific Spirit of the Age, by Frances Power Cobbe. 
 
CRYING, 29 
 
 his cross, no big talk about his self- sacrifice ; but as 
 the Christ who became a little child, and taught us the 
 * inasmuch,' looked down and noticed this little street 
 Arab — common in our London as the sparrow that He 
 spoke of long ago — how do you think He felt about it ? 
 And whereabouts in value do you think an action like 
 this would come ? " 
 
 In the following we have another instance of the 
 unselfishness of a little child. Kathie, three years old, 
 being always very loth to part with anything she pos- 
 sessed, was much troubled and fearful at her mother's 
 illness and possible death, but found it in her heart 
 to say : — " I shouldn't like my dear mother to die, but — 
 yet — I should like her to go to the golden city." 
 
 Crying, 
 
 Tears are familiar — and yet they have their mystery. 
 Keble says : — 
 
 Why should we faint and fear to live alone, 
 Since all alone, so Heaven has will'd, we die ? 
 
 Nor e'en the tenderest heart, and such our own, 
 Knows half the reasons why we smile and sigh. 
 
 Each in his hidden sphere of joy or woe 
 
 Our hermit spirits dwell and range apart. 
 Our eyes see all around in gloom or glow — 
 
 Hues of their own, fresh borrowed from the heart. 
 
 What is that which gives most early expression to 
 the mental states or feelings of an infant ? It is not 
 
80 THE CHILD. 
 
 verbal utterance, for the use of language indicates con- 
 siderable progress in mental development. 
 
 Before it has acquired the power of appreciating a 
 definite sound, or become capable of perceiving an 
 object external to itself, its consciousness has been 
 awakened, and has probably revealed itself to more 
 than one person. Twenty-four hours of its life will 
 not have passed without its making its wants or its 
 troubles known. It soon makes use of the universal 
 language of earliest infancy— the expressive voice of 
 pain or of grief, and, such is the marvellous gamut of 
 human feeling, of joy and laughter. There is a two- 
 fold appeal, awaking inquiring sympathy as it falls 
 upon the ear of the listener, and also to the eye, as it 
 takes shape in a falling tear. 
 
 A tear ! moulded into shape by the same forces as 
 those which give form to the planets in their orbits ; 
 a tear for which Nature has carefully provided its 
 appropriate receptacles, its adapted channels, and for 
 the discharge of its valuable functions, ever delicate 
 in its attentions to the eye, and equally resourceful and 
 helpful for the burdened heart with its sorrows and 
 distresses. 
 
 How deep and subtile is the sympathy evinced in 
 the entire facial expression with the bitter tear. What 
 contortions, what convulsive movements of the eye- 
 brows, and of the muscles which play around the 
 mouth ! 
 
 How strange the contrast between the placid face of 
 
CRYING, 81 
 
 contentment, and the streaming eye and the tortured 
 countenance ; and all this as strongly marked in a 
 little child as in an adult. Indeed, there is a sense of 
 shame and of weakness in an adult, which prompts the 
 attempt to conceal that, which in the case of a child, 
 is felt to be like the very profusion of eloquence. 
 
 There is nothing more demonstrative than tears. 
 Tears command an immense variety of expression in 
 connection with muscular contortions of the face. The 
 elevation or depression of lips, or eyebrows, the 
 wrinkles that overspread the countenance, and con- 
 tract the smooth muscles of the forehead, like the dis- 
 turbance of the fitful breeze across the placid surface 
 of the lake. 
 
 The mobility of the features renders them ready ex- 
 ponents of grief or sorrow, of vexation and disappoint- 
 ment, of rage and anger, particularly with flowing 
 tears. It is not less remarkable that painful and over- 
 whelming physical sensations equally find expression 
 through the same media. They thus become our 
 guardians and protectors in danger, and are full of 
 warning. 
 
 Harold was two years old, when running with his 
 sister round the table, both fell down and were hurt. 
 Harold ceased crying first, and, taking up his pinafore, 
 wiped Lucy's eyes, and soon both were happy. 
 
 " Don't give me your cold," said Papa. " No," re- 
 plied Harold, " I won't if I can help it ; I have just 
 finished watering my eyes." 
 
32 THE CHILD, 
 
 Children very early learn the power of tears as a 
 means of getting what they desire. They thus acquire 
 a commercial value and degrade the child. 
 
 A little boy sat on the floor crying. After a while 
 he stopped, and seemed buried in thought. Looking 
 up suddenly he said, " Mamma, what was I crying 
 about ? " " Because I wouldn't let you go out to 
 play." " O yes," and he set up another howl. 
 
 Genius — its early indications, 
 
 John Flaxman, the sculptor, at the age of five, was 
 fond of examining the seals of every watch he saw, 
 whether belonging to friend or stranger, and kept a 
 bit of soft wax ready to take an impression of any 
 specimen which pleased him. While yet a child he 
 made a great number of small models, in plaster-of- 
 Paris, wax, or clay, some of which are still preserved, 
 and have considerable merit. At the age of eleven and 
 five months he gained his first prize from the Society 
 for the Encouragement of Arts, &c. At thirteen, 
 another ; and the following year he was admitted a 
 student at the Royal Academy, then newly established, 
 and the same year he received their silver medal. 
 
THE CALCULATING BOY. 88 
 
 The calculating hoy. 
 
 In an address which George Bidder delivered before 
 the Institute of Civil Engineers of which he became 
 the President in i860, he endeavoured to account to 
 his audience for the success which had attended his 
 career, and this he attributed to the fact that he had 
 devoted himself as a child to mental arithmetic. Be- 
 ginning with ten, and going on by tens, the child soon 
 acquired an intelligent apprehension of the meaning 
 of 100. 
 
 His father was a working mason, near to whose 
 house there lived a kind-hearted old blacksmith, with 
 whom little George became acquainted, and there he 
 was allowed to amuse himself to his heart's content- 
 As he grew in strength he was able to blow the black- 
 smith's bellows, and on winter evenings little George 
 would be perched on a seat near the forge, often listen- 
 ing to the old man's stories. On such occasions neigh- 
 bours would drop in and listen, and one day someone 
 seems by chance to have asked for an answer to a 
 certain arithmetical problem, whereupon the boy with- 
 out hesitation gave the correct answer to the astonish- 
 ment of all present. Other questions followed, and 
 their increasing difficulty necessitated his interrogator 
 to resort to a board and a bit of chalk. His remark- 
 able power soon brought him before the public as ** the 
 calculating boy." Eventually he became an engineer, 
 
 D 
 
84 THE CHILD. 
 
 and a friend of George Stephenson. George Bidder 
 died in 1878, leaving behind him many engineering 
 works, monuments of his skill and success. 
 
 Literary, 
 
 Thomas Arnold, of Rugby, at the age of three, re- 
 ceived a present of Smollett's Historical Works, as a 
 reward for his accuracy in recounting the stories con- 
 nected with the reigns of the Kings of England. Be- 
 fore he had reached his seventh year he had composed 
 a tragedy. 
 
 Robertson, the historian, began life at fifteen with 
 his motto — Vita sine Uteris mors est. 
 
 Preaching proclivities. 
 
 Many a celebrated preacher, like Dr. Chalmers, has 
 preached as a child at three years of age. 
 
 Little Harold in his grandpapa's garden was over- 
 heard reading Rev. i. i, and seen to look up and say : — 
 " Now I wonder if any one in this congregation knows 
 what that means." 
 
 A child who subsequently became an eminent 
 minister and professor at a college, began preaching 
 at the age of three, when he took for his text: — ''Learn 
 to do evil, cease to do well," at which his father re- 
 marked : — " Come, come, John, that is bad doctrine." 
 
CURIOSITY AND DISCOVERY. 35 
 
 More reliable was the doctrine preached by John 
 Ruskin, who began his career as a pulpit orator at the 
 age of three with the appeal to his audience: — ''Be 
 dood people, be dood." 
 
 Curiosity and discovery. 
 
 "The holy philosopher hath said expressly that the 
 glory of God is to conceal a thing, but the glory of the 
 king is to find it out ; as if the divine nature according 
 to the innocent and sweet play of children which hide 
 themselves to the end that they may be found, took 
 delight to hide His works, to the end they might be 
 found out ; and, of His indulgence and goodness to 
 mankind, had chosen the soul of man to be His play- 
 fellow in this game."* 
 
 Lessing's answer to the question : — " If truth were 
 held out to him in one hand, and search of the truth 
 in the other hand, the philosopher's choice would, as 
 a rule, be the answer of the child." The process of 
 investigation affords keener interest, and stimulates 
 greater curiosity and wonder, than the actual posses- 
 sion of the thing sought. " I want to know " is the 
 indication of a healthy activity. 
 
 How often, however, is inquiry repressed and even 
 stifled ? *' Why are they called sisters of mercy, 
 mamma? " ** That's a name they have given to them," 
 says the unappreciative parent. 
 
 * Bacon's De Augmentis. 
 
 D 2 
 
86 THE CHILD. 
 
 " Little children must not ask questions," says 
 another foolish parent, not knowing that little children 
 are born notes of interrogation. 
 
 H. S. was an original inquirer. Before he was four 
 years old he studied the alphabet by his mother's side, 
 and commenced putting letters together and forming 
 words by his unassisted application. He was inter- 
 ested at a very early period in the study of geography 
 and geology. His apprehension of the spirituality of 
 God was drawn forth by a scripture text, " Thou, God, 
 seest me." 
 
 In many instances, far from encouragement being 
 given to a child to pursue the bent of its genius, the 
 child has succeeded in spite of the difficulties and the 
 opposition it has had to contend with. 
 
 Blaise Pascal, from his earliest childhood, discovered 
 a remarkable aptitude for mathematics. Geometry 
 therefore was kept out of his sight, lest it should inter- 
 fere with his appointed studies. Nevertheless, the 
 force of his genius discovered the elementary truths of 
 the forbidden science. When he was twelve years old 
 his father found him in the act of demonstrating a 
 problem on the pavement of an old hall where he used 
 to play. A rough diagram, traced with a piece of coal, 
 was found to be a proposition corresponding to the 
 thirty-second proposition of the first book of Euclid. 
 Other discoveries are recorded, following on the earlier 
 unfolding of his remarkable mind. 
 
INVENTION OF THE TELESCOPE. 37 
 
 How a little girl suggested the invention of the telescope. 
 
 Nearly three hundred years ago, there was Hving in 
 the town of Middleburg, on the island of Walcheren, 
 in the Netherlands, a poor optician, named Hans 
 Lippersheim. One day, in the year 1608, he was work- 
 ing in his shop, his children helping him in various 
 small ways, or romping about and amusing them- 
 selves with the tools and objects lying on his work- 
 bench, when suddenly his little girl exclaimed : — " Oh, 
 Papa ! see how near the steeple comes ! " Half star- 
 tled by this announcement, the honest Hans looked up 
 from his work, curious to know the cause of the child's 
 amazement. 
 
 Turning towards her, he saw that she was looking 
 through two lenses, one held close to her eye, and the 
 other at arm's length ; and, calling his daughter to his 
 side, he noticed that the eye-lens was plano-concave 
 (or flat on one side and hollowed out on the other), 
 while the one held at a distance was plano-convex (or 
 flat on one side and bulging on the other). 
 
 Then, taking the two glasses, he repeated his 
 daughter's experiment, and soon discovered that she 
 had chanced to hold the lenses apart at their exact 
 focus, and this had produced the wonderful effect that 
 she had observed. His quick wit and skilled invention 
 saw in this accident a wonderful discovery. 
 
 He immediately set about making use of his know- 
 ledge of lenses, and ere long he had fashioned a paste- 
 
38 THE CHILD. 
 
 board tube, in which he set the glasses firmly at their 
 exact focus. 
 
 This rough tube was the germ of the great instru- 
 ment, the telescope, to which modern science owes so 
 much ; and it was on October 22nd, 1608, that 
 Lippersheim sent to his government three telescopes 
 made by himself, calling them '' instruments by means 
 of which to see at a distance." 
 
 The discovery of the stethoscope. 
 
 Laennec, the eminent French physician, related to 
 one of his friends the story of his discovery. Walking 
 through the court of the Louvre, he observed some 
 children amusing themselves by holding a cylindrical 
 piece of wood to the ear and scratching with a pin on 
 the further end of it. Thereby they produced a noise 
 louder than the scratching of a pin produces under 
 ordinary circumstances. Next morning visiting his 
 patients in the Hospital Necker, he extemporised a 
 hollow cylinder out of a roll of paper, and applied it 
 over the heart of one of the patients. This was his 
 first stethoscope. 
 
 , Raphael's first playthings were the implements of 
 his father's art, and the latter delighted on all occa- 
 sions to encourage tendencies which seemed the pre- 
 sage of an extraordinary vocation to the noble art he 
 himself so loved.* 
 
 * De Quincey's Lives of M. Angela and Raphael. 
 
BOY INVENTORS. 89 
 
 Boy inventors. 
 
 Some of the most important inventions have been 
 the work of mere boys. The invention of the valve 
 motion to the steam engine was made by a boy, 
 Humphrey Potter, in 1713. The steam-engine at that 
 date was in a very incomplete condition from the fact 
 that there was no method of opening or closing the 
 valve of the cylinder, except by means of levers oper- 
 ated by the hand. 
 
 One of Newcomen's engines being at work at one 
 of the mines, a boy was hired to work the valve-levers. 
 Although this was not hard work, yet it required his 
 constant attention. As the boy, Potter, was working 
 these levers, he saw that parts of the engine moved in 
 the right direction, and at the exact time that he had 
 to open or close the valves. He procured a strong 
 cord, and made one end fast to the proper part of the 
 engine, and the other end to the valve-lever. Then he 
 had the satisfaction of seeing the engine work with 
 perfect regularity of motion. 
 
 A short time after, the foreman came round, and 
 saw the boy playing marbles at the door. Looking at 
 the engine, he soon perceived the ingenuity of the boy, 
 and also the advantages of so great a discovery. Some 
 few years later, Henry Beighton, in 1718, worked out 
 the boy's invention in a practical form, making the 
 steam-engine a perfect automatic working machine. 
 
 James Watt, almost the inventor of the steam- 
 
 OF THE *^ 
 "KTTTrinT-i «^ 
 
43 THE CHILD. 
 
 engine, was a very weakly child. He early manifested 
 a turn for mathematics and calculations, and took a 
 great interest in machines. 
 
 The power-loom is the invention of a farmer-boy, 
 who had never seen or heard of such a thing. He cut 
 one out with his knife, and after he had got it all done, 
 he, with great enthusiasm, showed it to his father, 
 who at once kicked it to pieces, saying he would have 
 no boy about him that would spend his time on such 
 foolish things. 
 
 The boy was afterwards apprenticed to a blacksmith, 
 and he soon found that his new master was kind, and 
 took a lively interest in him. He had made a loom of 
 what was left of the one his father had broken up, 
 which he showed to his master. The blacksmith saw 
 that he had no common boy as an apprentice, and that 
 the invention was a very valuable one. 
 
 He immediately had a loom constructed, under the 
 supervision of the boy. It worked to their perfect 
 satisfaction, and the blacksmith furnished the means 
 to manufacture the looms, the boy to receive one-half 
 the profits. 
 
 In about a year the blacksmith wrote to the boy's 
 father that he should visit him and bring with him a 
 wealthy gentleman who was the inventor of the cele- 
 brated power-loom. 
 
 Judge of the astonishment at the old home, when the 
 son was presented by the blacksmith as the inventor, 
 who told the father that the loom was the same as 
 
THE YOUNG MUSICIAN. 41 
 
 the model that he had kicked to pieces but a year 
 before. 
 
 Smeaton, the great mechanic, when a boy, disdained 
 the ordinary playthings of boyhood, collecting the tools 
 of workmen whom he bothered with no end of ques- 
 tions. One day, after having watched some mill- 
 wrights, he was discovered, to the great distress of his 
 family, in a situation of extreme danger, fixing a wind- 
 mill on the top of the barn. His father sent him to 
 London to study law ; but he declared that ''law did 
 not suit the bent of his genius," and addressed a 
 memorial to his father to show his utter incompetency 
 for legal pursuits. His father acted wisely, and finally 
 allowed him to do as he wished. It was he who built 
 the Eddystone light-house. 
 
 The young musician. 
 
 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the great composer, in 
 infancy listened to his sister's playing on the harpsi- 
 chord with intense delight ; and at the age of four his 
 father gave him lessons every day, and in his fifth year 
 he began .to compose melodies. He was taken, at the 
 age of six, on a tour with his sister for the exhibition 
 of their musical talents, and at a Franciscan convent 
 in Austria, he surprised the monks by the taste and 
 skill with which he played the organ. 
 
42 THE CHILD, 
 
 Imitation. 
 
 Harold (four) dressed himself up in rugs, and stuffed 
 a towel in front of him ; " There," he said to his 
 mother, " see my dress improver, mamma ; I'm a lady 
 like you." 
 
 Memory, 
 
 When Dr. Johnson was a child in petticoats, and 
 had learned to read, his mother put the Common 
 Prayer book into his hands, pointing to the collect for 
 the day, and said, " Sam, you must get this by heart." 
 She went upstairs leaving him to study it, but by the 
 time she had reached the second floor she heard him 
 following her." What's the matter?" she asked. " I 
 can say it," he replied, and repeated it distinctly, 
 though he could not have read it more than twice. 
 
 Punning, 
 
 Tom Hood may have punned in his cradle, even in 
 his babyhood. The following of a little girl of three 
 years is authentic. Being asked if she understood 
 the phrase in the nursery rhyme of the maiden all 
 forlorn that milked the cow with the crumpled horn, 
 said, " Oh yes, I know it means, not get your feet wet 
 on the grass, off the lawn.'' 
 
SOCIAL PRECOCITY. 48 
 
 Muriel when five years of age remarked to her 
 mother when her father was traveUing in Spain : — 
 " It's very lonely for dear father in Barcelona without 
 his wife, perhaps that is why it is called Barce-/ow«." 
 
 Precocity and dulness. 
 
 Precocity has its marvels, but it has its dangers, and 
 sometimes it forebodes premature decay. Bishop Hall 
 wrote : — " I never dared hope much from those great 
 beginnings of intellect and of memory which are never- 
 theless so much admired in children. I know well 
 that a child must first come to his strength, and if 
 those things that are proper to a later age show them- 
 selves earlier, he is not the better for it." 
 
 Social precocity. 
 
 Percy (eleven) : — " It is easy enough for me to love 
 the young ladies, but not so easy to get them to love 
 me." 
 
 Ernest (five), one day walking home from school 
 with a little girl, afterwards met one of his father's 
 friends, who pretended to be ^rprised that he should 
 walk with her, as he thought he preferred the society of 
 gentlemen. " So I do," said Ernest, " but the ladies 
 like a man." 
 
44 THE CHILD. 
 
 Intellectual precocity compatible with goodness and sim- 
 plicity of heart. 
 
 Of the boyhood of Lord Macaulay, his mother 
 wrote : — 
 
 " He gets on wonderfully in all branches of his 
 education, and the extent of his reading, and the 
 knowledge he has derived from it, are truly astonishing 
 in a boy not yet eight years old. He is at the same 
 time as playful as a kitten." 
 
 Dullness. 
 
 Dr. Thomas Fuller remarks : — ** Hard, rugged, and 
 dull natures of youth acquit themselves afterwards and 
 become the jewels of the country, and therefore their 
 dullness at first is to be borne with if they are diligent. 
 That schoolmaster deserves to be beaten himself who 
 heats Nature in a boy for a fault. And I question 
 whether all the whipping in the world can make their 
 parts which are naturally sluggish, rise one minute 
 before the hour Nature hath appointed." 
 
 Destructive or constructive ? 
 
 Toys or playthings are the means by which the 
 child-investigator enquires into the structure of things ; 
 and the pleasure of investigation is not fully attained 
 till the toy is pulled to pieces. " What's in the 
 
REASON, 46 
 
 drum ? " is the great question of the enquiring mind. 
 True, a great many toys go to a complete demonstra- 
 tion. But give the children toys of construction, and 
 see what busy and successful builders they will become. 
 
 Reason, 
 
 A child's earliest conception of God must needs be 
 inadequate, incomplete, and often grotesque. Its in- 
 tuitions of a transcending love and power will pro- 
 bably be much nearer the truth, than any formal 
 representation of God which its little mind may have 
 imaged. The ideas thus conceived may be very 
 natural. They are readily traceable in the analogies of 
 father and offspring, but the details of such an analogy 
 are often very intractable, and not easily adjusted. 
 The following instance is to the point. 
 
 Babs, three years old. 
 
 Mother : " Good night, baby, God bless you." 
 
 B. : '^ What is God ? " 
 
 M. : " Oh ! Our Heavenly Father, you know." 
 
 B. : *' Oh ! I see ; a Dadda that never comes down 
 to breakfast." 
 
 Babs' acquaintance with her father being limited to 
 the breakfast-table, she holds him in great contempt if 
 at any time he has not put in an appearance at that 
 meal. 
 
 Enid (four) being anxious to go and take part in a 
 funeral she was watching from the house opposite, was 
 
46 THE CHILD. 
 
 told that they were only taking away the body of the 
 lady, the angels having previously fetched her spirit 
 home. A few days later Enid looked wistfully again 
 at the house, and said : — " If I ask very gently, do you 
 think they would let me go and see that lady's arms 
 and legs ; they must look very interesting lying on the 
 bed alone." 
 
 Babs (two and a half), and Enid (four and a half), 
 modelHng in clay from a pea-pod. B. : '' Enid, did 
 God make this pea ? " E. : " Yes, Babs, God makes 
 everything." B. (pulling a maggot out of one of the 
 peas) : '' He didn't make much of a one of this, did 
 He, Enid ? " 
 
 Another story, on the same authority, supplies a 
 singular example of theological reasoning. 
 
 Enid and Babs in bed Christmas eve. 
 
 B. : " Enid, does God give us all our toys ? thought 
 it was Father Christmas ! " 
 
 E. (in explanatory tone) : " But God tells the rein- 
 deers what chimneys to stop at." 
 
 B. : " He must know a great deal to tell all that." 
 
 E. (reflectively) : " What did they do when God was 
 in Jesus, because there was no God in the sky to keep 
 the people in the world good." 
 
 There was no irreverence in these little children, 
 who in their simplicity were true to the very little they 
 had been taught, and as they were never left to ser- 
 vants for an hour, it seems as if they evolved their 
 theological notions by themselves. 
 
REASONING 47 
 
 The young theologians' posers. — " Mother," said a 
 child between three and four, " when God was having 
 the flood, why did'nt he drown the Devil too ? " 
 
 Gertrude (same age) : "Why didn't He make them 
 all good, then ? " 
 
 Reasoning. 
 
 Practical logician — George, a little boy of five : 
 " Mother, have I been good lately?" "I think you 
 have." " Oh well, I shall leave off praying now, for 
 it is no use asking God to make me good, if I am 
 good." 
 
 Another day he asked : — " Mother, have you done 
 growing yet ? " *' Yes ? then you can't grow any 
 better than you are ? " 
 
 Reasoning from inadequate data — " Mother, who 
 was my mother when you were a little girl ? " 
 
 Faculty of comparison. — A boy of six drew his 
 mother's attention to a fly which was contemplating a 
 drop of juice upon the table ; he remarked that to the 
 fly that drop of water was a large pond. 
 
 Little Harold : " I suppose God learned to do these 
 clever things when He was a little boy." 
 
 His analogical reasoning : — " Papa, do you think the 
 birds play hide and seek, when they call cuckoo ? " 
 
 On another occasion, during breakfast and while 
 eating eggs and bacon : — " Grandma, do fowls lay 
 bacon ? " After asking how old the world was and 
 
48 THE CHILD. 
 
 being told it was supposed to be many thousands of 
 years old before Adam was created, he said: — "Oh! 
 what a lot of weeds there must have been; Adam must 
 have had enough to do to clear them all away." 
 
 A little child at two and a half years, on catching 
 pussy in the act of stealing some milk, reproved her 
 thus : — '* You're a very naughty pussy ; I can't love 
 you and Jesus can't love you, at least not very much." 
 
 The logic of the stomach, — Mabel (seven and a half), 
 Christmas morning : — " We had better not eat no 
 brekner" — so as to be better prepared for grandma's 
 Christmas dinner. 
 
 A boy called on the nurse for help for his mother, 
 " who had had a new baby." Nurse : " And how old 
 is mother's new baby ? " Small boy : '* Oh ; we don't 
 know yet, mother only had it on Sunday." The logic 
 of this seems to be that the age of a baby is to be 
 determined by internal evidence as the age of a tree by 
 its rings. 
 
 Child's compliment to his mother : — 
 
 John (aged six) was particularly fond of Roman and 
 Grecian history ; he had a great veneration for his 
 mother, and was astonished one day to find that she 
 did not know everything. 
 
 The same lady was once a governess in a family, and 
 her pupil was surprised that she was not encyclo- 
 paedic. In her indignation the child went to her father 
 and told him that the governess was not fit to teach 
 her as she did not know everything. The father smiled 
 
THE HEROISM OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 and opened his child's eyes a Httle wider when he 
 told her that he was in the same hapless condition. 
 Mabel (five) : " Mamma, do you love God ? Then 
 I shall love him if you do." 
 
 The heroism of childhood. 
 
 On the morning of the third day out from Liverpool, 
 a young stowaway was discovered among the casks 
 for'ard, in a ship bound for New York. He was *' a 
 little bit of a lad" not ten years old — ragged as a scare- 
 crow, but with a bright little face, only fearfully thin 
 and pale. 
 
 He stood before the first mate on the forecastle, sur- 
 rounded by crew and passengers. 
 
 " What brought you here ? " asked the first mate 
 grimly. 
 
 " It was my step-father as done it," said the child, 
 in a feeble but steady voice. " Father's dead and 
 mother's married again, and my new father says as 
 how he won't have us brats about eatin' up his wages, 
 and he stowed me away when nobody wer'n't lookin' 
 and gave me some grub to keep me goin' for a day or 
 two till I got to sea " ; and he pulled out a dirty bit of 
 paper with the address of an aunt to whom he was 
 to go. 
 
 The sailors believed the boy, but the first mate was 
 incredulous. 
 
 "Look here, my lad," said he; "that's all very 
 
 E 
 
50 THE CHILD. 
 
 fine but it won't do here. Now point out the man 
 who stowed and fed you, or it will be the worse for 
 you." 
 
 The boy looked with a bright and fearless face, and 
 in a firm voice said, " I've told you the truth." 
 
 " Heave a rope to the yard. Smart now," com- 
 manded the mate. 
 
 The men looked at one another in surprise, but they 
 obeyed. 
 
 The rope ready, the mate said to the little lad : — 
 *' Now, my lad, you see that rope. I'll give you ten 
 minutes to confess," and he took out his watch and 
 held it in his hand, " and if you do not tell the truth 
 before the time is up, I'll hang you like a dog." 
 
 A sullen growl of remonstrance passed round among 
 the men. 
 
 ** Silence there," cried the mate. And with his own 
 hands he put the noose round the boy's neck. The 
 little fellow never flinched, but some of the sailors 
 shook with excitement. 
 
 " Eight minutes," shouted the mate ; " if you have 
 anything to confess, you'd best out with it, for your 
 time's nearly up." 
 
 " I've told you the truth," answered the boy, very 
 pale but quite unmoved, " and I cannot tell a lie. 
 May I say my prayers, please ? " 
 
 The mate nodded, and the little fellow went down 
 on his knees with the rope still round his neck. And 
 putting his hands together he softly repeated the 
 
THE HEROISM OF CHILDHOOD. 51 
 
 prayers he had learned from his mother's lips. Then 
 rising, and folding his hands behind him, he said to 
 the mate, very softly, "I'm ready." 
 
 The hard heart of the mate broke. He snatched the 
 child up in his arms, kissed him and wept over him. 
 "God bless you, my boy; you would not tell a lie to 
 save your life. I will be a father to you." And the 
 mate kept his word. 
 
 James Bristow, a boy of eight years, lived with his 
 mother at Walthamstow. Mrs. Bristow went out on 
 an errand, leaving the boy in charge of the little three- 
 year old sister. A small parafin-lamp was burning in 
 a corner of the room, and to reach it the child climbed 
 upon a chair, and upset the lamp. The parafin caught 
 fire and the child's dress was quickly in flames. The 
 boy might have run off in terror to find his mother ; 
 but he tore off the child's garments, and put her on 
 the bed. In doing so, his own clothes caught fire, 
 and it took the poor boy some time to tear them off. 
 He succeeded at last, but he was so seriously hurt 
 that, though taken at once to the hospital, the in- 
 juries proved fatal within a week. 
 
 Is it too much to say that the presence of mind,, the 
 self-command, the fortitude of this little boy, and 
 above all his self-obliviousness, afford a glimpse of 
 that spiritual element of life which implies a Divine 
 source ? 
 
 An act of heroism in an adult is often prompted 
 by love of praise. A man does not like to be thought 
 
 E 2 
 
52 THE CHILD. 
 
 a. coward, and he is stimulated by a sense of public 
 opinion. A child, like James Bristow, is not worldly- 
 minded enough to be swayed by such considerations. 
 
 Glory and honour, 
 
 " My story begins at the moment when the prizes 
 are given. Now fancy the scene. The Earl (Lord 
 Shaftesbury) rises. The table is piled up with articles, 
 and certain boys approach one by one. First comes- 
 the winner of the prize for punctuality. Every boy 
 behind had had his chance at it, and there stands the 
 boy that has won it. He takes an accordion away, 
 and goes back to his seat while cheers rise from every 
 quarter of the hall, but chiefly from the five hundred 
 throats and five hundred pairs of clapping hands- 
 of his young vanquished competitors. You could 
 scarcely believe it possible that anything awaited 
 other boys to be compared in triumphant joy with 
 this. Then comes the prize for writing. Its winner 
 advances to the front and receives it. At this, all 
 the little fellows there, who had themselves been 
 leaning over their desks, sitting on their bare-board 
 forms, with their pens in their hands, dipping them 
 in ink-pots just above, and their two big serious eyes- 
 fixed on the words between the lines in their copy- 
 books, steadily making it true to the copy there — yes, 
 all of them, with one accord, broke out afresh in a 
 glorious uproar, and the boy that had beaten them- 
 
GLORY AND HONOUR. SB 
 
 all carried off a desk. Next came the thrift prize for 
 the boy who had spent the least of his pocket money, 
 and saved the most in his box. His thrift might have 
 been the act of self-denial, but I fear it had in it some 
 element of meanness, for the cheers lost a little of their 
 swing. Others came, and as each carried off his prize 
 hands and voices fell to clapping and shouting, f^ad 
 hearts seemed to boUnd and sing. Then the next bo^' 
 came. Suddenly all the joy went out of the place a^ 
 light goes when the gas is put out. And there was 
 a dead silence. To everybody it seemed as if some- 
 thing was going to happen. The whole place became 
 almost breathless. What was the matter ? What we 
 saw was a little figure standing at one end of the table, 
 evidently timid, and screwing up his courage, for he was 
 very pale and had put out his fingers on to the edge of 
 the table, as it would seem to steady himself. The Earl 
 said, ' I have now the honour — ,' and he paused, and 
 drew himself up, as if making room for a great swell of 
 feeling, at the same time lifting something from the 
 table almost reverently (it was a little box). He open- 
 ed it, and took into his hand a small round medal. 
 The audience at each second became stiller and with 
 almost distressing suspense ; and, to catch every word 
 that was to be spoken, it became stillness itself. The 
 Earl continued in a subdued tone, ' This boy has 
 saved life 1 ' That boy ? A something went right 
 through the place. The audience could restrain itself 
 no longer, and broke out in tumultuous cheers again 
 
54 THE CHILD. 
 
 and again, hands and feet and voices. Handkerchiefs 
 were waved, and hundreds of strong men were in tears. 
 Meanwhile the Earl was pinning a medal on the 
 child's jacket, and the child himself was lifting the 
 hand he had put out to the table, and drawing the 
 back of it across his eyes. He could save life, it 
 seemed, but he could not stand praise, and he quietly 
 sidled away. But his comrades behind the chair 
 would not allow that. They gave great cries of 
 ' hurrahs,' which quivered with feelings that had 
 been in no shouts before, standing on the seats, and 
 looking over one anothers' heads. And the boys who 
 had won the writing-desks and accordions, as he went 
 by, put them down and clapped him on the back. 
 He had undoubtedly done better than they all." 
 
 " Now, those lads felt something of the grand sacred 
 feeling with which all heaven casts down its crowns, 
 and shouts the supreme triumphant glory of Jesus ; for 
 that boy had in him some of the glory sacred with the 
 sanctity of God, and which all creatures were made to 
 do homage to, the glory which is the especial glory of 
 the Saviour of the world."* 
 
 Prejudice. 
 
 The prejudice of a child is not always deep-rooted. 
 *'A gentle-looking girl of about six years of age, 
 
 * Address to Children on Glory and Honour, by Rev. Benjamin Waugh, 
 Oct. 1883. 
 
SOCIAL DISTINCTIONS. 55 
 
 whose father was a much-respected European, and 
 whose mother was an Arab, surprised me very much 
 one day, by saying in Arabic, without any provocation, 
 and with a gesture of scorn, to a Jewish workman, 
 * Go, thou Jew, and be crucified. ' The child naturally 
 good-natured and affectionate, shuddered when she 
 partially understood how cruel and unjust her words 
 were. By my wish, she begged pardon of the Jew, 
 and then, by her own impulse, and to his great 
 wonder, kissed his hands, while tears stood in her 
 eyes."* 
 
 Social distinctions, rank, &c. 
 
 Nothing can be clearer than the New Testament 
 teaching on the question of rank— of social position — 
 in relation to the kingdom which is " not of this 
 world." The brother of low degree is to rejoice in 
 his exaltation, and the brother of high degree is to 
 triumph over the accidents of birth, and to rejoice 
 that he finds himself on an equally grand footing as 
 the humblest in this world's estimate. 
 
 Does childhood forecast this " equality " of the King- 
 dom ? Was the child that Jesus took and set in the 
 midst of His disciples the child of a prince or of a 
 peasant ? The question is out of place. It was a 
 child, and the child was to be regarded as stripped of 
 all accidents of birth and parentage. The ideal child 
 
 * Rogers' Domestic Life in Palestine, p. i8g. 
 
56 THE CHILD. 
 
 was represented by the particular specimen that hap- 
 pened to be at hand. 
 
 The friend to whom this suggestion was first made 
 remarked that it was all very well to speak of poverty 
 as a blessing and to look with interest on a poor child, 
 but that wealth even for children had its advantages ; 
 but he did not quite realize the position. It is not a 
 question of wealth or poverty. Either may be a 
 temptation and a curse. But both are the accidents 
 and not the essentials of a man or child. 
 
 But here is the charm of the point. The child, as 
 such, is unconscious of what is regarded as the social 
 degradation of its poverty ; or, if born to wealth, is 
 uninfluenced by the habits of thought and feeling en- 
 gendered by wealth. The spirituality of the ckild's 
 nature has, as yet, received none of the lights and 
 shadows of poverty and riches, and everyone has pro- 
 bably had opportunity of noticing the fraternizing of 
 two children coming from opposite ranks of life. The 
 accidents are overlooked ; the essentials are recognized. 
 The children are brothers, and they have, as yet, no 
 social distinction to restrain them. On the one side 
 there is no pride to assert itself; on the other, no 
 shame to hide, and thus they will play together in the 
 streets of their Jerusalem. 
 
 The Christian " world " may get some help and 
 guidance from such little children. 
 
 When he was a boy, the late Prince Imperial of 
 France left the Tuileries one day for a ramble, having 
 
CHILDHOOD UNMORAL. 67 
 
 been seized with a strong desire to go and join some 
 boys who were snow-balHng. He returned after an 
 absence of about four hours, to find his parents in the 
 utmost agitation as to what had become of him. The 
 Httle King of Rome, Napoleon the First's son, once 
 wanted to play truant in the same way, but was 
 checked in time. He then declared with many tears, 
 that he wanted to go and make mud-pies with some 
 dirty boys who were playing on the quays of the Seine. 
 
 Childhood unmoral. 
 
 *' Because man cannot succeed in poising himself 
 against Nature, it does not follow that he cannot take 
 her hand and be lifted to her level. But this would be 
 his becoming unmoral^ as a little child. (Here, per- 
 haps, is where the precepts of Christ have appeared 
 unpractical or impossible. We have not noticed this 
 basis of them all. He is supposing men to have 
 accepted the becoming as a little child). We have not 
 recognized this element in being raised to the level of 
 Nature, and have sought it, if at all, combined with 
 our morality. The question is: — Is Nature infra-moral 
 or super-moral ? "* 
 
 " When we know that exactly in proportion as a 
 man is more a man and worthier, so are things not 
 evil to him, which are evil to those less worthy, and 
 when we know, too, that Christ set a little child as His 
 pattern, to whom things are not evil."t 
 
 * Hinton's Law-Breaker, p. 299. f Ibid., p. 300. 
 
58 THE CHILD. 
 
 "The advance comes through the children. The 
 difficulty of the grown-up men and women is not that 
 they cannot take up the new right, but that they 
 cannot let go the old. But this latter has not to be 
 done by the children at all. The change is in two 
 portions, one hard, the other not hard. Now, the 
 children have only one of these to do, that which is 
 not hard ; the hard one does not come to them."* 
 
 A boy of five years sometimes asked his father 
 troublesome questions, but his father gave him an 
 answer in long, hard words that the child had never 
 heard; but George would never acknowledge that he 
 did not understand, and answered on such occasions, 
 " Thank you, I see." 
 
 May we not hope that in this case there was not so 
 much a false assumption of knowledge as a loving 
 desire to appreciate the father's kind but doubtfully 
 wise explanation ? 
 
 Unmoral. — Little boy wearied with school tasks 
 sighed : — " Oh, if all the world would but agree to 
 know a little less !"t 
 
 Explanatiom. — Ernest (five). One day he asked 
 where the old moons went to. Nurse tried to explain 
 to him that it was the same moon, but he was sure 
 there must be old ones if there were new ones. Pre- 
 sently he said: — "I'll tell you where the old ones go to, 
 they drop down behind the clouds, and the new ones 
 spring out of the clouds, the same as crocuses do out 
 of the earth." 
 
 * Ibid., p. 302. t Parent's Review, Jan. 1894. 
 
Utniversitt) 
 
 DO WE UNDERSTAND OUR CHILDREN? 59 
 
 Do we understand and trust our children ? 
 
 " I once had a boy, the son of a Methodist minister, 
 — you would think a minister ought to understand 
 his boy. This boy came to my school. His father 
 
 thought he was converted His father brought 
 
 him to me and said, * I want you to take this boy ; he 
 is very bad, but I can do nothing with him. You do 
 a very good work here ; I should like you to try him.' 
 I looked into the boy's face. There was a talismanic 
 (that is not the right word, but it will do) look passed 
 between him and myself, and I thought I could do 
 something with him. There came a time when it 
 was necessary to decide as to the truthfulness of this 
 boy. The teacher brought certain charges which the 
 boy denied. The teacher did not understand the 
 character he was dealing with, but I felt certain that 
 the boy's story was straight, and when the charges 
 had been made, I said to the boy ' State your case.' 
 And when he was through I said, ' I believe you.' 
 The boy burst into tears. He did not know what 
 to say. Why, it was the first "time in his life that 
 he had found somebody who absolutely believed 
 him. He turned all kinds of colours. He went to 
 his seat and I dismissed the teacher. The boy came 
 into my office a few minutes afterwards, and took me 
 by the hand, still sobbing. He said, ' Mr. Packard, I 
 will never do a bad thing again in your school, as long 
 
m THE CHILD. 
 
 as I live.' I said ' Why ? ' ' Because you believe I 
 told the truth, and I did tell the truth ; and I am going 
 to show that I deserve the confidence.' 
 
 *' In a week his father came to see me. He walked 
 up to me and said, 'You have given me a son, and I 
 want to thank you.' I said ' I don't understand.' 
 He answered, ' I didn't know my own boy. I thought 
 him converted, but he was not. You converted him ; 
 he is the talk of the neighbourhood ; he cannot think 
 anything wrong ; he cannot do anything wrong." * 
 
 Christian portraiture anticipated in a little child. 
 
 See his clear large eyes : mark his plump cheeks : 
 no wrinkles on his brow : no lines of thought. Do you 
 charge him with carelessness, with thoughtlessness ? 
 
 What did Jesus say to His disciples ? " Take no 
 thought for the morrow / " "Be careful for nothing ! " 
 O blessed childhood ! 
 
 Receptivity. 
 
 " Except ye receive the kingdom of heaven as a little 
 child ye shall in no wise enter therein." 
 
 Here, the knowledge of the nature of a little child — 
 the nature possessed by our Lord — served Him with a 
 striking illustration. It was not easy to convey to His 
 disciples a true conception of His kingdom. But a 
 little child might help them. 
 
 * Parent's Review, Nov. 1893. 
 
RECEPTIVITY. 61 
 
 What is that in a Httle child which commends itself 
 as a feature one would like to reflect ? 
 • We are familiar with such explanations as are 
 usually given ; such as the child's * humility,' ' simpli- 
 city,' &c. ; but our Lord tells us in the shortest possi- 
 ble way what He means. He says the kingdom of 
 heaven is to be received; and thus we get the very 
 attitude of mind necessary to its reception. 
 
 The receptivity of a child is much greater in early or 
 in earliest years than afterwards. It is as yet more 
 passive than active. It is now susceptible of unfading 
 impressions, for earliest impressions are most ineradic- 
 able. The child's mind has no preoccupations. 
 
 Place the child in relation with any object it has not 
 before observed. It is quiet, its activities are com- 
 pletely arrested. For its little mind receiving and 
 absorbing impressions, impressions reaching its mind 
 through the senses, wonder, admiration, fear, curiosity 
 and other feelings are awakened. The child is acted 
 upon, it is not acting. The activities are aroused in 
 due course. 
 
 Our Lord says that to enter into the Kingdom, a 
 man must become a little child. He receives, and by 
 means of his receiving he enters. 
 
 The narrative in Mark's Gospel (x. 13 — 17), is 
 followed by the story of the young man who came 
 running to Christ, and who asked Him the question, 
 " What shall I do that I may inherit eternal life ? " 
 Our Lord knew and at once revealed the man to 
 
62 THE CHILD. 
 
 himself. He was not a child. Alas ! all the avenues 
 to his receptive faculties were choked up with hard 
 cash. " He was very rich." His soul was pre- 
 occupied, "and he went away sad." He had too 
 much to carry. He would not become a receptive 
 Jittle child. He was too full to receive the kingdom of 
 heaven. 
 
 Another glimpse of the Master's intimate knowledge 
 of human nature is brought to our mind in what 
 follows : " I thank thee, O Father, that Thou hast hid 
 these things from the wise and prudent, and hast 
 revealed them unto babes.'' 
 
 Here we have the two great obstacles to the recep- 
 tion of the kingdom of heaven. One of these is 
 represented by the rich young man, the type of 
 worldly-mindedness, and heart-absorption in wealth ; 
 the other is found in human philosophy, and usually in 
 a theologic form. 
 
 A little child is free from both these forms of en- 
 tanglement and spiritual destruction. It is destitute 
 of earthly possessions ; therefore it is capable of 
 receiving. It has no notions in its head ; therefore it 
 has no difficulties of belief. The heart is free. The 
 mind is free. Men and women must empty them- 
 selves of self in all its forms, in order to be receptive. 
 Thus they become once more little children. This is 
 only another way of saying " Ye must be born again," 
 is it not ? 
 
 It is its receptivity that makes a little child so 
 charming. 
 
FAITHFULNESS. 68 
 
 Filial affection and God's Heaven. 
 
 "A boy of six years named Tommy Lloyd, son of 
 Mr. James Lloyd, residing in the mountain hamlet of 
 Meingwynionmawr, was missing from home during 
 the recent snowstorm. The villagers, armed with long 
 staves, turned out in a body to the hills, resolved to 
 spare no effort in finding the lost child. After they 
 had spent ten hours among the hills and valleys a 
 messenger arrived on horseback with the news that 
 the missing boy had safely arrived at Llwynwermwent, 
 near Newquay, where his mother was visiting some 
 friends. So great had been the little fellow's longing 
 for his mother that he braved the bitter cold and 
 blinding drifts of snow and accomplished a journey 
 of seven miles over the bleakest uplands in Cardigan- 
 shire." * 
 
 Ernest, aged three (to his nurse), " I should like papa 
 and me to go to Heaven ; " then followed rapidly a list 
 of his relations who were to go there too, ending with, 
 ^* How happy we'll all be when God is ready for us." 
 
 Faithfulness. 
 
 " In Mr. Giammal's establishment there were several 
 black servants, — good-natured Abyssinian girls. They 
 looked very picturesque in their holiday dresses. One 
 
 * Daily News, Jan. i6, 1893. 
 
64 THE CHILD. 
 
 day there was great rejoicing among them, and cries 
 of congratulation echoed throughout the house. I 
 inquired the cause. I found that a young slave girl 
 who had been hired by Mr. Giammal, had just been 
 set free. She was the property of an Arab widow 
 
 lady The poor girl was at first quite overcome 
 
 with delight and wonder, but on reflection she seemed 
 almost to tremble at the loneliness and responsibility 
 of her new position. She asked her mistress if she 
 could always love her just as much as she had loved 
 her before, and added, ' I would rather keep your love 
 than gain my freedom.'"* 
 
 What only a child can do. 
 
 Being in Brussels, I visited the Royal Lace Factory. 
 In the Atelier I watched the women and girls at work 
 on some of the finest specimens of their artistic labour. 
 One was quite an old woman, who, in her spectacles, 
 was still able to do a full day's work, at which she 
 contentedly earned two francs a day. She had been 
 at it over forty years. Sight, as a rule, goes much 
 sooner. 
 
 "And how old are they when they begin to learn 
 the art ? " I asked ; and was informed in reply that 
 they commenced between the ages of four and five. 
 "That is very young." "Yes, but it teaches the 
 children the lesson of patience ; and, if they did not 
 
 * Rogers' Domestic Life in Palestine, p. 377. 
 
WHAT ONLY A CHILD CAN DO. 65 
 
 begin when young, they would never acquire the 
 abiUty to do such fine work." 
 
 My informant seemed to think that patience was 
 about the highest possible attainment. It is a divine 
 virtue, but not the only one ; and it is to be wished 
 that hope (another great and healthy virtue), still finds 
 a home in the hearts of these hard-working people. 
 
 But I was struck with the fact that the art must be 
 acquired when the children are quite young, and the 
 spirituality of the child received a new and striking 
 illustration. 
 
 The faculties of a child are so pliant, so fresh, so 
 clear, and the work of the Brussels lace is so fine and 
 delicate, that the child, before its perceptions are 
 blunted, before its tastes have become degraded, before 
 its senses are made coarse, and before it has known 
 anything of disobedience and discontent, takes readily 
 to a life's devotion, whose beautiful productions adorn 
 a princess and grace the most fashionable assemblies. 
 
 Poor little child, — have all who wear your lace as 
 patient, as contented, as happy a life as yours ? 
 
 And you can acquire what older people were in- 
 competent to attain : and you can do what older hands 
 were unable to perform. 
 
 Only by conversion, and becoming as little children, 
 can the world-encrusted soul acquire once more the 
 capacity for many a delicate and difficult spiritual 
 acquirement. 
 
THE CHILD. 
 
 The wilL 
 
 There is no necessity to discuss the metaphysics of 
 what we recognize as Will in a child. Its manifesta- 
 tion from a very early period none will dispute. 
 
 It may be observed, however, that what we trace in 
 an uneducated adult as Will determined mainly by 
 emotion, is strikingly evident in a child. The will is 
 moved by emotional impulse. How can it be other- 
 wise ? Experience has as yet taught nothing; and 
 reason is but in its dawn. 
 
 Musicians. 
 
 Infant prodigies in music were never more numerous 
 than now. But all performers are not composers. 
 
 Among the most remarkable of child composers may 
 be mentioned the boy Handel. As is very often the 
 case, the genius of the child was opposed, and Handel 
 was intended by his father for the profession of the 
 law. But the boy got to the clavichord in an attic, with 
 the sound so deadened, that he might follow his bent 
 unknown to his family, and as an infant he made sur- 
 passing progress in manipulating the instrument as 
 well as in original composition. 
 
 Mozart, at the age of five, had produced several 
 pieces of music. 
 
 Harry at nine months would listen intelligently to 
 
A RAPID AWAKENING. 67 
 
 music, and at four and a half years of age he sang to 
 a large audience, making an hour's entertainment en- 
 tirely himself. 
 
 Artists and sculptors. 
 
 Sir Thomas Lawrence, at six years of age, produced 
 excellent portraits of Lord and Lady Kenyon. 
 
 Antonio Canova, almost as soon as he could hold a 
 pencil, was initiated into the principles of drawing ; 
 and while still a boy, worked as a sculptor and ac- 
 quired fame. 
 
 A rapid awakening. 
 
 Miss Martineau tells us of a schoolboy of ten, who 
 laid himself down, back uppermost, with Southey's 
 Thalaba before him, on the first day of the Easter 
 holidays, and turned over the leaves, notwithstanding 
 his inconvenient position, as fast as if he were looking 
 for something, till in a very few hours it was done, and 
 he was off with it to the public library, bringing back 
 the Curse of Kehania. Thus he went on with all 
 Southey's poems, and some others, through his short 
 holidays, scarcely moving voluntarily all those days 
 except to run to the library. " He came out of the 
 process so changed that none of his family could help 
 being struck by it. The expression of his eye, the cast 
 of his countenance, his use of words, and his very gait 
 were changed. In ten days he had advanced 3^ears in 
 
 F 2 
 
THE CHILD. 
 
 intelligence ; and I have always thought that this was 
 the turning point of his life. His parents wisely and 
 kindly let him alone, aware that school would presently 
 put an end to all excess in the new indulgence." 
 
 Scientific observation, 
 
 James Ferguson, the astronomer, was the child of 
 a day labourer. The day's work done, the boy went 
 out into the fields, where he wrapped himself in his 
 blanket, and lying on the grass, with a thread on which 
 beads were strung, measured the distances and move- 
 ments of the stars. He was taught by an old woman, 
 through whom he learnt the alphabet, and then to read, 
 much to the astonishment of his father. While yet 
 a boy he discovered the properties of lever and axle. 
 Though to him an original discovery, he w^as chagrined 
 when he subsequently found books recording the same 
 discovery by others. 
 
 The great Faraday became an errand boy to a book- 
 binder at the age of twelve. A year later he was a 
 bookseller's and bookbinder's apprentice. He now 
 had the opportunity of making acquaintance with the 
 treasures of the Encyclopcedia Britannica, Mrs. Marcet's 
 Conversations on Chemistry, &c. After dipping into 
 these works, he came to the conclusion that it was 
 not his lot to be " a deep thinker or a very precocious 
 person," thus betraying that humility which remained 
 a charming element of his character throughout his 
 splendid career. 
 
THE IMAGINATION AND THE SENSES. 
 
 Manners. 
 
 Politeness. It is the custom in all good Spanish 
 families always to leave something on one's plate, in 
 order not to appear too great an eater. They accustom 
 their children to this habit by telling them frequently, 
 " Politeness requires you to leave something on your 
 plate ; don't forget this, it is politeness." At the table 
 where a friend of mine was sitting, a little girl two and 
 a half years old had reluctantly left a portion of some 
 sweet dish. She leaned towards her mother and 
 whispered in her ear, but loud enough to be heard 
 by everybody : — " Please mamma, may I eat politeness 
 to-day?" 
 
 Life and death illustrated. 
 
 Ernest (five) had been asking about his heart beat- 
 ing, and after his nurse had explained it he said : — 
 " Oh yes, I know now ; it's like my highlander ; when 
 the top spins, he can dance ; when it stops he can't do 
 it ; that's the difference between life and death." 
 
 The imagination and the senses. 
 
 The illusions of the senses are usually corrected by 
 the reason ; but the following is an instance of the 
 correction of the imagination by an appeal to the 
 senses. 
 
70 THE CHILD. 
 
 Ernest (four) went to his father's office in 
 Birmingham on the occasion of a visit by the Queen, 
 to witness the procession from the Town Hall. Hear- 
 ing the cheers of the crowd, he began saying to himself 
 the lines of Mrs. Crewdson from The Martyrdom of 
 Marius : — 
 
 " And the clamours of the people 
 
 Through the Arch of Titus roll, 
 All down the Roman Forum 
 
 To the towering Capitol." 
 
 Ernest was grievously disappointed not to see the 
 Queen in her crown and robes, and remarked, " She's 
 only a stout old lady with grey hair." 
 
 Children are original, but they are sometimes apt at 
 quotation as witness the following : — 
 
 Ernest (under three) on his father's return from a 
 tour in Scotland, expressed his delight as he followed 
 him into his room, in the following quotation from 
 *' The Spider and the Fly :" 
 
 " Dear friend, what can I do, 
 To prove the warm affection 
 I always felt for you ? " 
 
 At three he could repeat many of Lear's Nonsense 
 Rhymes. The river Thames was pointed out to him. 
 The passengers on the steamer were much amused 
 when he at once repeated : 
 
 " There was an old person of Ems, 
 Who casually fell in the Thames, 
 
 But when he was found. 
 
 They said he was drowned, 
 This silly old person of Ems." 
 
DEMOCRACY AMONG THE CHILDREN. 71 
 
 . And at four he remarked, " My papa isn't like the 
 
 busy bee ; the bee improves the shining hour, but my 
 papa improves it whether the sun shines or not." 
 
 Democracy among the children. 
 
 Is childhood affected by the democratic spirit of the 
 age? 
 
 Madge, a little girl, went into the fields one day with 
 a lady who took her camp-stool. The lady had sat 
 down by a field of mangolds. After a little time Madge 
 proposed that her friend should now stand while she 
 took the stool. It was suggested to Madge that she 
 should sit on a mangold. Madge tried first one and 
 then another, but with the same result — she tumbled 
 off them all. A broad hint to the lady that she should 
 now try the mangolds and let Madge have the stool. 
 
 Muriel, at two and a half years, was discovered in 
 proud possession of a hammer and some tacks, and on 
 being deprived of the same by her grandmother in- 
 dignantly flung after her retreating form the rebuke — 
 " Don't be selfish grandma !" 
 
 The preceding facts and observations have been 
 selected, as far as possible, not for the purpose of show- 
 ing what a child thinks and does under the most 
 favourable conditions of early training, but what the 
 child must be, and what it will do, apart from previous 
 
72 THE CHILD. 
 
 experience and anterior to the time which brings guid- 
 ance or promptings from without. 
 
 Material, either objective or subjective, upon which 
 the httle one may exercise its faculties, must present 
 itself to the mind, and appropriate stimuli to the for- 
 mation of purpose must rouse the imagination. As 
 much as this there must be. The infant is utterly un- 
 equal to an a priori assumption. But more than this 
 would interfere with the child's individuality, and its 
 unbiassed action. Its mental conceptions would cease 
 to be original ; and our surprise would vanish when we 
 knew that decisions arrived at under the direct influ- 
 ence of its surroundings and the suggestions offered 
 to the infant by its attendants, had been impressed on 
 the child's mind. 
 
 We want to see, with the minimum of personal ex- 
 perience, and a will unbiassed from without, how the 
 infant will behave. It will now form its own con- 
 ceptions of its little bit of mental property, and it will 
 make its own experiments upon it ; and when it gives 
 utterance to its ideas we may get, what w^e may fairly 
 expect, an original observation, x And we are con- 
 tinually amused and surprised at the strange con- 
 clusions at which the child has arrived. We pro- 
 nounce him clever. We are astonished ; but our 
 astonishment is often due to our failing to notice 
 that the child could come to no other conclusion from 
 the premises than that which it had reached. Its 
 facts were really most simple, and its induction the 
 
WHAT A CHILD THINKS. 7* 
 
 most slender. Its startling conclusion was really in- 
 evitable. We are surprised at the child's originality, 
 because his standpoint differs so widely from ours 
 owing to our mental training and varied experience. 
 Our course of thought and the determining factors 
 of our action, are based upon the training which has 
 for years been going on in our natures and characters. 
 
 The interest and value, therefore, of instances ad- 
 duced in the foregoing pages, must be estimated by the 
 degree of freedom from restraint on the one hand, and 
 on the other hand, from external suggestion as to the 
 lines along which thought may travel, and the un- 
 fettered will may be expressed. 
 
 It is, doubtless, difficult in many cases to ascribe to 
 a particular story the part played in its evolution by 
 domestic influences on the child. Still, the story will 
 generally carry with it sufficient evidence to justify the 
 conclusion as to the independent action of the child's 
 mind. 
 
 The illustrations could be indefinitely multiplied, but 
 these are sufficiently numerous for the purpose. " As 
 a child thinketh in his heart, so is he." But the im- 
 portance of his thinking will be greater or less in the 
 formation of opinion as to what a child essentially is, 
 when we are able to state how much the thought is 
 the child's, and how far the thought has been put into 
 its head by another. 
 
 From the instances adduced, there is overwhelming 
 evidence in favour of the divinity of the child's origin ; 
 
74 THE CHILD. 
 
 and this is the main conclusion it is sought to establish 
 in these pages. 
 
 The study of childhood is not less worthy than the 
 investigation of the beginnings of things by the geo- 
 logist, or the chemist, or the natural philosopher. 
 
THE SEAMY SIDE OF CHILD-NATURE. 75 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF CHILD-NATURE. 
 
 To affirm, without qualification, that a child comes 
 into the world complete and perfect would be as 
 absurd as it is untrue. It begins its existence as a 
 bundle of potentialities. It is full of the most tender 
 susceptibilities. It is a delicately strung musical 
 instrument. A sympathetic touch will elicit the sweet- 
 est tones ; an ignorant rough-handed person will evoke 
 all manner of discordant noises. 
 
 In the preceding chapter the life is traced in its 
 unfolding and during its most early stages, mainly 
 under loving and wise conditions, and, as a rule, 
 brightest anticipations have been fulfilled. The child 
 has grown, and its growth has been watched with 
 satisfaction and delight by those most solicitous for 
 its welfare. 
 
 But the proper treatment of the infant must be 
 directed by a just appreciation of its necessities and 
 its claims, and these can only be decided upon after a 
 careful study of the nature of the child. But who is 
 sufficient for these things ? 
 
 It is no exaggeration to say that a young mother or 
 a nurse-girl, into whose hands the babe first comes. 
 
76 THE CHILD. 
 
 will more frequently than not, be ignorant of its con- 
 stitution, and quite unprepared for the duties of its 
 education, whether physical, mental or moral. The 
 child, as a consequence of neglect or mistaken kind- 
 ness, is troublesome, disagreeable, crying, passionate. 
 It soon acquires a bad character, and if its parents be 
 theological, the little one is set down as a remarkable 
 victim of the fall of Adam, though the real cause of the 
 mischief is more likely to be the fall of the baby 
 through the heedlessness of the nurse. 
 
 Accident, blunder, bad temper, over-indulgence in the 
 nurse, will generally be at the bottom of the manifes- 
 tation of evil in the babe, and neither Adam nor his 
 latest descendent can fairly be held responsible for 
 what we call the seamy side of childhood. 
 
 It must not be forgotten that heredity, through the 
 wickedness of its ancestors, may have entailed in the 
 poor infant constitutional evils that no training will be 
 able to eradicate ; but the fact ought to excite more 
 tender pity and enlist the fuller sympathy. 
 
 A new-born babe may be said to be morally perfect 
 though its perfection is purely negative. As yet it 
 knows neither good nor evil. It is, as yet, unmoral, 
 simple ; and its simplicity as regards what is evil, is 
 that which the Apostle Paul desired for his disciples. 
 
 Fostered by a wise and tender nurse, the infant's 
 sensitive nature, like a small fragile craft launched 
 upon the stream of time, will be screened from the 
 blasts of cutting winds, sheltered from the collisions 
 
THE SEAMY SIDE OF CHILD-NATURE. 77 
 
 to which it is exposed, and kept out of the currents 
 which threaten to make it an early wreck. 
 
 On the other hand, supposing the babe to fall into 
 the hands of an unsympathetic nurse whose handling 
 is provocative of discomfort and whose mistakes arouse 
 reflex feelings against the injury done ; an Augustinian 
 theorist would be at once satisfied that such a specimen 
 offers an infantile demonstration of the doctrine of 
 Adamic corruption. 
 
 May we not take a more generous, nay, a more just 
 view of the little stranger, and find out some more 
 reasonable, more hopeful, and more God-like explana- 
 tion of the evils which sooner or later present them- 
 selves for observation in the experience and behaviour 
 of the precious infant ? 
 
 Take, for instance, the manifestation of " anger." 
 "A worm will turn when it is trodden upon," and a 
 baby suffering pain, generally by accident in manipu- 
 lating the tender little thing — it may be a pin accident- 
 ally stuck into its body — will betray the suffering in 
 response to the violent stimulus. 
 
 In the early part of its existence, as James Hinton 
 says, its actions have no moral value ; the child is 
 neither moral nor immoral but unmoral. 
 
 Presently, with a certain measure of experience, it 
 learns that crying brings help and deliverance. A 
 friendly hand puts matters right. A scream in an 
 infant is often a kindly warning to a mother that a 
 wrong has been done or a duty neglected. 
 
78 THE CHILD. 
 
 With advancing intelligence it learns the value of 
 tears as a means of getting what it wants ; or, as a 
 weapon of offence, the tears stand as the symbol of 
 dislike, or of revenge for being deprived of a toy with- 
 out seeing any reason why it should be treated so 
 badly. 
 
 Our primitive ancestors, characterised by impulsive- 
 ness and often by extreme irascibility, may fairly be 
 debited with some of this evil tendency ; and this 
 tendency, supplemented by the ignorant, mischievous, 
 and often cruel treatment of parents, will hardly fail to 
 develop a monstrous character. 
 
 Caprice in a little creature of eleven months mani- 
 fested itself in a violent temper, because she vainly 
 tried to seize her grandfather's nose. 
 
 Perez placed this passion among the class of animal 
 sentiments. 
 
 Jealousy, again, is more or less common among all 
 animals. A gentleman of the writer's acquaintance, 
 cannot make any demonstration of affection to his 
 wife but the collie immediately gets excited with 
 jealousy ; and ceases his barking and is at peace, as 
 soon as some attention is shown to him. Who has 
 not seen a jealous child making itself wretched at its 
 parents' mutual caresses ? 
 
 A child sometimes covets a thing not for the sake of 
 enjoying it, but because it does not like to see another 
 possessing it. 
 
THE RECONCILER. 79 
 
 Cruelty, 
 
 What is called cruelty is generally the result of 
 the unreasoning manner in which a child will con- 
 duct its investigations of the phenomena which come 
 under its notice. A child is attracted by a fly on 
 the window pane. The movements of the fly stimu- 
 late the attempts to take possession of the poor in- 
 sect. The child has no intention of harming the 
 fly ; he only wants to examine the object to which his 
 attention is drawn. Very likely the fly gets damaged ; 
 and if the pursuit of knowledge makes the child a vivi- 
 sectionist, and the fly loses a wing or a leg, it is not 
 necessarily the consequence of cruelty in the child, but 
 merely an unfortunate incident in the pursuit of know- 
 ledge. 
 
 Resentment. 
 
 A child takes offence, anger is aroused, and de- 
 sire for retaliation is excited. But like the feelings 
 of children, pleasurable or painful, the passion is not 
 very deep ; and it is very rare for a child to cherish 
 resentful thoughts. 
 
 The reconciler. 
 
 The following true story confirms the view proposed, 
 that the evil thoughts of a little child are more akin to 
 
fiO THE CHILD. 
 
 the ruffling of the surface of the lake, than the lashing 
 into fury of the raging sea. 
 
 Mrs. G. was out one day when she came upon a 
 group of children. At the moment, a man was re- 
 proving a little boy of four or five, for kicking his 
 sister. He passed on and now my friend took the 
 case in hand, and urged the offender to kiss his sister 
 and be good. He flushed with anger, and was 
 obstinate. Mrs. G. then said to the little girl :— " You 
 kiss him, then." This she did at once, and the little 
 fellow was conquered ; he flung his arms round her 
 neck, and the reconciliation was complete. A penny 
 for some sweets crowned the new-found happiness. 
 
 Quarrelsome children. 
 
 Richard and Jane are always quarrelling (ages only 
 three and four). One day the waves of contention ran 
 high — each was claiming the possession of the moon ! 
 
 An old man, not far from eighty, tells me that the 
 most vivid recollection of his own childhood is that at 
 three his passion was aroused, and he lay upon a form, 
 striking out and daring anybody to come near him. 
 
 Dissimulation, 
 
 Training is necessary to make a child a dissembler. 
 A fifth of November mask over its face looks tempting, 
 but it is not long before it feels hot and uncomfortable, 
 and the child cannot tolerate the stifling thing that 
 
FORCE OF EXAMPLE. 81 
 
 comes between it and the fresh air of heaven. Dis- 
 guises are for grown-up people who can't walk 
 straight. 
 
 Comparing notes with the young Prince of Asturias, 
 afterwards King of Spain, the French Prince Imperial 
 one day asked him what lesson he found it hardest to 
 learn. *' It is," said the then future King of Spain 
 dismally, " not to laugh when I am amused at the 
 theatre." 
 
 " They let me laugh as much as I like," said the 
 Prince Imperial ; " but what I don't like is to be 
 obliged to smile and look pleasant to men whom I 
 know are my father's enemies." 
 
 He was specially alluding to Count Bismarck, who 
 had come on a visit to Napoleon III. at Plombieres, 
 and had been received with a cordiality which the boy 
 knew to be more apparent than real. 
 
 Force of example. 
 
 A little girl only fifteen months old had already 
 begun to imitate her father's frown and irritable ways 
 and angry voice ; and very soon after she learnt to use 
 expressions of anger and impatience. When three 
 years old, this same little girl gravely said to a visitor 
 at the house, with whom she had begun to argue quite 
 in her father's style : — " Do be quiet, will you, you 
 never let me finish my sentences." 
 
 UNIVERSITY, 
 
82 THE CHILD. 
 
 Lying. 
 
 Lying has its root in distrust. Trust is the normal 
 state of a child's nature. But its suspicion is soon 
 aroused by a harsh word or a frown, confidence is 
 gone, fear is excited, a sense of wrong somewhere is 
 engendered. The child is right in trying to please, but 
 the thing to please is said instead of the thing which 
 is true in the hope of averting some evil. 
 
 Care should always be taken to ascertain whether a 
 little child is conscious of what a lie means. At two 
 years of age Harry told a lie and was corrected by his 
 mother. He looked at her through his tears and said, 
 " "What is a lie, a thing you put in your pocket ? " An 
 explanation sufficed and he never again swerved from 
 the truth. 
 
 Envy and pride. 
 
 Envy springs out of a sense of one's own supposed 
 inferiority to another's real or imagined superiority. 
 Pride results from one's own imagined superiority to 
 another's fancied inferiority. If pride fail of the 
 recognition it claims, it becomes a cause of irritation 
 to its possessor. 
 
 John Ruskin maintains that pride is at the bottom 
 of most of the miserable mistakes that are made. 
 
 The seeds of pride are very early sown in a child's 
 heart. Fond and foolish mothers are among the most 
 
PRAYING CHILDREN. 83 
 
 frequent and successful sowers. They put the seeds 
 into fine clothes. They drop them into the ears of 
 their children while they talk to their friends of the 
 pretty faces and charming ways of their little ones. 
 Instead of checking they will sometimes applaud the 
 sauciness and the haughtiness, which, before all things, 
 they ought to be concerned to eradicate or uproot. 
 
 Cunning, 
 
 A little girl, of three years, was young enough to be 
 put to sleep every afternoon. One day she found that 
 her mother was going out in the afternoon. She 
 objected, and begged her mother not to go. But her 
 appeal could not be listened to, and nurse took her to 
 her bedroom and put her down to sleep in her bed. 
 The nurse left the room and then the little thing got 
 out of bed, found her mother's boots and concealed 
 them. Time was lost in hunting for the missing 
 boots : the search was unsuccessful. The mother 
 could not go out. When the child woke from her 
 sleep she was discovered with one boot under each 
 arm. 
 
 Praying children. 
 
 What ? it will be asked, are not children to pray ? 
 The reader will frame his answer to the question, when 
 he has read the following. 
 
 A little boy reminded God on one occasion that his 
 
 G 2 
 
84 THE CHILD. 
 
 petition had "not been attended to," and requested 
 that it might not be forgotten in future. 
 
 The same child had been offended by his governess. 
 His mother saw him burying a piece of paper on this 
 occasion in the garden. When she was able, unseen 
 by the child, to dig up the paper, she discovered that 
 it was a request to the devil to take the governess 
 below. 
 
 We talk of virgin soil, and of its prolific character. 
 This is the soul of a little child. The moral is : Take 
 heed what you sow. 
 
 The environment of the child should be healthy and 
 suitable to its years. Let the sowing be " wind," and 
 its friends will reap "the whirlwind;" for as we sow,, 
 we reap. 
 
 Disappointing lives come of neglect^ injudicious train- 
 ing, and often of the most fearful errors in the 
 teacher. 
 
 Total depravity ; or fading light. Which ? 
 
 Lord Shaftesbury relates the story of one of the waifs 
 and strays of London, who was in the habit of sleeping 
 at night within a large iron roller in the Regent's Park. 
 The boy found another lad who had not where to lay 
 his head, and at his invitation the ' neighbour' shared 
 his iron bedstead with him. 
 
 " During his perambulations of the slums of London 
 in 1846, by his ragged school investigations, &c., Lord 
 
TOTAL DEPRAVITY. 85 
 
 Ashley made himself thoroughly acquainted with the 
 haunts and habits of the young thieves of the metro- 
 poHs." 
 
 " A large proportion do not recognize the distinctive 
 rights of meum and tuum. Property appears to them 
 to be only the aggregate of plunder. They hold that 
 everything that is possessed is common stock : that he 
 who gets most is the cleverest fellow, and that every- 
 one has a right to abstract from that stock what he 
 can by his own ingenuity. With them there is no 
 sense of shame, nor is imprisonment received as a 
 disgrace."* 
 
 Lord Shaftesbury recorded this, having received it 
 from the lips of a City missionary, a kind and worthy 
 man who had endeared himself to the whole of a 
 wretched district, and especially to the younger 
 population. 
 
 '* One evening having put on a new coat, he went, 
 about dusk, through a remote street, and was instantly 
 marked as a quarry by one of these rapacious vaga- 
 bonds. The urchin did not know him in his new 
 attire, — therefore without hesitation relieved his pockets 
 of their contents. The missionary did not discover his 
 loss, nor did the boy his victim, until in his flight he 
 had reached the end of the street. He then looked 
 round and recognized in the distance his old friend and 
 teacher. He ran hack to him, breathless, " Hullo," said 
 
 * Edwin Hodder's Life and Works of Lord Shaftesbury. Vol. ii., 
 p. 263 
 
86 THE CHILD. 
 
 he, " is it you Mr. ? I didn't know you in 
 
 your new coat ; here's your handkerchief for you ! "* 
 
 The spoiled child. 
 
 In a subsequent chapter we have attempted to pre- 
 sent the child, welcomed by Jesus Christ, as an ideal 
 of the kingdom of Heaven, but we may here ask the 
 question : — What is a spoiled child ? 
 
 The spoiled child is a child that nobody likes. His 
 presence in a home makes that home a misery ; and 
 he must be an exceptionally hopeful person who will 
 predict for that child a career of happiness and pros- 
 perity. 
 
 He is not, unfortunately, so uncommon as to render 
 it necessary to portray his character, and it would be 
 deemed superfluous were we to attempt to describe the 
 means of spoliation. 
 
 One is struck at the outset with the term ^* spoiled.'' 
 To spoil is (literally) to strip off, to plunder. And we 
 cannot help remarking the essential identity of the 
 nature of the "spoihng," whether we observe it in the 
 occurrence which took place on the eve of the de- 
 parture of the Israelites from Egypt, when " they 
 spoiled the Egyptians " ; or whether we trace it in a 
 destructive child who spoils his toy ; or whether it is 
 forced upon our attention in an indulgent parent who 
 spoils his child. 
 
 * Ibid., p. 264. - • 
 
THE SPOILED CHILD. 87 
 
 The spoiling in each case is identical. That is, 
 there is a stripping, or deprivation, of some valuable 
 property w^hich belonged to the object spoiled. The 
 spoiled Egyptians were deprived of their material 
 treasures. The spoiled toy is deprived of its essential 
 properties as a plaything. And the spoiled child is 
 deprived or suffers the loss of those precious qualities 
 which make childhood so sweet and attractive. 
 
 What makes the spoiled child of the home so 
 sad and so serious a matter is, that the home of that 
 child is usually responsible for the domestic trouble. 
 The spoliation is effected, not by outsiders, but by 
 relatives, and more frequently than not, by an 
 ignorant indulgent father or mother. 
 
 Still, the spoiled child is the exception rather than 
 the rule. At least we have found it so, whether we 
 have studied childhood in the homes of comfort and 
 ease, or in the more humble families of poverty and 
 privation. 
 
 We have watched children in the Sunday school. 
 Take the infant class. Discouragement has come at 
 the very outset of our work, for here and there has 
 turned up a spoiled child of the home. The boy 
 chafes at the restraint of school rules, and finds it a 
 great bore to have to learn anything at all ; the girl's 
 attention is diverted by her bright ribbon, or flower- 
 decked hat, from any serious attempt to forget herself 
 and her petted prettiness, while both boy and girl have 
 been supplied with light refreshments in the shape of 
 
88 THE CHILD. 
 
 " sweets." But, happily, these are the exceptions, 
 not the rule. The little ones, as yet, have Heaven on 
 their side ; and though the world is all before them, it 
 is not in them ; and almost any one of them might be 
 taken by the great Teacher, at random, and his beauti- 
 ful lesson would not suffer from a nineteenth century 
 text. For we doubt not he would still say to the 
 disciples — and are we not all His disciples ? — " Except 
 ye be converted and become as this little child . . . . " 
 
 Now, what the parent is to the home, that the 
 teacher is to the Sunday school class. And the 
 Sunday scholar may become a spoiled child even when 
 the teacher, with the utmost conscientiousness and 
 affectionate interestedness, is loading the child with 
 his good things. Verily, paradoxical as it may appear, 
 the spoiHng of the home and the spoiHng of the school, 
 are both the result, mainly, of overloading the child. 
 
 The injudicious gifts of the home are the very means 
 by which the child suffers loss of his most precious en- 
 dowments ; and the overloading by the teacher of the 
 innocent child effects a similar result. 
 
 In either case, the child is being spoiled by re- 
 ceiving too much ; or in other words is not getting 
 truly at all, but is being stripped of his rightful 
 property. " I am rich and increased in goods " is 
 simply the utterance of the spoiled child " writ 
 large." 
 
 But how are little children spoiled in the Sunday 
 school ? 
 
THE SPOILED CHILD. 
 
 Our answer to the question will be better under- 
 stood by first recognizing the fact that a little child 
 is supposed to be most suitably welcomed to the 
 school with a feehng in the mind of the teacher akin 
 to pity— '' poor little thing ! " 
 
 " Well," says an impatient reader, " weakness is a 
 prominent feature in a little child, and surely our pity 
 is not thrown away here." 
 
 Think, my friend, whether your pity, though natural, 
 for it is closely allied to sympathy, is the feeling that 
 should have the fullest and deepest current in your 
 heart, when you receive " one such little one." Do 
 you not remember that the Master said : — " He that 
 receiveth one such little one receiveth me ?" Did John 
 pity " the lamb of God," when he drew the attention of 
 his disciples to the gentle Jesus ? (John i. 36). How 
 often, if you have been a careful observer of God's 
 ways in history, have you noticed that He has chosen 
 the weak things of the world to confound the mighty. 
 Nay, from our worldly estimate of Power, how weak 
 is the Almighty ! Even His high purposes seem to be 
 sown in weakness, but only that they may be raised in 
 power. 
 
 How remarkable is the power of a little child to 
 arrest attention, to excite sympathy, to provoke to 
 love ! How spontaneous, disinterested, and ungrudg- 
 ing the help we proffer ; how irresistible its un- 
 conscious demands ! And yet this word— irresistible — 
 as appropriate as any we can think of, suggests not 
 
90 THE CHILD. 
 
 merely power but omnipotence. How often, when 
 others have vainly sought to move you from your pur- 
 pose, and you have triumphantly opposed the tempta- 
 tion to relinquish your occupation, have you given in 
 to the silent but eloquent appeal of a little pair of eyes* 
 All else might be successfully withstood, but " the 
 child has won the day." 
 
 Our pity, then, is somewhat superfluous, but as this 
 is not often mischievous in its effect in the Sunday 
 school, we will pass on to the consideration of more 
 serious and pernicious means of spoliation. And we 
 notice — 
 
 The superinduction on the natural spirituality of the child 
 of an artificial religiousness. 
 
 " Seeming to be religious," summed up the character 
 of some members of the early Christian church ; and, 
 without being uncharitable or censorious, it must be 
 admitted that it describes the Christianity of many in 
 the present day. 
 
 Think of the child as a plant. To secure a healthy 
 plant, the soil must be good ; sunshine and rain are 
 essential ; fresh air and suitable temperature must be 
 obtained. A plant may be robbed of its vigour, its 
 growth may be stopped, and decay will be hastened 
 by withdrawing it from its natural requirements. The 
 child may be robbed of its beauty, its power of deve- 
 lopment, in the same way. Withdraw it from Divine 
 resources, and give it artificial light, heat, atmosphere— 
 and it will be spoiled. 
 
THE SPOILED CHILD. 91 
 
 Thus by inducing an artificial and superficial reli- 
 giousness, the qualities which Jesus commended in the 
 child are being weakened, repressed or destroyed. 
 
 There must, doubtless, be regulations of time for 
 lessons and worship, but these should interfere as 
 little as possible with the life and freshness of the 
 individual pupils. 
 
 A still more serious means of spoliation, whether 
 in the home or in the school class, is the neglect of the 
 spiritual by the substitution of the cultivation of the 
 intellectual. 
 
 The stimulus given to secular learning of late years 
 has been extraordinary. It is largely due to competi- 
 tion. Education has not been primarily the object, 
 but the successful passing of " Exams. '' — The method — 
 cramming. The end of the tutor may be attained ; 
 but the pupil, instead of being prepared by educational 
 processes for the affairs of life, is often little else than 
 pate de foie gras. 
 
 So with the education of the soul. Its faculties may 
 lie dormant, while the m.emory is being stored with the 
 scientific or doctrinal system of Theology of the 
 schools. Instead of bread — a stone. 
 
 More than this. Whole books of the Bible may be 
 committed to memory while the soul of the child is 
 being starved. 
 
 The soul is not a tank for storing the water of life, 
 but an organism whose vigour and growth must be 
 constantly nourished by the living water. 
 
92 THE CHILD. 
 
 Theology may map out to the mind the goodly land 
 with faithful and minute detail. It may trace its 
 rivers, describe its mountains, its cities, its rich pas- 
 tures, its mineral wealth, its natural products ; but a 
 life-long study of the map will never put one in pos- 
 session of the goodly land. The journey must be 
 begun. The land must be entered. The grapes must 
 be gathered. The fields must be cultivated. And for 
 all this, the energies of the man must be put forth, and 
 in their unfolding the strength will be increased. 
 
 The end of spiritual education, then, is not a cram- 
 ming of the mind with knowledge, but a development 
 of spiritual faculty in discernment, in holy resolve, in 
 purity of living, and in wise and loving action. 
 
 One of the first attempts in the elementary education 
 of a baby is to get it to stand upon its feet, and to en- 
 courage it to run alone. Here we have the great func- 
 tion of the true spiritual teacher clearly expressed. He 
 must help the child to stand and to walk. You may 
 spoil the child by artificial support and everlasting 
 perambulator. 
 
 Means of spoliation. 
 
 There are many ways in which a child may be 
 spoiled. Unintentionally and ignorantly the spoiling 
 of a child goes on ; and there is often a rude awaken- 
 ing, when the eyes of the spoiler are opened. 
 
 Keeping before our mind the essential elements of 
 
MEANS OF SPOLIATION. 
 
 the spiritual nature of the child we notice its un- 
 conscious gentleness and humility. This results from a 
 sense of its dependence on another, its feeble resources 
 of mind and body, and the very narrow limits of its 
 experience ; and is not this humility one of the great 
 charms of a little child ? 
 
 The self-consciousness of a little child is quickly 
 aroused ; and with consciousness of self the spoiling 
 has begun. The humility of the child is endangered. 
 
 Take, for instance, the recitation of poetry before 
 company or in public, after forcing the little brain 
 to commit it to memory; the subjects being most 
 frequently unsuited to the capacity and sphere of the 
 child, and even unintelligible. 
 
 That shrewd and sympathetic observer, Dr. Johnson, 
 understood this. He was exceedingly disposed to in- 
 dulge children, and ceremoniously careful not to offend 
 them. He was, however, full of indignation against 
 such parents as delight to bring their young ones too 
 early into the talking world, and was known to give a 
 good deal of pain by refusing to hear the verses that a 
 child could recite. This was the case on one occasion 
 when a lady brought her two children to him. Gray's 
 Elegy might become comic in the mouths of little 
 children ; but Johnson would not have Gray any more 
 than the children spoiled. When he was told the 
 children would recite a verse alternately, he said; — 
 " No, let them both recite at once, and then the noise 
 will be sooner over." 
 
94 THE CHILD. 
 
 Why fasten mechanically exotic flowers, however 
 lovely, on the slight stems of a young and tender 
 plant ? 
 
 The stimulus of injudicious and often exaggerated 
 praise of a child brought forward to perform some 
 clever feat, endangers humility by encouraging pride. 
 
 Still more ignoble the ambition of a parent to en- 
 hance the natural charms of childhood by dressing 
 it in clothes in which pride again is often fostered. 
 Who would paint the lily ? " Be clothed with 
 humility." 
 
 Still more serious is the despoiling a child of its 
 faith. How a child's trust wins the heart ! And yet 
 an unsuspecting child may suffer a strange revulsion of 
 feeling, an astonishment of dismay, when for the first 
 time it is aroused from its sweet restfulness of soul by 
 a deceptive word or action. A new and baneful ex- 
 perience this, which may lead to the most disastrous 
 consequences in character and life. 
 
 A brutal soldier may with a firebrand destroy the 
 most gorgeous temple ; but this is a trifle compared 
 with the destruction of the faith of a little child. It 
 were better for the offender to be cast, with a mill- 
 stone round his neck, into the midst of the sea. 
 
 Rob a child of his faith — an element of his true 
 nature — and he is spoiled indeed. 
 
 Not less sad and disastrous is the assault on a child's 
 heart. This is the citadel of the affections. Yet it 
 may be chilled by a sinister glance ; shocked by a 
 hasty word ; broken by an unjust or harsh judgment. 
 
MEANS OF SPOLIATION. 95 
 
 Better err a thousand times on the side of over- 
 appreciation, or even of praise, than w^ound the tender 
 bhnd affection of a generous Httle soul. 
 
 In a little child it is quite possible for the wine of 
 love to turn to the vinegar of hate. Nor w^ould the 
 love be so chargeable w^ith weakness or fickleness, as 
 the unjust, unkind and capricious conduct of a parent 
 who is really responsible for the change. The hate 
 may be truer to the genuineness of the heart's best 
 affection, than a love weak and indefinite, which can 
 live unperturbed amid the discouragement inflicted by 
 those who should encourage and strengthen it. 
 
 Parental love may be profusely demonstrative and 
 lavish in its gifts, but it may altogether fail of its best 
 fruits. Its capriciousness may wound the heart ; its 
 unwise gifts may foster selfishness. And here one 
 detects the busy hand of spoliation. 
 
 The heart does not live on toys and luxuries, but in 
 the admired and trusted affection of the parent. 
 
 In this chapter facts have been adduced which re- 
 veal the child in the least favourable light. Apart from 
 any preconceived theory and approaching the consider- 
 ation of childhood in the spirit of honest inquiry, what 
 would be the fair conclusion suggested ? It ought 
 never to be forgotten that an infant is endowed with 
 faculties which from the earliest period are more sen- 
 sitive to impressions, more delicately responsive to the 
 touch, than at any subsequent stages of its existence. 
 
 Now when we speak of the seamy side of childhood, 
 
96 THE CHILD. 
 
 we may be thinking of essential attributes as necessarily 
 including a bias to evil, or a radically evil or sinful 
 nature. This is not the sense in which we are using 
 the words. 
 
 Hereditary taints of evil may reveal themselves in 
 some little individual specimen of humanity, just as 
 hereditary mental and moral excellencies may be early 
 manifested in another specimen. But each of these 
 may be special varieties, whilst the essential attributes 
 of the type are not to be overlooked. 
 
 But beyond and apart from what must be conceded 
 to the modifying power of heredity, the seamy side of 
 childhood will be found to be largely due to evil train- 
 ing, to, the persisting and corrupting influence of bad 
 example and to the unholy thoughts of the heart and 
 the wicked practices of the hands. 
 
 There can be nothing to be astonished at in a child 
 who has been allowed to develop under conditions 
 which are favourable only to that which is evil ; and 
 in reviewing the instances of a naughty childhood we 
 often marvel at the intuitions of a love, and a purity, 
 and a generosity, which sometimes discover themselves 
 in a young life that seems to be practically lost. 
 
 Such cases suggest rather an inextinguishable, or at 
 least a fading light, before the dark clouds of vice into 
 which the young life is forced, than a being who brings 
 with it from its birth a nature which can only be 
 developed along the lines of the earthly, sensual and 
 devilish. The seamy side of the child is not, therefore. 
 
EVOLUTION AND HEREDITY, 97 
 
 essential to the child-nature but is due to the deplor- 
 able conditions under which the child is developed ; 
 and if instances are carefully studied the evil may be 
 easily traced to the viciousness of the atmosphere 
 which the child has been unable to escape. 
 
 Evolution and heredity. 
 
 "The most beautiful witness to the evolution of 
 man is the mind of a little child," says Henry 
 Drummond ; " evolution, after all, is the study of the 
 nursery." 
 
 Just as the dissecting room affords the most ample 
 opportunity for acquiring a knowledge of the anatomy 
 of the human body, the nursery supplies the largest 
 facilities for the collection of facts which illustrate the 
 functions and development of the human mind. 
 
 In the child we have before us a clue to the history 
 of mankind from the most primitive times. The first 
 year of a child's life may represent the full-grown 
 prehistoric man. The gradual development of the 
 infant mind, year by year, supplies an epitome of the 
 growth of the race. This is no mere conjecture. 
 There are still races existing on the earth's surface 
 whose mental status and attainments are about on a 
 level with those of a baby. It cannot be said that the 
 progress of these races has been arrested, for it has 
 scarcely yet begun. The field of observation includes 
 the lowest type of primeval men and all the inter- 
 
 H 
 
98 THE CHILD. 
 
 mediate stages of ancient and modern civilization, up 
 to the highest style of spiritual development that man 
 has reached under the influence of the purest religion 
 in the present day. The whole process is shadowed 
 forth in a porcelain factory, where you behold at one 
 inspection the china clay and the various processes 
 through which it passes in the manufacture to the 
 finished vase. 
 
 But more than this. Not only can the earliest 
 stages of mental evolution be studied in living speci- 
 mens on the face of the earth ; not only is the nursery 
 a microcosm in which the various phases of mental 
 evolution are traceable, but according to Romanes, the 
 nursery also discloses the order in which the faculties 
 of the mind are developed. 
 
 In Romanes' books on Animal Intelligence and on 
 Mental Evolution in Animals, he gives us the results 
 of his observations on animals. Taking the emotions, 
 as one set of phenomena, to which he devoted special 
 attention, with the view of detecting the order of their 
 development in various stages of animal life, he came 
 to the following conclusions : — 
 
 Fear. 
 
 Sympathy. 
 
 Benevolence. 
 
 Surprise. 
 
 Emulation. 
 
 Revenge. 
 
 Affection. 
 
 Pride. 
 
 Rage. 
 
 Pugnacity. 
 
 Resentment. 
 
 Shame. 
 
 Curiosity. 
 
 Emotion of the beautiful. 
 
 Regret. 
 
 Jealousy. 
 
 Grief. 
 
 Deceit. 
 
 Anger. 
 
 Hate. 
 
 Emotion of the 
 
 Play. 
 
 Cruelty. 
 
 ludicrous. 
 
EVOLUTION AND HEREDITY, 99 
 
 Let parents observe their offspring with regard not 
 only to the fact of the existence of these feelings but 
 with reference to their earliest manifestations, and 
 they may find confirmation of the conclusions at which 
 Romanes arrived. 
 
 It is not necessary to the scope of this Essay to fol- 
 low Romanes through his argument, though it is full 
 of deep interest. 
 
 There is yet another doctrine of more immediate 
 importance as bearing on the nature of the child, and 
 that is the doctrine of heredity. 
 
 Evolution and heredity are not by any means 
 opposed to one another. In connection with evolu- 
 tion we are supplied with the general principles of 
 reproduction. By heredity we learn the differentiation 
 which results from special influences, such as educa- 
 tion, occupation, disease, &c. 
 
 Evolution illustrates the progress of the species. 
 Heredity explains the specific variations of type. 
 Heredity is an universally admitted principle, which 
 accounts for family and national idiosyncrasies. 
 
 Orthodox theology has fastened itself on the law of 
 heredity greatly to the disparagement of the little 
 child, and to the discouragement of those who have 
 the charge of its training. 
 
 Evolution encourages hope as it postulates man's 
 gradual ascent from a lower to a higher range of being, 
 and anticipates the ultimate triumph of the spirit over 
 the flesh. 
 
 H 2 
 
100 THE CHILD. 
 
 The theology which condemns (we cannot say wel- 
 comes) a little stranger into our home as the miserable 
 outcome of an awful catastrophe, called " the Fall," 
 logically though cruelly fastens upon the race the 
 radical taint of depravity, and would clothe us in 
 the garments of mourning and despair. 
 
 Heredity explains the transmitted virtuous ten- 
 dencies of the good, no less than the transmitted 
 vicious tendencies of the bad. But evolution, holding 
 on its upward way, is ever on the side of hope and 
 improvement. 
 
 The pessimist would not admire this rose-coloured 
 picture of development, and he would, doubtless, 
 adduce facts less favourable to the progressive than 
 to the retrogressive theory. What has he to say? 
 He would point to the birds or fishes, whose forms 
 have undergone modification by altered conditions ; 
 whose sight has been lost by withdrawal from light ; 
 and other instances of disused faculty resulting in its 
 ultimate extinction. Much might be brought forward 
 of the effect of disused or of unused faculties, of mind 
 as well as of body. The process is illustrated by familiar 
 examples, physical, mental and moral, under the modi- 
 fying influence of circumstances. Weismann points 
 out many causes and conditions of retrogressive deve- 
 lopment in nature ; but allowing for these remarkable 
 instances of retrogression, the outcome of evolution is 
 generally favourable to progress and improvements, 
 and opposed to degeneration. 
 
EVOLUTION AND HEREDITY. 101 
 
 Three distinct stages are noticeable facts in the pro- 
 gress from inorganic matter and motion up to the 
 highest and most complex existence — man. i. The 
 change from inorganic to organic matter. 2. The 
 further development from organic matter to sentient 
 consciousness ; constituting the distinction between 
 the vegetable and animal kingdoms. 3. The exist- 
 ence in man of a number of his noblest faculties, and 
 most remarkable characteristics, pointing to a universe 
 of Spirit, to which the world of matter is altogether 
 subordinate. 
 
 The environment of a child explains and illustrates 
 the laws of its development. It is particularly interest- 
 ing to observe the order in which the evolution from 
 the lower, that is the sensuous, to the higher intellec- 
 tual faculties takes place. This may be considered in 
 the following order : i. The musical. 2. The artistic. 
 3. The metaphysical or abstract. 4. The mathema- 
 tical ; and as some add, 5. Wit and humour. 
 
 Of the higher faculties, we put musical impressions 
 and expressions earliest, because we perceive that the 
 senses have a part to play in the perception and 
 development of musical ideas. The consciousness of 
 sound, with elevation and depression of pitch in its 
 sequence of tones, and early acquirement of acquaint- 
 ance with that succession and relation of notes which 
 form a tune and rhythm. 
 
 So with regard to the artistic faculty. The intelli- 
 gence readily combines its subjective idea with the 
 
102 THE CHILD. 
 
 report of the sense of sight, and pictures become a 
 means of "the higher education." 
 
 It has often been noticed how inadequate are the 
 powers of the untutored savage to manage the simplest 
 mathematical process — numeration— and how quickly 
 he finds himself out of his depth ! 
 
 Wit and humour are the outcome of an appreciation 
 of plain facts, touched by poetic imagination, or at 
 least by a sense of fitness of harmony or contrast of 
 ideas, giving rise to more or less ludicrous observations. 
 
 The spiritual, the supreme part of man's nature, as 
 it is almost undefinable, is hardly to be reckoned as one 
 of the series of mental phenomena, more than it is to 
 be regarded as a sensuous or emotional state. It is 
 cognizable through the emotions, as well as through 
 the intellect, it melts in tears, or it may harden in 
 mental states. At first it is a mere possibility, but at 
 a very early period it w411 develop into activity by a 
 breath of the Divine Spirit. Fuller discussion of this 
 is reserved for a future chapter. 
 
 \ 
 
THE CHILD OF HEATHENDOM. 103 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 th£ child of heathendom. 
 
 Having at some length discussed the characteristics of 
 childhood in numerous instances, to which an ob- 
 servant reader might add to almost any extent, it will 
 be worth while to notice the place the child has 
 occupied in some of the ancient civilizations, and also 
 to observe the influence of the civilization and religions 
 of various countries upon children. 
 
 It might be expected that an advanced civilization 
 would be favourable to the well-being of the child, and 
 that the children of barbarous peoples would be placed 
 at a great disadvantage, but it is not always so, as will 
 be seen further on. 
 
 Neither is religion any guarantee of the child's pro- 
 tection and happiness. With some "the sacred rites 
 of religion" have included the sacrifice of innocent 
 children, who have had a back-handed compliment 
 paid to them by those who have offered " the fruit of 
 the body for the sin of the soul." 
 
 And again, the heathen have often put to shame, 
 in their care of children, the boasted superiority of 
 Christian nations. 
 
104 THE CHILD. 
 
 THE CHILDREN OF EGYPT. 
 
 Following Wilkinson,* who quotes from Plato, we 
 learn that " in the education of youth they were par- 
 ticularly strict; and 'they knew,' says Plato, * that 
 children ought to be early accustomed to such gestures, 
 looks, and motions as are decent and proper, and not 
 be suffered to either hear or learn any verses and songs, 
 than those which are calculated to inspire them with 
 virtue ; and they consequently took care that every 
 dance and ode introduced at their feasts or sacrifices 
 should be subject to certain regulations.' They parti- 
 cularly inculcated respect for old age ; and the fact of 
 this being required even towards strangers, argues a 
 great regard for the person of a parent ; for we are 
 informed that, like the Israelites and the Lacedaemo- 
 nians, they required every young man to give place to 
 his superiors in years, and even if seated to rise on 
 their approach. 
 
 " Nor were these honours limited to their life-time : 
 the memory of parents and ancestors was revered 
 through succeeding generations : their tombs were 
 maintained with the greatest respect ; liturgies were 
 performed by the children, or by priests at their ex- 
 pense." 
 
 If Women are respected we may he pretty sure that 
 Children will he well treated and trained, 
 
 * Ancient Egyptians, vol. ii., 1854. 
 
THE CHILDREN OF EGYPT. 105 
 
 " In primitive ages the duties of women were very 
 different from those of later and more civilised periods, 
 and varied of course according to the habits of each 
 people. Among pastoral tribes they drew water, kept 
 the sheep, and superintended the herds as well as the 
 flocks. As with the Arabs of the present day, they 
 prepared both the furniture and the woollen stuffs of 
 which the tents themselves were made, ground the 
 corn, and performed other menial offices. They were 
 also engaged, as in ancient Greece, in weaving, spin- 
 ning, needlework, embroidery, and other sedentary 
 occupations within doors. The Egyptian ladies in 
 like manner employed much of their time with the 
 needle ; and the sculptures represent many females 
 weaving and using the spindle. But they were not 
 kept in the same secluded manner as those of ancient 
 Greece, who, besides being confined to certain apart- 
 ments in the house most remote from the hall of en- 
 trance, and generally in the uppermost part of the 
 building, were not even allowed to go out of doors 
 without a veil, as in many Oriental countries of the 
 present day. The Egyptians treated their women 
 very differently, as the accounts of ancient authors 
 and the sculptures sufficiently prove. At some of the 
 public festivals women were expected to attend — not 
 alone, like the Moslem women at a mosque, but in 
 company with their husbands or relations."* 
 
 Such was the position to which woman had attained 
 
 * Ibid., vol. ii., p. 224. 
 
106 THE CHILD, 
 
 in Egypt, and the honour in which she was held, that 
 she sometimes became the supreme ruler. 
 
 We get a glimpse of regard for childhood among the 
 Egyptians in the beautiful story of Pharaoh's daughter, 
 in connection with the finding of Moses. " Take this 
 child and nurse it for me," reveals the love of the 
 mother and the leadership of the princess. 
 
 ANCIENT GREECE. 
 
 We cannot give a better idea of the high apprecia- 
 tion of childhood by the best minds of Greece than 
 by quoting Plato as translated by the late Professor 
 Jowett.* 
 
 " Plato's views of education are in several respects 
 remarkable. Like the rest of the Republic, they are 
 partly Greek and partly ideal, beginning with the 
 ordinary curriculum of the Greek youth, and extend- 
 ing to after life. Plato is the first writer who distinctly 
 expresses the thought that education is to comprehend 
 the whole of life, and to be a preparation for another 
 in which education is to begin again. This is the 
 continuous thread which runs through the whole of 
 the Republic, and which more than any other of his 
 ideas admits of an application to modern life."t 
 
 ^^ His conception of education is represented , not like 
 
 * Dialogues of Plato translated into English. The Republic, vol. ii., 
 1871. 
 
 f Introduction, p. 152. 
 
ANCIENT GREECE. 107 
 
 many modern views, under the image of filling a vessel, 
 but of turning the eye of the soul towards the light,''*' 
 
 " The principles on which rehgion is to be based are 
 two only ; first, that God is true ; secondly, that He is 
 good. Modern and Christian writers have fallen short 
 of these ; they can hardly be said to have got beyond 
 them."t 
 
 " But the honourable mind which is to form a 
 healthy judgment ought rather to have had no experi- 
 ence or contamination of evil habits when young. And 
 this is the reason why in youth good men often appear 
 to be simple, and are easily practised upon by the evil, 
 because they have no samples of evil in their own 
 souls."t 
 
 The education of the children is under discussion : — 
 
 " You know that the beginning is the chiefest part 
 of any work, especially in a young and tender thing ; 
 for that is the time at which the character is formed 
 and most readily receives the desired impression. 
 
 " Quite true. 
 
 " And shall we just carelessly allow children to hear 
 any casual tales which may be framed by casual per- 
 sons, and to receive into their minds notions which are 
 the very opposite of those which are to be held by 
 them when they are grown up ? 
 
 *' We cannot allow that. 
 
 " Then the first thing will be to have a censorship 
 of the writers of fiction, and let the censors receive any 
 
 * Ibid., p. 153. f Ibid., p. 154. + Ibid., p. 236. 
 
108 THE CHILD, 
 
 tale of fiction which is good, and reject the bad ; and 
 we will allow the mothers and nurses to tell their chil- 
 dren the authorized ones only At the same time 
 
 most of those which are now in use will have to be 
 discarded 
 
 " But which are the stories that you mean, he said, 
 and what fault do you find with them ? 
 
 *'A fault which is most serious, I said, the fault 
 of telling a lie, and a bad lie.''* 
 
 And then he goes on to discuss the stories which 
 should be kept from children, the cruelties of the gods, 
 the misrepresentation of the state of the dead, as one 
 to shrink from. 
 
 " And we must beg Homer and other poets not to 
 be angry if we strike out these and similar passages, 
 not because they are unpoetical, or unattractive to the 
 popular ear, but because the greater charm of them as 
 poetry, the less are they meet for the ears of boys and 
 men, who are to be sons of freedom and are to fear 
 slavery more than death. 
 
 "Also we shall have to reject all the terrible and 
 appalling names which describe the world below — 
 Cocytus and Styx, ghosts under the earth, and sapless 
 shades, and any other words of the same type, the very 
 mention of which causes a shudder to pass through the 
 inmost soul of him who hears them. I do not say that 
 these tales may not have a use of some kind, but there 
 is a danger that the nerves of our guardians may become 
 affected by them.'^f 
 
 * Ibid., Book II., p. 201. f Ibid., Book III., p. 210, 
 
ANCIENT GREECE. 109 
 
 The following is mainly from Plato : — * 
 
 " The first year is the beginning of the whole life to 
 everyone ; which ought to be written in the temples of 
 their fathers, as the beginning of life, both to a boy 
 and girl." 
 
 In discussing the treatment of the child, even in 
 embryo, and its physical treatment after birth, the fol- 
 lowing occurs : — 
 
 " All bodies are benefited by shakings and motion, 
 when moved without weariness, of all that are moved 
 by themselves, or by swings, or carried on the sea, or 
 on horseback, or borne along in any manner soever by 
 other bodies, and through these getting the mastery 
 over food and drink, they are able to impart to us health, 
 and beauty, and the rest of strength,'' \ 
 
 ** Since then such is the case, what shall we say that 
 we ought to do after this ? Are you willing for us to 
 say with a laugh, that we are laying down laws for the 
 pregnant woman to walk about, and to mould the infant 
 as a thing of wax, while it is yet flexible, and to put it in 
 swathing clothes until it is two years old ; and that we 
 are moreover compelling the nurses by legal fines to 
 carry the children either into the fields, or to the 
 temples, or their acquaintance, until they are suffi- 
 ciently able to stand alone ; and then that they should 
 be careful, lest by the limbs becoming distorted, while 
 forcibly resting on them, being still young, to undergo 
 
 * The Laws, translated by Surges. Book VI., Chap, xxiii., p. 248. 
 t Book VII., p. 251. 
 
 universitt! 
 
110 THE CHILD. 
 
 the additional labour of carrying the infant, until it 
 had completed its third year ; and that the nurses 
 ought to be as strong as possible ; and, in addition, 
 that unless these things take place to each child, we 
 are to enact a fine upon those who do not so act ? 
 or is this far from being the case ? For that, which has 
 just now been mentioned, would happen to us without 
 stint. 
 
 " Clin. What is that ? 
 
 " A then. To pay the debt of abundant laughter, 
 through the womanlike and servile manners of the 
 nurses being unwilling to obey us."* 
 
 '' Athen. Let us then receive this as an element 
 with respect to both the circumstances, (the body 
 and soul,) of the very young, that the nursing and 
 motion, taking place as much as possible all the night 
 and day, are profitable to all, and not the least to the 
 youngest ; so that, if it were possible, they may live as 
 if always sailing on the sea. But now, (since this is 
 impossible), it is requisite to act as near as possible 
 to this with respect to the newly born nurslings of 
 
 children When mothers are desirous to put 
 
 to sleep their children, who sleep with difficulty, they 
 do not bring them to a state of quietness, but, on the 
 contrary, of motion, by shaking them ever in their 
 arms ; nor yet that of silence, but that of singing to 
 them ; and they artlessly soothe their children, as it 
 were, by the sound of a pipe, and, as the remedies of 
 
 * Ibid., Book VII., Chap, ii., p. 252. 
 
ANCIENT GREECE. Ill 
 
 the mad Bacchants are employed, by making use, at l^e 
 same time, of the movements in music and the dance. 
 
 ** Clin, What then, O guest, is especially the cause 
 of this ? 
 
 *' Athen. It is not very difficult to know. 
 
 " Clin. How so ? 
 
 *^ Athen, Both these passions result from fear; and 
 there are certain terrors through a depraved habit 
 of soul. When therefore any one brings from without 
 an agitation to passions of this kind, that which is 
 from without overcomes the dreadful and insane 
 motion within ; and after overcoming, it seems to 
 have produced a calm in the soul, and a quietness 
 in the leaping, which had been troublesome as regards 
 the heart of each ; (and) thus, (what is) altogether agree- 
 able, it causes some to obtain by lot* sleep ; but others, 
 who are awake, and dancing and soothed by the pipe 
 under the influence of the divinities, (or as we say, ' by 
 the blessing of God '), to whom each may be supplicat- 
 ing and sacrificing, it causes to possess habits of sound 
 sense in the place of a maddened state. Now this, to 
 speak in brief, has in this way a certain probable 
 reason."! 
 
 After alluding to timidity and fortitude, moroseness 
 and courage : — 
 
 " A then. In what manner then is to be implanted 
 Avhich of these we may wish in the newly born ? We 
 
 * The text is somewhat confused, Burges says, 
 f Ibid., p. 254. 
 
112 THE CHILD. 
 
 must endeavour to state how and to what extent a 
 person may have an easy road in these matters. 
 
 '* Clin. How not ? 
 
 ^^ Athen. I will mention then the fixed opinion with us, 
 that luxury renders the manners of youth morose and iras- 
 cible, and vehemently agitated by things of a trifling 
 nature; but that an excessive and rustic servitude 
 causes them to be contrary to this, abject and ilHberal, 
 and man-haters, and unfitting associates. 
 
 " Clin. But how will the whole state be able to 
 bring up those, who have as yet no perception of lan- 
 guage, and are unable to have any taste for the rest of 
 instruction ? 
 
 " A then. Somehow in this way. Every animal, as 
 soon as it is born, is wont to utter some sound with a 
 loud cry, and not the least the human species ; and 
 more than the rest of animals it is affected in addition 
 to its crying with the shedding of tears. 
 
 " Clin. Entirely so. 
 
 '* Athen. Now nurses, looking to what infants are 
 desirous of, make a conjecture by their presenting to 
 them something. For they think they correctly offer 
 that, on which being presented the children are silent ; 
 but incorrectly that, at which it sheds tears or cries 
 out. For in the case of children tears and cries are 
 the indications of what they love and hate, (and are) 
 signs by no means lucky. Now this period is not less 
 than three years, a not small portion of life to pass 
 through badly or not badly."* 
 
 * Ibid., p. 255. 
 
ANCIENT GREECE. 118 
 
 Then the conversation goes on, indicating that 
 neither the pursuit of pleasure, nor the entire avoid- 
 ance of pain should be attempted. 
 
 " Nor let him permit any other person, old or young, 
 male or female, to suffer the same thing with us, and, 
 as far as he is able, the newly-born the least of all. For 
 all the manners are, through custom, implanted in all the 
 most powerfully at that period. And further still, if I 
 were not about to appear to be jesting, I would say, that 
 one ought to attend to women, who are carrying any- 
 thing in the womb, the most of all during that very 
 year, so that the person pregnant may neither enjoy 
 pleasures numerous and violent, nor, on the other 
 hand, feel pains, but live through that period, pre- 
 serving a line of conduct benignant, and good-tempered, 
 and mild."* 
 
 *' Athen. : If then in the case of a boy and girl of 
 three years old, any one should bring these matters ac- 
 curately to an end, and make use of what has been said 
 in not a careless manner, they will be of no small 
 advantage to those recently brought up. But there 
 will be a need of sports for the habits of the soul at 
 three, and four, and five, and even six years of age. 
 But we must already remove them from luxury, by 
 chastising them, not in an ignominious manner, but, as 
 we said on the subject of slaves, by chastising not with 
 insults so as to encourage an angry feeling in them, 
 when so chastised, nor a feeling for licentiousness by 
 
 * Ibid.f pp. 256-7. 
 
 I 
 
114 THE CHILD. 
 
 suffering them to go unpunished, we must do the same 
 in the case of the free-born. Now the sports of per- 
 sons of that age are self-produced ; and which, when 
 they come together, they almost invent themselves. . . . 
 After six years of age let each sex be separated."* 
 
 Burges, in a note, says that whatever may have 
 been the case with Greece in the time of Plato, in 
 other countries and more recent periods the sports of 
 children, so far from being invented by themselves, 
 have been handed down from age to age ; and as Paley 
 remarked, while empires have flourished and decayed, 
 the sports of children have remained unchanged by 
 time ; for they still ride on sticks, and play at odd and 
 even, as Horace tells us they did in his day; and make 
 horses and carts out of orange peel, as Aristophanes 
 states they did more than 2000 years ago. 
 
 Then the discourse flows on upon education. The 
 appropriation of so large a space in Plato's graphic 
 description of childhood in his day — to the discussion 
 of errors to be avoided, and the methods to be adopted 
 for a judicious development of the young, cannot fail 
 to impress any one who studies the subject at all. 
 
 ROMAN CHILDREN. 
 
 Like the Greeks, the Romans regarded childhood 
 mainly as a necessary preliminary introduction to a 
 manhood, in which the orator, the legislator, the 
 
 * Ibid,, pp. 258-g. 
 
ROMAN CHILDREN. 115 
 
 warrior, should live to make his mark on his age, and 
 possibly fill a brilliant page in the history of the 
 Roman empire. 
 
 If the Greeks developed the man of intellectual cul- 
 ture — the logician, the poet, the lover of pleasure, the 
 artist of purest ideal in physical beauty and of power- 
 ful and varied emotion — the Roman training produced 
 men of practical energy — men who gloried in oratory, 
 and above all, men who would lead armies to victory, 
 men who could make roads all over the empire and 
 found lasting settlements. 
 
 We know something of the "stuff" out of which 
 men are formed, but we have very little definite know- 
 ledge of the mode by which that stuff was shaped. 
 
 The mother's influence over the child was great. 
 She was the worthy companion of her husband. In 
 early times the children sat at table with their parents, 
 and would listen, in respectful silence, to the conversa- 
 tion on the services their father had rendered to the 
 State. They were allowed to accompany their fathers 
 to the senate, and learned to be quiet, or to speak at 
 the proper time. The rod was almost too well known 
 to the children. At least so thought Horace, the pupil 
 of Orbilius Pupillus, who immortalized his cross- 
 grained master in his verse. 
 
 At the age of seven the child was handed over to the 
 grammatistes, or literator, to acquire the art of reading 
 and writing. 
 
 The wisdom and tenderness of Quintilian are notice- 
 
 I 2 
 
116 THE CHILD. 
 
 able in his sympathy with children, as it comes out in 
 his observations on the teachableness of youth in gene- 
 ral. He remarks, farther, that if the promise of youth 
 often remains unfulfilled, it is due rather to defective 
 education, than to the want of ability in the child. 
 
 Quintilian would have the education begun at the 
 very earliest age, and always in a hopeful spirit. Espe- 
 cially does he urge the greatest care in the selection of 
 a nurse ; and it is the duty of the paedagogus to correct 
 the faults of the nurse. Learning must be felt to be a 
 pleasure and not a burden. If the child discover no 
 aptitude for one kind of study, let him try another. 
 
 We get a glimpse of a Roman home from the writ- 
 ings of Cicero, when he alludes to little Tullia getting 
 clamorous for the promised doll which, it appears, 
 Atticus forgot that he was to give her. Thus affording 
 us a touch of nature that makes the whole (child) 
 world kin ! 
 
 THE CHILDREN OF INDIA. 
 
 A book with this title gives sufficient illustration for 
 our purpose, of the manner of dealing with children in 
 India. The inferior position of woman explains the 
 difference in the regard for girls as compared with 
 boys. The girls are nothing, the boys are everything. 
 You may hear a Hindu talk about children and girls : 
 as though girls were not children at all, but something 
 not nearly so good. If you were to ask a father how 
 
THE CHILDREN OF INDIA. 117 
 
 many children he had, you would generally be told the 
 number of boys only, for they say " girls don't count." 
 
 On the birth of a little girl the Hindus conclude that 
 the gods must have been very angry, as the explana- 
 tion of their withholding a boy. 
 
 When a boy is born, festivities, rejoicings and pre- 
 sents mark the event : on the birth of a girl there 
 is no bell-ringing, there are no presents, no messengers 
 of good news. 
 
 A Hindu gentleman has said that — ** Honour thy 
 father and thy mother " is the first commandment to 
 the Hindus. 
 
 The children are taught that the gods hate them, 
 and that they may hate their gods. 
 
 Until five or six years old the boys and girls live 
 together, and very much in the same way. 
 
 The girls have no lessons to learn ; the mothers can- 
 not teach them. Until very recently, it was thought 
 absurd to try to teach girls or women to read. The 
 girls have no occupation, no reading, no pictures, no 
 needlework. The men and boys do that. They spend 
 much time in doing their mother's hair, for Hindu 
 ladies think a great deal of their hair, and like to show 
 plenty of it. They enjoy listening to stories. They 
 learn to cook. The one thing they are taught to hope 
 and pray for is a nice husband. The girl must be 
 married before she is ten years old. The boys stay at 
 home after marriage — not the girls, whose mothers-in- 
 law are often a terror to them. 
 
118 . THE CHILD. 
 
 In the zenanas they talk about their jewels to their 
 visitors, but never about their husbands. 
 
 THE CHILDREN OF PERSIA. 
 
 The following sketch is mainly compiled from two 
 original sources, one from the pen of a Nestorian 
 Christian lady who is living and working with her 
 husband in the education of the children of Persia ; 
 the other from a Kurd, whose father was a Kurdish 
 Molla (Mohammedan priest), and who since his conver- 
 sion to Christianity has suffered much in maintaining 
 his Christian faith. 
 
 Suppose we enter a house in a Persian town in 
 which has just arrived a new baby. Boys and girls in 
 our English homes are alike welcome. But here a 
 marked difference is observable between the reception 
 of a boy and a girl. If a boy, every face beams with 
 delight. For days the members of the family circle 
 and neighbours keep holiday and indulge in festivities, 
 mid the strains of musicians. When the musicians 
 learn that a girl is born, they go away disappointed. 
 Friends bring presents. And the individual who carries 
 the good news that a son is born, to the father, re- 
 ceives a handsome gift. How different in the case of 
 a daughter ! Every face is clouded. Curses rest upon 
 her inoffensive head from the hour of her birth. 
 
 Motherhood brings with it a love for the child, a 
 characteristic, says our Kurdish friend, that distin- 
 guishes the Persian women. 
 
THE CHILDREN OF PERSIA. 119 
 
 It is the natural affection only of a father which 
 provides for the needs of his girl, otherwise fathers 
 are sure that what they spend on a girl is lost. For 
 example, — one of their great kings Shah Abbas once 
 asked a gardener how much he earned a day. He 
 answered tenpence. The Shah enquired how he spent 
 that. He replied, he owed a man twopence a day, 
 and lent twopence to another ; he threw twopence into 
 the sea, and spent the remaining fourpence on himself 
 and his wife. 
 
 Shah Abbas told him he could understand giving 
 twopence back to the man to whom he owed it, but 
 why he lent money while he was in debt, and why he 
 should be so foolish as to throw away money he could 
 not understand. The man said that he meant the 
 twopence he paid back was spent on his father, who 
 was old and unable to work ; and the twopence which 
 he lent was spent on his son, whom he expected 
 when he grew up would help him as he had helped his 
 father ; and the twopence he threw into the sea he 
 spent on his daughters, thus showing that girls are 
 considered of no account. 
 
 When a poor little baby is born it is wrapped, 
 according to the custom of the country, in swaddling 
 bands, and a little cap is placed on its head, which is" 
 bound round very tightly with a handkerchief. On the 
 day of its birth seven onions are put on an iron rod, 
 and each day one of these is thrown away until the 
 child is seven days old, and round the bed of the 
 
120 THE CHILD, 
 
 mother and child, which is on the floor, are placed 
 swords and guns in order that "All" (evil spirits) 
 which are supposed to be the enemies of the mother 
 and child, should not come near and kill them ; and 
 till the seventh night the lamps are never put out 
 during the night. Children in Persia are never bathed 
 till they are one year old. 
 
 When a child is about a month old, after the Astron- 
 omers or the Koran have been consulted, and a lucky 
 hour has been selected, they put it in a cradle, and 
 bind its legs and arms tightly down with bandages to 
 the cradle, which is something like a shallow box on 
 two rockers. The box is fitted with cushions so that 
 the child's body is on a level with the top of the box. 
 A bandage is tied over its eyes so that the poor little 
 thing is obliged to be quite motionless, with aching 
 back, it cries and cries, until the mother finishes her 
 work or returns from her bath. 
 
 As a rule the mothers nurse their own children. 
 They carry the babe strapped to the back while about 
 their daily duties. And here, as everywhere else, the 
 children reflect the disposition, character, and apti- 
 tudes of the parent. 
 
 The little Persian babes are left entirely to their own 
 resources. They are not indulged with toys, or games. 
 Nothing is done to amuse them. The only occupation 
 left to interest them is eating. This is their only joy. 
 
 As they grow up, however, little boys, will often 
 amuse themselves. They talk about their father's 
 
THE CHILDREN OF PERSIA. 121 
 
 sheep, and seem to find a pleasure in alluding to " my 
 father's buffalo ; my father's cow." At this age they 
 will gather sticks, and build huts, and act the shep- 
 herd. They soon acquire bad habits, and quarrel and 
 fight with one another. Their idea of God becomes 
 associated with swearing, and taking God's name in 
 vain is a common characteristic of the children of 
 parents who know not and care not for God. 
 
 The games of little girls at this age are called " luck- 
 looshy." They are played with five stones. These are 
 collected when the children are quite small, and are 
 treasured up till they can use the stones in various 
 ways, as children do knuckle-bones in England. 
 
 There are no shops at which the girls can buy dolls. 
 But the instinct of the mother prompts the little one 
 to manufacture its own baby out of a piece of stick 
 and some rags. They also find great amusement in 
 making tiny clay vessels ; forming an oven, and baking 
 their own cakes. They are thus busy at the age of 
 five or six. 
 
 At this tender age, the children of cruel mothers are 
 compelled to work very hard, carrying food upon their 
 little backs, to those who may be working upon the 
 farm ; sometimes nursing the baby, or rocking the 
 cradle. 
 
 A little girl is taught to swear by the name of her 
 brother. They are expected now to do services for 
 their father and brother. At seven they are not con- 
 sidered too young to do the work of a woman. 
 
122 THE CHILD. 
 
 Brothers are always up in the morning with the Hfe 
 and bustle of the farm. The little boys sit upon the 
 yoke of the oxen. Others learn to be masons or 
 carpenters, beginning at a very early age. There are 
 very few schools for them other than the school of 
 practical life. 
 
 They are really anxious to be instructed, for they 
 are a very intelligent race. Religion is inherent in 
 their nature. Every Mohammedan believes there is a 
 God. 
 
 Their personal ambition leads them to seek and to 
 possess a good name, and this quality manifests itself 
 at the age of six or seven. Thus they give great hon- 
 our to pens, ink, and paper, and look upon these things 
 as holy. 
 
 Where a few schools have been opened, a remark- 
 able advance is perceptible. As yet the majority of the 
 inhabitants consider it quite out of place to educate a 
 woman, and therefore very few of the women can read 
 at all. 
 
 At the age of seven every girl begins to learn to sew 
 and do fancy work, and this fills up most of her time 
 until she is married. 
 
 The manners of the Persians are noticeable. Should 
 a stranger come into the house, the little girl must 
 stand all the time. She prepares the visitors' pipes ; 
 in winter weather she has to remove their outdoor 
 garments, and carry water for their ablutions. In fact, 
 the Persian girl is a girl no more after she is eight or 
 
THE CHILDREN OF PERSIA. 123 
 
 nine years of age. In the evening she must always be 
 busy at her distaff and spindle, affording nineteenth 
 century illustrations of the pre-Christian era when 
 Solomon commended the virtuous women, or the still 
 earlier time when the cloth was being spun for the 
 Tabernacle. 
 
 A mother kisses her son, but she rarely kisses her 
 daughter. She does not think that her girl has a 
 heart. The sister is trained to lavish her attentions 
 on her brother; the love is not reciprocated. The 
 best of everything is reserved for the boys and men. 
 
 Where the Gospel has been proclaimed and received, 
 all this is changed. The home life is moulded in love 
 and unity. The contrast between such a home and 
 the home of a mother who has actually been seen to 
 crush her little girl under her very feet, must be strange 
 indeed. 
 
 The people are steeped in superstition. And the 
 poor Persian children are terrified by the fearful things 
 they learn. They are taught to believe in genii or 
 demons, and there is a chapter devoted to these genii in 
 the Koran, and some people are believed to influence 
 them. Parents and others are constantly speaking 
 about genii to the children, and think they are every- 
 where ; they teach them to say " Bismellah " (in the 
 name of God) in order that the genii should depart. 
 
 Children are not fed regularly, and if a child after a 
 late supper has nightmare, and cries out in the night, 
 they say the genii have affected him. The parents run 
 
124 THE CHILD, 
 
 off to the priest for a prayer (** I have written a good 
 many of these prayers myself," writes my friend, " hav- 
 ing once been a Mohammedan priest ") to drive the 
 genii away. 
 
 Persian children are dressed just like grown-up 
 people, there are no dresses specially devised for chil- 
 dren. Little girls are covered with a chader, which 
 is a black silk or cotton sheet. A white veil covers 
 the face, it has tiny pin-holes over the eyes and nose. 
 They wear besides a garment which is like loose 
 trousers. Boys dress like their fathers. Children 
 are compelled to sit and act like grown-up people. If 
 they walk or run about a room, like English children, 
 they are punished. The chader and veil are worn only 
 when they go out. 
 
 Among the nobility men and women are employed 
 to teach them how to behave like grown-up people. 
 Boys are miniature men, and girls miniature women. 
 There is really no child-life in Persia. But few 
 schools, and these, unHke our own where all is done 
 to make school-days bright and happy, are dull and 
 uninteresting. The children are made to repeat a 
 sentence over and over again, parrot fashion, some- 
 thing like this : — " Kaf lam push kul aooyo," and they 
 do not even understand the meaning of the words. 
 They must read the whole of the Koran, 114 chapters, 
 in this parrot fashion, without understanding it, before 
 they read any other book. This tedious reading of an 
 unknown tongue takes four or five years. 
 
THE CHILDREN OF PERSIA. 125 
 
 In winter they must get up very early in the morn- 
 ing. A bag of charcoal in one hand, a little napkin 
 containing food in the other, they (the boys) start for 
 school. If late they are whipped. Each boy has a 
 pot (like a flower-pot) in which he puts his charcoal, 
 and puffs and puffs, until it is red-hot ; then places a 
 cushion close to it, on which he sits, his Koran on his 
 lap, moving his body backwards and forwards all the 
 time repeating the monotonous words of the Koran. 
 The schoolroom is a small one, with a small door, and 
 two little holes in the walls to serve for windows ; both 
 door and holes are closed in winter, so there is no 
 ventilation whatever. The fumes of the charcoal and 
 the closeness of the room, where so many children are 
 gathered, causes headache and makes them nervous 
 and feverish. 
 
 They have no recreation hour and no play, and often 
 school begins at sunrise and continues till sunset. In 
 summer time it is better for them, for then doors can 
 be opened and fresh air let in. 
 
 If a boy gets tired of this tedious routine and runs 
 away from the school, or is unable to master the diffi- 
 cult Arabic verses of the Koran, they are bastinadoed — 
 a very cruel form of punishment. If they get tired of 
 the motion of constantly moving backward and for- 
 ward and rest, they are struck with a stick on the 
 shoulders. There are no holidays during the whole 
 year, except on Fridays, which is the Sabbath in 
 Persia. A master of such a school himself knew some 
 
126 THE CHILD. 
 
 children who, after eight years learning in the way 
 described, could not tell one letter from another. No 
 wonder that with such a system of education one 
 finds in Persia among one thousand men, perhaps 
 but one who is able to read and write; and among 
 one hundred who can read and write only one can do 
 so correctly. 
 
 No education of any sort is provided for girls, ex- 
 cept among the rich whose daughters are sometimes 
 taught to read the Koran, which is, among Moham- 
 medans, considered a meritorious thing to do. Village 
 boys have a happier life, as they are free from school 
 altogether and spend their days attending cattle. 
 
 Children in Persia are taught very early to hate 
 Christians and the Jews, especially the latter, and 
 think of them as unclean. On their way to school, or 
 shops, they torment the Jewish boys and girls by strik- 
 ing them on their heads, stoning them, &c. ; and are 
 encouraged to do this by grown-up people. 
 
 THE CHILDREN OF CHINA. 
 
 The advent of a little boy in a Chinese family is 
 an event. There never was such a fine baby born ! 
 What compliments pass! What rejoicings take place ! 
 But as in so many other countries, the little girls are 
 great mistakes, and it goes badly with them. The 
 first three days they lie on some rags on the fioor. 
 This is the preface to the sad story of their lives. 
 
THE CHILDREN OF CHINA. 127 
 
 When three days old the baby is washed with 
 charmed water, for luck ; in this water there are 
 pepper, dates, walnuts, soap, chips of acacia wood, 
 and other ingredients, good for washing off the baby's 
 outside skin. Then it is washed in more water, in 
 which have been put some "cash," chestnuts, dates and 
 silver. This washing is designed to secure riches for 
 the child when it shall have grown up. Then a large 
 plaster is put on the baby, made of pitch and a plant 
 called mugwort. The object of this is to prevent its 
 having any aches or pains. After this the skin is 
 smeared with white of egg to give it a good com- 
 plexion, and then it is beaten on the hip with an onion 
 to make it clever. 
 
 For fourteen days, and sometimes for a longer 
 period, the baby undergoes the ceremony of " binding 
 the wrists." A piece of red cord, about two feet long, 
 so as not to interfere with the infant's freedom is tied 
 round each of the wrists and fastened. Some children 
 have a few old cash tied to the cord. Some have a red 
 string without any cash. Others have silver toys, as 
 well as cash, tied round their wrists. The charm of 
 the cord is that it will keep them from being naughty 
 afterwards, preventing their being frightened, and 
 throwing their arms about. Evil spirits are to be kept 
 away by the cash ; and the toys are to make it a 
 happy child. 
 
 When a child is a month old all its hair is shaven 
 off. If the baby is a boy, the relatives and friends are 
 
128 THE CHILD. 
 
 invited to a feast the day he is shaven, and presents 
 pour in on the lucky little fellow, one of the gifts 
 always being a plate with " Long life, honours, and 
 happiness," engraved upon it. 
 
 After the first washing a baby is not put into the 
 water for a year. It is considered dangerous. Its face 
 and hands are wiped with a damp cloth ; the rest of 
 its little body goes dirty. Its head is shaven often to 
 increase the growth of the hair, and when an inch or 
 two long it is plaited into a tiny tail on the top of the 
 head with a bit of silk. 
 
 The infant never gets any kisses. The mother 
 smells its face instead of kissing it. Instead of ex- 
 claiming " what a darling!" the mother says: "how 
 nice you smell !" 
 
 It is not often that a girl will get the fondling that 
 a mother gives to her boy. Alas ! multitudes of girls 
 are destroyed as soon as they are born ; their inhuman 
 parents would rather kill them than have to feed them. 
 They are often drowned like kittens ; and with greater 
 cruelty still, they are sometimes burned alive. 
 
 How is the inteUigence of a boy first addressed ? 
 and how is the bent of his genius first discovered ? 
 At about three months old, he has several objects 
 placed before him — a pair of shears, a pair of scales, 
 a measure, a mirror, a pencil, some ink, paper, books, 
 and other things, and from what he first happens to 
 touch, it is inferred what he is going to be when he 
 becomes a man. If he put his hand on a book or a 
 
THE CHILDREN OF CHINA. 129 
 
 pen, they say he will be a great scholar ; if he touch 
 the scales, he is destined to be a successful merchant. 
 
 The child's first instruction is in the worship of idols 
 and its dead relations and spirits. They are taught 
 to work as soon as they can walk. This develops a 
 gravity of demeanour which is characteristic of the 
 Chinese. Before visitors children are reverential. If 
 a visitor ask to see the boys, they are sent for, and on 
 entering the room they kneel down before the visitor, 
 and knock their heads on the floor several times, and 
 then they get up and stand facing him, but some dis- 
 tance off. And this is good behaviour in which the 
 Chinese take great pride. 
 
 The Chinese are great at gambling, and as their 
 children have few games or toys, but are taught that 
 they must behave like gentlemen, they soon acquire 
 the gentlemanly habit of gambling with cards and 
 dominoes. Perhaps a less objectionable accompHsh- 
 ment for a gentleman is the making and flying of kites, 
 for which they have a world-wide reputation. 
 
 Obedience is a fine characteristic of a child ; and 
 the Chinese display this virtue long after our English 
 children have put it away as a childish thing. 
 
 With the prevailing superstition of the parents, the 
 children are soon infected. The following story illus- 
 trates this, but it also tells of something better. The 
 tenderness and sympathy of a little girl were brought 
 out through her unintentionally causing the death of 
 two dragon-flies while playing with them. This so 
 
130 THE CHILD. 
 
 preyed on her mind that she fell ill, and for a time 
 lost her reason. Her parents were much concerned 
 and being as superstitious as the child, sent for the 
 Buddhist and Taoist priests to cure their child, but the 
 louder they chanted the worse the child became, till 
 they feared she would die. The news of the trouble 
 and its cause spread, and a native gentleman who was 
 a scholar, hearing of it, went to the house and told her 
 parents that he had knowledge of what we call " the 
 black art," and could restore their little girl if they 
 would allow him to do so. They thanked him, and he 
 ordered the whole gang of priests away, and when 
 quiet was restored went in to see the child and told 
 her that by his arts he had captured the spirits of the 
 two dragon-flies and imprisoned them in two paper 
 ones which he would show her, and that if she burnt 
 incense and made her prostrations to the paper ones 
 containing the spirits of the dead, they would leave off 
 troubling her. 
 
 The child did so and recovered from her fears and 
 was soon well again. 
 
 The parents offered him money and thanks, but he 
 said, " you foolish people, it is you with your ignorance 
 and nonsense that have hurt the little girl and nearly 
 killed her, not the dead flies. I have no such power 
 as you suppose, but by deceit have undone the harm 
 that your foolish teaching has done the child." 
 
 Chinese girls, while yet quite young, are set to work. 
 One of their first occupations is pasting bits of old rags 
 
THE CHILDREN OF CHINA. 131 
 
 to boards, till they are about as thick and strong as 
 pasteboard. These are put to dry in the sun, and then 
 the rag is pulled off the boards and cut up into soles 
 for the common kind of shoes. 
 
 English children as well as grown-up people are 
 generally very polite to strangers. The Chinese are 
 polite at home ; they are ready to give up their favourite 
 toys, their cherished seat, their most prized books to 
 others, and they do not make themselves miserable by 
 these little acts of self-denial. 
 
 Every boy means to be a learned man ; learning 
 comes before wealth. Paper, ink, slabs, and brushes 
 are called the four precious things. Thus the faculties 
 of the boys are encouraged. 
 
 This story of a little boy, who was ambitious to be- 
 come a learned man, is authentic. He was so poor, he 
 could not aiford a candle, and the evening was his only 
 time for study. His neighbours in the next house 
 enjoyed the light of candles. A chink in the wall 
 allowed a streak of light to shine upon the boy's book, 
 and thus was he able to pursue his studies. 
 
 Another boy depended for his evening light on a 
 fire-fly shut up in a bottle, and by this light he used to 
 read. 
 
 A boy, who was always falling asleep over his lessons, 
 would keep himself awake by tying his pig-tail to a 
 beam in his room, so that when he nodded he would 
 wake up by a pull at his pig-tail. 
 
 As we find in other countries where woman is de- 
 
 K 2 
 
132 THE CHILD. 
 
 graded, the men undergo examinations from which 
 women are excluded. 
 
 Ancient institutions and customs are perpetuated 
 from generation to generation. And children — cabined, 
 cribbed, confined — have a poor chance of healthy de- 
 velopment of mind on the lines of nature or grace. 
 
 CHILDHOOD IN THE DARK CONTINENT. 
 
 The following statements touching childhood in 
 Africa are mainly from " The Children of Africa,'" 
 
 " Lander when he was in Africa saw a mother sell 
 her little girl for a necklace. She was not a baby 
 either, so it was not to save carrying her, that her 
 mother wanted to sell her. The poor little girl clung 
 to her mother's knees, saying, ' Oh, mother, do not sell 
 me. What will become of me ? What will become of 
 you when you get old, if you let me go away from you ? 
 Who will fetch your corn and milk ? Who will pity 
 you when you die ? ' But the mother took no notice, 
 and the poor little girl was sold, and all for the sake 
 of a necklace. Among the Fantees, fathers and 
 mothers pawn their children. Husbands pawn their 
 wives too, and even themselves. If the person pawned 
 is a woman or girl, the man who takes her can be just 
 as cruel to her as he likes." 
 
 '*You must not think that all West African mothers 
 are bad ones. Some of them love their children very 
 much, and their children love them." 
 
CHILDHOOD IN THE DARK CONTINENT. 133 
 
 "Another very cruel thing that is done in West 
 Africa, and in other parts too, is that if two httle 
 babies are born at the same time they are killed, be- 
 cause it is thought unlucky to have twins. On the 
 Niger, when twins are born, they are killed directly and 
 thrown away, and nobody is ever allowed to speak 
 about them." 
 
 " In some parts of West Africa not only twins are 
 killed, but also all boys and girls whose top teeth come 
 through before their bottom ones." 
 
 " In Lower Guinea, as soon as a child is born, the 
 news is told in the street by the crier in a loud 
 voice, so that every one may know. Then someone 
 in another part of the town answers the cry, and pro- 
 mises that the people of the town will receive the child 
 amongst them, and that it shall be treated as if it be- 
 longed to them. Then a crowd collects in the street, 
 and the baby is brought out and shown. A basin of 
 water is brought too, and the head man of the town 
 or family sprinkles some water on the baby, gives it a 
 name, and says he hopes it may live to be old, to be 
 rich, and to have many children of its own, or some- 
 thing of that sort. Most of the people in the crowd 
 do the same as the head man, till the poor baby is 
 quite wet through. All who help in this sprinkling 
 promise that they will be friends of the baby. The 
 people say they do not know what was the beginning 
 of this custom, nor whether it has any meaning." 
 
 " The children in Lower Guinea are taught to be 
 very respectful to old people." 
 
134 THE CHILD. 
 
 " Among the Zulus and most other tribes in South 
 Africa, the parents are very glad when a girl is born, 
 because they expect to get a good price for her from 
 the man who marries her." 
 
 " When she is fourteen or fifteen a girl is called 
 grown-up, and then, instead of being more useful, as 
 you would expect, she is allowed to be just as lazy as 
 she likes for a few years, and in some parts of the 
 country spends her time in lying on the ground in the 
 sun, gossiping, dancing, or at the best, making belts, 
 necklaces, bracelets, and rings with beads. She lives 
 this idle life till she gets married, which is not gener- 
 ally till she is eighteen or twenty, though in some 
 
 tribes the girls marry younger She will have no 
 
 time to be lazy after that. She will have to put on a 
 leather petticoat, cut the front part of her hair close to 
 her head, make a chignon at the back dyed red (this is 
 the sign of a married woman) and set to work to get 
 food for her husband." 
 
 " The Bushmen are not all kind to their wives and 
 children. A father often nearly kills his children if he 
 is angry with them, or if they are not a nice shape, 
 or even if they want food. The children are often 
 smothered or strangled, or thrown away in the desert 
 to be starved or eaten by wild beasts. Even the 
 mothers are no better. Sometimes if a lion is heard 
 roaring at the mouth of a cave (you remember the 
 Bushmen's huts are really caves), a father or mother 
 will throw their baby to it to make it quiet. The 
 
ARAB CHILDREN. 135 
 
 mothers generally take no care of their children after 
 they are able to crawl about by themselves. If a 
 mother dies when her child is still younger than this, 
 the child is buried alive with her." 
 
 "The Barotsi, who live north of Bechuanaland, 
 have some very cruel customs with the children. At 
 very important times they cut off the fingers and toes 
 of a little child, and sprinkle some of the blood on the 
 boat or house that the king is going to use, and then 
 toss the child into the Zambesi river." 
 
 It is recorded of missionaries in Africa that when 
 entering a fresh district and seeing the alarm on the 
 faces of natives, and the preparations for war at the 
 sight of the white-faced strangers, peace and content 
 (re-assurance ?) and a sense of security will immedi- 
 ately reign amongst the men when the missionary puts 
 forth his wife and child for them to do what they like 
 with them. 
 
 ARAB CHILDREN. 
 
 From a work on Domestic Life in Palestine we give a 
 glimpse of Arab child life, with some of its special 
 characteristics. 
 
 During the absence of the Consul, Miss Rogers was 
 visited by two little girls of the Sakhali family who 
 came to her, saying, *'Oh, Miriam, peace be upon you. 
 We have thought that you must be sad and lonely. . . . 
 may he return to you soon and in safety ! " They 
 
136 THE CHILD. 
 
 were very clever, quick children ; and though only 
 eight and nine years old, they could already make 
 bread and prepare many simple dishes. They were 
 surprised that Miss Rogers had not been taught how 
 to cook ; it is the chief point in the education of an 
 Arab girl. On being summoned away from the chil- 
 dren, whom she had been amusing and instructing from 
 her workbox, and the children being told that she must 
 go, they said : — " We are glad that you will to-day see 
 the Consul ; but we are sorry you are going away from 
 us ; go in peace." 
 
 Another story, from the same book, illustrates the 
 influence of children. 
 
 "Little Nimhr, the son of the Agha, arrived; he was 
 about seven years old. He came bounding into the 
 room, and was soon wrapped in the folds of his father's 
 scarlet cloak and covered with kisses and caresses. 
 I was struck by the change in the somewhat stern 
 aspect of Salihh Agha. He was full of tenderness and 
 demonstrative affection for his little son, an ugly boy, 
 but of that piquant description of ugliness which is 
 
 sometimes so attractive He showed in every 
 
 action that he was accustomed to be noticed and 
 lovingly treated." 
 
 The following picture of the freedom of the younger 
 children in the presence of an affectionate father, and 
 the restrained behaviour of an educated elder daughter 
 of the same father, throws light on the family life. 
 
 "His, Saleh Bek's, children unconsciously proved 
 
NEW GUINEA. 137 
 
 to me that they were accustomed to be caressed by 
 him, for they clustered round him lovingly, and little 
 Said was especially demonstrative. He said coaxingly, 
 * O, my father, may I go to see the house of the 
 English lady? it is her wish that I should go.' Asme, 
 his eldest daughter, scarcely spoke a word, and sat 
 sedately still and impassive ; and the face which a few 
 minutes before had seemed to me so beautiful with 
 vivacity and cheerfulness looked quite unattractive. It 
 seems to me to be a part of Oriental etiquette for the 
 elder children to preserve a kind of grave decorum in 
 the presence of a father, the younger children alone are 
 free to show their natural feelings, and demonstrative 
 affection is regarded as childish and undignified." 
 
 Old Testament facts are confirmed by the present 
 habits of the Arabs in Palestine. The East is station- 
 ary. Many of the practices of the Arabs of to-day 
 are as old as the book of Genesis and the time of the 
 Patriarchs. 
 
 NEW GUINEA. 
 
 While at this section of the book, Mrs. Chalmers, 
 the wife of a Christian missionary in New Guinea, 
 brought under the writer's notice some interesting 
 facts connected with their life among the " Savages." 
 
 During the first year of a child's life the mother is 
 expected to devote herself entirely to her offspring and 
 it is therefore necessary for a second wife to attend to 
 
138 THE CHILD. 
 
 the cultivation of the ground, which is her particular 
 right, and prepare food for the husband. 
 
 Their affection is remarkable ; and the father shares 
 the solicitude of the mother. The gentleness and 
 tenderness of the fathers is such as one observes in the 
 Japanese, who enjoy the nursing of the children in 
 their dinner hour as the best part of the meal. 
 
 The boy's early education and amusement consist 
 in the training of the eyes and limbs, especially in the 
 use of the assegai and the bow and arrow. The career 
 of a warrior is placed before their ambition as the 
 great object of their lives. As the child grows older, 
 he is passed through several stages of his progress 
 towards manhood, each stage being marked by an 
 initiatory rite, and celebrated by a festival. The 
 children, boys and girls, are taught dancing, — the 
 sexes always being divided, while the two parties are 
 in sight of each other. The mothers dress the child- 
 ren with flowers and artistically arranged leaves. The 
 attention of Mr. and Mrs. Chalmers was drawn to the 
 children, while watching their movements. " That's 
 my boy," " That's my beauty," might be heard with 
 delighted exclamations. As the boys grow up, the 
 initiatory mysteries suggest some severe if not cruel 
 rites, but Mr. Chalmers has never penetrated the 
 secret. They are shut up at the age of twelve in sacred 
 custody of old men : no woman is allowed to go near 
 the enclosure. 
 
 These good missionaries have won the affection 
 
NEW GUINEA 
 
 and respect of the natives. Our artificial, unnatural 
 civilization in Mr. Chalmer's estimation is not to be 
 preferred to the simple, free and natural civilization of 
 the savages ! He knows them, and trusts them, and 
 he goes about among them without fear. One day 
 Mrs. Chalmers missed a table cloth. She denounced 
 the thief — would have nothing to do with man or boy, 
 till the table cloth was restored. One boy at length 
 produced it. He said he found it at the bottom of the 
 river. But the coffee stains, &c., upon it refuted the 
 explanation. Still they were glad it was returned, and 
 several devoted converts wiped their tears from their 
 eyes, when they knew they were to be treated as 
 friends again. 
 
 The natives usually crowd around, many coming 
 into the sitting room of the missionaries, but while 
 partaking of a meal, they show their delicacy of feel- 
 ing by withdrawing to the outside, or stopping in the 
 doorway. They have made many of their converts 
 teachers in their school. 
 
 According to Figuier, the Patagonians are about the 
 lowest in the scale of humanity. " The existence of a 
 new-born infant is submitted to the (kind ?) considera- 
 tion of the father and mother, who decide upon its 
 life or death. Should they think fit to get rid of it, it 
 is smothered, and its body carried a short distance, 
 and then abandoned to wild dogs and birds of prey." 
 
 Marriage among these nations is a traffic, a barter 
 of various articles and animals for a wife. The woman 
 
140 THE CHILD. 
 
 moreover is burdened with work, whilst the man takes 
 his ease, whenever he is not hunting or engaged in 
 minding the cattle. 
 
 THE CHILDREN OF JAPAN. 
 " The gentleness of Jesus." 
 
 " The Gospel of Creation "* it may be difficult to 
 trace among whole nations of savages, so completely 
 has it vanished like a bright morning cloud from their 
 horizon, — so clearly erased, apparently, from the tablet 
 of the human heart. Yet it would be more correct, 
 perhaps, to say that " it is hid to them that are lost," 
 and only hidden beneath the rubbish which centuries 
 of perversity, barbarity and brutality have accumulated 
 over it. Bishop Westcott cannot greatly err when he 
 maintains that the incarnation preceded sin : and al- 
 though sin has marred "the human face divine," the 
 likeness of God is only defaced not destroyed. The 
 fine gold has become dim, but the gold of incarnate 
 Divinity has not all been extracted from the mine of 
 humanity. 
 
 One sweet trait of the nature of Christ is His gentle- 
 ness, \ It is remarkable that during the eighteen cen- 
 
 * Vide Christus Consummator : some Aspects of the Work and Power 
 of Christ in relation to Modern Thought, by Brooke Foss Westcott, 
 D.D., D.C.L., Bishop of Durham, second edition, 1887. 
 
 f " Now I Paul myself intreat you, by the meekness and gentleness of 
 Christy I who in your presence am lowly among you . . . " — 2 Cor. x. i. 
 
THE CHILDREN OF JAPAN. 141 
 
 turies of Christian civilization — especially among theo- 
 logians, — this tender plant, the gentleness of Christ, 
 may be sought after and found only as a very rare 
 specimen. Choked by the bitter weeds of arrogance, 
 self-assertion, and implied or avowed infallibility, the 
 gentleness of Jesus seems almost to have been exter- 
 minated or to have perished. The tendency of offi- 
 cialism is to wither it, whether in Church or State. 
 Spiritual power and authority are incompatible. Des- 
 potism and gentleness have never been twin sisters. 
 Anathema and meekness do not well up from the same 
 fountain. 
 
 The Gospel of Creation is obscured or "hid" among 
 the nations who know not God ; but it is not difficult 
 to trace a line here and there of its primal fulness and 
 perfection. Nor ought it to surprise us if, among the 
 heathen, fragments of the precious gift, by Creative 
 grace, have been preserved. The East will bear its 
 testimony as well as the West. If the children of 
 Abraham still nourished the sense of divine righteous- 
 ness ; if something of its essential glory survived in the 
 genius and ideal beauty of the Greek ; if its divine order 
 still asserted itself in Roman jurisprudence, why should 
 we be surprised if vestiges of the primal gospel are dis- 
 coverable in the life and character of the Japanese ? 
 
 There are many points of identity between the 
 Japanese and the Chinese. The creeds of Buddha and 
 Confucius have both moulded the religious thought 
 and life of the two nations. Their priests and pagodas 
 
142 THE CHILD. 
 
 are alike. Their literature and written language are 
 the same. Till the Chinese men adopted pigtails, 
 the hair of both nations was worn in the same manner. 
 The buildings and junks were till quite recently the 
 same, as also their kinds of food. But it is in a moral 
 point of view the Japanese compare most favourably 
 with the Chinese. They are cleanly in their persons 
 and dwellings : intelligent, brave and honourable. 
 
 For a remarkable instance of the survival of the 
 Gospel of Creation we may go to Japan. We plume 
 ourselves on our superiority, and lay the flattering 
 unction to our souls that the Japanese are indebted 
 to our European ideas and institutions for their rapid 
 progress in the arts of civilization. Doubtless the 
 Japanese would gratefully and ungrudgingly acknow- 
 ledge their obligations to Europe. But the power of 
 rapid assimilation is due to their own moral capacity — 
 the receptivity of their gentle natures — their freedom 
 from prejudice and suspicion. No other Asiatic nation 
 has discovered the same plastic quality by which its 
 life could be so readily moulded by the arts of Western 
 Civilization as the Japanese. Their peculiar aptitude 
 for taking on the forms of European life is most strik- 
 ing. How is this ? They have gentle manners. They 
 are child-like. Explain it how we may, they manifest 
 in their every-day life that beautiful quality which we 
 admire as gentleness. This is their cherished inherit- 
 ance from the Gospel of Creation. It was not a very 
 conspicuous trait in the character of the Goths, the 
 
THE CHILDREN OF JAPAN. 143 
 
 Vandals or the Huns. Neither the Angles and Saxons, 
 nor the Conqueror, achieved celebrity under the banner 
 of the dove. And the existing nations of Europe and 
 America are far more familiar with the lion, the ser- 
 pent, the eagle, the dragon, and other rude monsters, 
 than with this tender Paradisaical bird. 
 
 But what has all this to do with the children of 
 Japan ? Let us see. 
 
 The Japanese are just now debating whether they 
 shall mould their habits on the Christian system of 
 morality, or on science and philosophy. They are 
 really divided between the Gospel which they have 
 inherited from Creation, and the gospel of conven- 
 tional Christianity, as they estimate it from our inter- 
 course with them. If they could really see the Christ 
 putting a little child in the midst, they would feel so 
 thoroughly at home with Him, that the controversy 
 would be at once ended. For childhood lies at the 
 very foundation of their domestic and social life. 
 
 We, the professed followers of the meek and gentle 
 Jesus, are simply startled by the public announcements 
 just now being issued under the benign authority of 
 the Mikado. These announcements touch practical, 
 and especially official, life. Did any Christian govern- 
 ment ever suggest to Count Goto, one of the Japanese 
 ministers, that in the Communications Department — 
 in post-offices and postal savings-banks — " every mem- 
 ber of the public, irrespective of social or official posi- 
 tion, should be treated with politeness and civility " ? 
 
144 THE CHILD. 
 
 The same minister further urges the importance ot 
 avoiding all assumption of authority or show of official- 
 dom, in dealing with females, old people, and those of 
 tender years. Every official should be "kind and un- 
 assuming to all persons entitled to avail themselves 
 of his services ; " and the public, " so far from being 
 rendered reluctant to face the airs of officialdom, should 
 be able to feel that they may always count on ready and 
 polite attention."* The writer once asked a class of 
 250 children, how they regarded the policeman. Most 
 of them evidently shuddered at the name ; and one little 
 girl said she should run away as fast as she could. 
 This may be less discreditable to the police than to 
 parents, who most unfairly threaten the troublesome 
 child with " the policeman " as a stimulus. 
 
 Neither through the channels of commerce nor the 
 church can this gentleness be regarded as a European 
 import. If it be not a vestige of that original gospel 
 written on the fleshly table of the heart, what is it ? 
 What can it be ? That it is not something foreign, 
 now for the first time grafted on the Institutions of 
 Japan, is clear. It is indigenous — not exotic. It is a 
 natural evolution, and no prettier bit of evidence can 
 be adduced than that which modern travellers in the 
 Mikado's domains describe. 
 
 That the unit of humanity is not the individual but 
 the family — man, woman, and child — will not be dis- 
 puted. The formative forces of humanity as expressed 
 
 * See Daily Telegraph, June 13th, 1889. 
 
THE CHILDREN OF JAPAN. 146 
 
 in the family life, are not exhausted there. They work 
 from the family to the state, which properly becomes a 
 larger family ; and with practical eyes we are actually 
 seeing, more and more clearly, with the progress of 
 true Christianity, that the nations — all the families of 
 the earth — are members only of one great community — 
 brethren of whom the Christ is the One head. 
 
 The unity of Japan, in its beautiful social aspects, is 
 based on the family life. Its natural history is not to 
 be traced in the enforcement by external authority of 
 a cut and dried extraneous system, forced upon the 
 nation by " a new constitution," but by the working of 
 the leaven of the family unit spreading its benevolent 
 and amiable influence through the ramifications of 
 society. 
 
 The following facts, by an English eye-witness, will 
 justify the theory suggested : — 
 
 " I never saw people take so much delight in their 
 offspring, carrying them about, or holding their hands 
 in walking, watching and entering into their games, 
 supplying them constantly with new toys, taking them 
 to picnics and festivals, never being content to be with- 
 out them, and treating other people's children also 
 with a suitable measure of affection and attention. 
 Both fathers and mothers take pride in their children. 
 It is most amusing about six every morning to see 
 twelve or fourteen men sitting on a low wall, each with 
 a child, under two, in his arms, fondling and playing 
 with it, and showing off its physique and intelligence. 
 
146 THE CHILD, 
 
 To judge from appearances, the children form the chief 
 topic at this morning gathering. At night, after the 
 houses are shut up, looking through the long fringe of 
 rope or rattan which conceals the sliding door, you see 
 the father, who wears nothing but a niaro in *the bosom 
 of his family,' bending his ugly, kindly face over a 
 gentle-looking baby, and the mother, who more often 
 than not, has dropped the kimono from her shoulders, 
 enfolding two children destitute of clothing in her arms. 
 
 The children, though for our ideas too gentle 
 
 and formal, are very prepossessing in looks and be- 
 haviour. They are so perfectly docile and obedient, 
 so ready to help their parents, so good to the little 
 ones, and, in the many hours which I have spent in 
 watching them at play, I have never heard an angry 
 word, or seen a sour look or act."* 
 
 " The village Jrimichi, which epitomizes for me at 
 present the village life of Japan, consists of about 300 
 houses built along three roads, across which steps in 
 fours and threes are placed at intervals. Down the 
 middle of each a rapid stream runs in a stone channel, 
 and this gives endless amusement to the children, 
 specially to the boys, who devise many ingenious 
 models and mechanical toys, which are put in motion 
 
 by water-wheels Obedience is the foundation 
 
 of the Japanese social order, and with children accus- 
 tomed to unquestioning obedience at hom.e the (school) 
 teacher has no trouble in securing quietness, attention, 
 
 * Miss Bird's Unbeaten Tracks in jfopan, vol. i., p. 140. 
 
THE CHILDREN OF JAPAN. 147 
 
 and docility. There was almost a painful earnestness 
 in the old-fashioned faces which pored over the school- 
 books; even such a rare event as the entrance of a 
 
 foreigner failed to distract these childish students 
 
 The mechanical toys, worked by water-wheels in the 
 stream, are most fascinating." 
 
 This is followed by a description of a children's 
 party. " One of their games was most amusing, and 
 was played with some spirit and much dignity. It 
 consisted in one child feigning sickness, and another 
 playing the doctor, and the pompousness and gravity 
 of the latter, and the distress and weakness of the 
 former, were most successfully imitated. Unfortunately 
 the doctor killed his patient, who counterfeited the 
 death sleep very effectively with her whitened face ; 
 and then followed the funeral and the mourning. They 
 dramatize thus weddings, dinner-parties, and many 
 other of the events of life. The dignity and self-posses- 
 sion of these children are wonderful. The fact is that 
 their initiation into all that is required by the rules of 
 Japanese etiquette, begins as soon as they can speak, 
 so that by the time they are ten years old they know 
 exactly what to do and avoid under all possible circum- 
 stances."* 
 
 Let these illustrations suffice in substantiation of the 
 claim we have made on behalf of the children of Japan. 
 
 Sir Edwin Arnold gives a pretty picture, in Scrihnefs 
 Magazine, of Japanese children, whose admirable be- 
 
 * Ibid., pp. 131-2. 
 
 L 2 
 
148 THE CHILD. 
 
 haviour, as he says, really seems absolutely to confute 
 the doctrine of original sin. '* They never seem to do 
 any mischief, possibly because there is not much mis- 
 chief to do. In the houses nothing of any value exists 
 for them to break ; there is nothing they will perpetu- 
 ally be told * not to touch.' The streets almost en- 
 tirely belong to them (there is practically no horse 
 traffic in Tokio), and yet, although they may do almost 
 anything there they never seem to do anything v^rong- 
 Everybody is friendly to them ; every fifth shop is full 
 of toys and dolls, and sweetstuff of strange device, in- 
 gredients, and colour, for their delectation. Their 
 innocent v^ays and merry chatter render every quarter 
 pleasant." And they are the opposite of useless in the 
 domestic economy, these black- eyed youngsters. "We 
 shall see hundreds of children, not more than five or 
 six years of age, carrying, fast asleep, strapped on their 
 small shoulders, the baby of the household." 
 
 The children of Madagascar. 
 
 The state of civilization and the moral condition of 
 a people may, to a great extent, be measured by the 
 reception given to that little item we call a baby. A 
 nation addicted to infanticide, to contempt for chil- 
 dren, will be characterised by barbarity, and their 
 country must be reckoned among the dark places of 
 the earth. 
 
 How do the Malagasy welcome the little stranger? 
 
THE CHILDREN OF MADAGASCAR. 149 
 
 Thus : " Hail ! God has blessed you ! God has given 
 you a successor, so we are come to bring you a little 
 money to buy shrimps for the baby's mother." The 
 baby's friends reply : "May you live long, may you be 
 long protected from witchcraft, may you, too, have 
 babies born to you ! and as for the money you have 
 brought, what is that to us ? It is your coming to 
 visit us that makes us glad ; but since it is customary, 
 we thank you ; may God bless you ! " None of these 
 visitors who come crowding into the house when a 
 baby is born ask to look at the little new-comer ; that 
 would be considered quite improper ; but after asking 
 whether it is a boy or a girl, they sit and chat for a 
 while, and then take their leave, the women often 
 carrying off a quantity of dried beef in their lamba, a 
 present from the baby's father." 
 
 The belief in witchcraft and in evil spirits in Mada- 
 gascar is, alas ! most profound, and it brings the Mala- 
 gasy quite up to the level of a British superstition 
 which still lurks about the Church as well as the rural 
 districts of our country. Hence children born on un- 
 lucky days, have been put to death by thousands. 
 Prompted by their affection for their children and their 
 alarm at the evils threatening their lives, and consider- 
 ing, in their ignorance that these evils could only be 
 averted by death, they were driven to infanticide.* 
 
 * An English Christian father, out of the tenderest affection of his 
 heart, expressed himself, in the hearing of his children, as wishful that 
 his own offspring might die young, that they might be saved from sin- 
 
150 THE CHILD. 
 
 " Sometimes, however, the child was not put to- 
 death at once, but placed out at the village gate, or 
 at the entrance of an ox-pit in the yard outside the 
 house, just at the time when the cattle were being 
 driven home for the night. If the oxen all passed by 
 without touching it, the evil fates which had hung over 
 the child's life were supposed to be removed, and it 
 was taken home again, with great rejoicing. A very 
 interesting story was told me by one of my scholars 
 how on one occasion a little child, belonging to a slave 
 woman of theirs, was placed at the gate of an ox-pit, 
 when seven oxen were being driven home in the even- 
 ing. The first on coming to the place where the baby 
 lay, put its nose down and smelt it, or as the Malagasy 
 say * kissed ' it, for their kissing consists in nose-rub- 
 bing, then at one bound jumped right over it and down 
 into the pit below. The second came and smelt it and 
 leapt over it in the same way ; the third came and did 
 just the same, and the fourth, and so on until the 
 seventh, and it too jumped right over the little one 
 without harming it in the least. How the poor 
 mother's heart must have beat with hope and fear as 
 she saw one after another of the huge beasts come up 
 and thus take compassion on her little child ! It is 
 said that the present prime minister of Madagascar 
 was put out in this way to be trodden by the cattle, 
 
 ning and from the destructive consequences of sin. The writer also 
 recalls the case of a Christian English mother, goaded to madness by 
 the dread for her child of eternal torments, drowning it in a water-butt^ 
 
THE CHILDREN OF MADAGASCAR. 151 
 
 but he likewise escaped, and has Hved to rise to great 
 power and has been the husband of three Queens of 
 Madagascar." 
 
 Might there not be as intense a maternal affection in 
 the Malagasy mother as there was in the mother of 
 Moses, whose successful attempt to save the boy will 
 be carried down the stream of time to the end of the 
 world ? 
 
 The greatest store is put upon a first-born child. The 
 first time the baby is taken into the open air, when it is 
 a month old, is an important ceremony. So is also 
 the first hair-cutting, at the age of three months, when 
 the relatives and friends of the family assemble. If 
 the parents are sufficiently well-to-do, one or two or 
 more oxen have been killed, and part of the meat put 
 on the fire to cook, and part cut up to be given to each 
 guest when departing .... The hair-cutting is pro- 
 ceeded with, with due formality : the hair removed 
 from the child's head is carried off to the doorway, and 
 placed under the threshold, and a prayer for good-luck 
 is offered. On the occasion of the first hair-cutting 
 the child receives a name. 
 
 The little ones run about naked till about three, 
 then they are put into a little akanje, or shirt-like 
 garment. 
 
 Children are very early set to useful occupations. 
 While the slave or the mother is getting the supper 
 ready, the father will often tell the children stories or 
 get them to play at riddles. 
 
162 THE CHILD. 
 
 Charms and medicine reveal the superstitious cha- 
 racter of the Malagasy people. Prohibited things are 
 called fady. Thus a little child about a year old must 
 not be called good-looking or fat, but be spoken of as 
 ugly, or called a little pig, or a little dog. An old man 
 explained that the fear of the child being haunted by 
 ghosts was at the bottom of the practice. 
 
 To give a young child an egg to eat is fady. The 
 reason given is that they are both eggs, and it cannot 
 be right that one egg should eat the other. Kissing a 
 child's hand is to be carefully avoided, as it is said the 
 youngster so treated wil become selfish, and will beg 
 for anything it sees. So we learn that selfishness is 
 not deemed a great virtue. Nor are they encouraged 
 to repent of a generous action, for they are warned 
 that if they want back anything they have given away, 
 they might cause the death of their mother. 
 
 Though the language is so copious in words which 
 express the superstition of the people, it contains but 
 one word which signifies God, — the intuition of a 
 higher being. 
 
 The success of Christian missions in the education 
 given in schools is remarkable. The spiritual possi- 
 bilities of the children are developed quickly, while the 
 adults, loaded with superstitions and often hardened in 
 selfishness and sin, are difficult to reach. 
 
M. Lobrichon's well-known picture "// etait une fois " 
 
 is, with the permission of Messrs. Boussod, Valadon and 
 Co., reproduced here on account of the various phases of 
 child-life which it records, and the striking character 
 which it depicts, not of one child alone, but of each one 
 of the group. The motherly authority of the narrator ; 
 the appreciative interest of the eldest listener, with the 
 absorbed attention evinced in the suspended needle-work. 
 The wondering meditative mood of the next, and the least 
 of a funny enquiring turn of mind ; the artist not failing 
 in the attitudes of the children, nor the surroundings of 
 the somewhat humble home. 
 
'i^M^ 
 
 OF THE 
 
 XXNIVERsiT 
 
THE CHILD OF ART. 153 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE CHILD OF ART. 
 
 It is a remarkable fact, that in both ancient Hterature 
 and art, childhood counted for very little. With the 
 poets a child is a rara avis. And with the artists the 
 child is a little old man. The estimate of a child was 
 not Wordsworth's — " father of the man," but only 
 possible man. The child grew in interest only as he 
 approached the state of manhood. 
 
 Childhood is the period of weakness, and it is its 
 weakness which lends to infancy its wonderful pathos. 
 In the character of the lively Greek or the prosaic 
 Roman, strength of mind and of muscle drew forth 
 admiration and awoke the strenuous endeavour to 
 excel. 
 
 Take the sculpture of the Greek. Ideal strength 
 seems to assert itself at least as fully as ideal beauty — 
 and only the beauty of man and woman is thought 
 worthy of the chisel of the artist. 
 
 If only mothers had been artists, what pictures 
 would have come down to us from early times ! 
 
 Certainly there are no indications during the best 
 period of Greek art of childhood as a special study for 
 the sculptor. The beauty of children seems to be 
 passed by for the more stately beauty of men and 
 
154 THE CHILD. 
 
 women. The Greeks were sensuous, and the more 
 fully developed form of a Venus had an attraction 
 which the little child utterly failed to excite. To the 
 Greek the family was bound together by ties far in- 
 ferior in strength to that of personal friendship, and 
 not nearly so sacred as that of country. 
 
 The story of Niobe comes down to us through 
 Homer and various classical authors, who differ much 
 as to the details. According to the common story, 
 which represents her as a daughter of Tantalus, she 
 was the sister of Pelops, and married to Amphion, 
 King of Thebes, by whom she became the mother of 
 many sons and daughters. Proud of the number of 
 her children she deemed herself superior to Leto, who 
 had given birth to two children only. Apollo and 
 Artemis, indignant at such presumption, slew all the 
 children of Niobe. For nine days their bodies lay in 
 their blood, without anyone burying them, for Zeus 
 had changed the people into stones ; but on the tenth 
 day the gods themselves buried them. Niobe herself, 
 who had gone to Mount Sipylus, was metamorphosed 
 into stone, and even thus continued to feel the calamity 
 with which the gods had visited her. The story of 
 Niobe and her children was frequently taken as a sub- 
 ject of ancient art. 
 
 The most celebrated was the group which filled the 
 pediment of the temple of Apollo Socianus, at Rome, 
 and which was found at Rome in the year 1583. This 
 group is now at Florence, and consists of the mother 
 
THE CHILD OF ART. 155 
 
 who holds her youngest daughter on her knees, and 
 thirteen statues of her sons and daughters besides the 
 psedagogus of the children. 
 
 This story reflects the character of the mother and 
 her devotion to her children at a very early period. 
 
 We ransack the treasures of Greek art for a little 
 child almost in despair. But Praxiteles is not dead. 
 He lives in Hermes, the tender guardian of young 
 children, the god who when a child is forsaken of 
 father or mother, takes him up and tends him. 
 
 The young god Dionysos, child of the fruitful earth 
 and the bright sunshine, offspring of Semele and the 
 golden shower of Zeus, was just such a forsaken little 
 one. This tender woman-hearted Hermes evokes our 
 admiration and our love, without awe or fear. Even 
 the child Dionysos has no fear. His little hand is 
 laid trustfully on the shoulder of Hermes. 
 
 Miss J. E. Harrison* relates the discovery by the 
 German excavators at Olympia in 1877, of the statue 
 of Hermes ; but after describing its surpassing beauty, 
 she tells us that Dionysos, so far as beauty goes, is 
 most disappointing. " The hair, the face, the body 
 are not ill-worked ; but stiff and somewhat unpleasant, 
 and wholly unchildlike. As regards mere beauty, we 
 could wish they had never been found." 
 
 Pheidias is known for accuracy in minutest details, 
 as well as majesty in his colossal figures. He gave 
 proofs of his skill by making images of minute objects 
 
 * Introductory Studies in Greek Art. 
 
166 THE CHILD. 
 
 such as cicadas, bees, and flies — in chasing and en- 
 graving. But were the children, notwithstanding, be- 
 neath his notice ? If imitative art was beneath 
 Pheidias, was there nothing in infancy to provoke an 
 effort for the attainment of the ideal beauty of his 
 inspired genius ? He dwelt among the gods ; he 
 seems to have had no idea of a God incarnate in 
 an infant. 
 
 Roman art was severe and power in any and every 
 form they worshipped. The weakness of a little child 
 made child-life a matter of indifference. It was valu- 
 able only for what it might become in after years. 
 
 The Italian painters appreciated the beauty of in- 
 fancy, but their conceptions were developed exclusively 
 in their endeavours to picture the infant Jesus. The 
 same may be said of early Flemish art. In Spanish 
 art we at once recall Murillo's lively beggar boys which 
 convey the idea to our minds that in him we have an 
 illustration of one who was devoted to the study of 
 child-life. But in Spain, where he is certainly seen at 
 his best, they are the exceptions to the general rule — 
 such pictures being rarely met with in the country ; 
 and under his name the many works in other countries 
 of beggar boys, are said to have been mainly executed 
 by his followers. 
 
 When we come down to Vandyke we see in the 
 Balbi children an enthusiasm for the glowing loveliness 
 of an Italian child, though with him it is infrequent 
 compared with the numerous examples of child-beauty 
 
THE CHILD OF ART. 167 
 
 by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and in the picture galleries of 
 our own day. 
 
 How is it that Caldecott has won our admiration 
 and affection too, as the artist of Childhood ? What 
 is it that in his subjects and their treatment, has 
 touched all child-like hearts, in young and old alike ? 
 It must be the Divine humanity which comes out in 
 the little words of profoundest meaning. " The least 
 of these, my brethren." Is it any exaggeration to say 
 that such artists as Caldecott and Kate Greenaway 
 have done more than most art teachers to inspire and 
 draw out the art instinct in the people ? Their secret 
 is truth ; no costly elaboration or mechanical trap- 
 pings — the simple and naked truth. 
 
 The growing appreciation of childhood in art is at 
 once the expression and the encouragement of a rever- 
 ence, a sympathy and a tenderness of compassion 
 known only to those whose highest conceptions and 
 deepest feelings are due to an inspiration whose source 
 is found in the Eternal Love. 
 
 To the art of the photographer is justly due the 
 prominence given in recent years to the children. Is 
 it too much to say that portraiture has received a de^ 
 cided impetus through the camera of the photographer ? 
 And while children, as a rule, rarely advance beyond a 
 vague and indefinite representation on the canvas of 
 the early masters, photography has developed a child 
 with a well-defined intelligence, and often an intensity 
 of feeling of which ancient art had no conception. 
 
158 THE CHILD. 
 
 ' Children have drawn out the genius of the photo- 
 graphic artist, and the photographer, in grateful recog- 
 nition of the charms of childhood, has done much to 
 bring and to keep the children in the home as promin- 
 ently as they deserve. 
 
 This may horrify some ideahsts ; but popular taste 
 and popular feeling are awakened and developed by 
 photographic portraiture. 
 
THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL. 159 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL. 
 " Give me children, or else I die." — Gen. xxx., i. 
 
 Glimpses of the Divine Fatherhood are to be had 
 from very early times among the Jews, and the reflex 
 action of the idea of God as Father is discoverable in 
 the more tender regard for children in subsequent ages. 
 
 Plato, as we have seen in the section devoted to the 
 best conceptions of childhood by heathen philosophers, 
 impresses us with his deep interest in the subject. He 
 would have children kept from all that is harmful. 
 He enters into careful study of the training of children, 
 — their religious interests as well as their physical and 
 mental culture, — but that which comes out so pro- 
 minently in the Jewish conception of religion is utterly 
 wanting in Plato. He claims a great deal of respect 
 for the gods, but he has not a word for what Jews and 
 Christians hold so dear — the Divine Fatherhood. This 
 precious truth seems to have been the special gift 
 granted to the children of Abraham. 
 
 We find the sacred scriptures gemmed with the 
 endearing terms — "the Father" and "O righteous 
 Father." 
 
 The mode of divine manifestation begins with the 
 
160 THE CHILD. 
 
 idea of righteousness. God's ways are equal. His 
 throne is established in righteousness. Under the 
 form of Law, He made known His ways unto Moses. 
 In harmony with this method, the first commandment 
 runs thus : — Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy 
 heart. 
 
 God is essentially love ; and as a final testimony to 
 the two fundamental characteristics of the Eternal, our 
 Lord, in the presence of His disciples, apostrophises 
 God thus — righteous Father ! 
 
 And who could rely on a love that was not righteous ? 
 God's love cannot be a mere fickle sentiment ; now 
 hot, now cold. No. God is love. And Jesus reveals 
 God, the Father. The New Testament brings out the 
 grand truth, with the clouds and the thunderings and 
 lightnings of Sinai cleared away — and lo ! Jesus with a 
 little child upon His knee ! 
 
 " But God cannot be the Father of a bad man." 
 
 The prodigal son says not only that He can be, but 
 that He is. St. Paul at Athens testified to the same 
 broad fact without qualification or limitation. 
 
 A faith in the one God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, 
 and Jacob, is most striking in its manifestation in 
 regard of children, and the religions and civilizations 
 of heathen nations fall into the shade as the practices 
 of those nations in the treatment of children are con- 
 sidered. It is a distinctive feature of Jewish life, 
 through all their history, that children were not re- 
 garded as an incumbrance, but as the choicest blessing 
 
THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL. 161 
 
 God could bestow, and the supreme evidence of Divine 
 favour. The barrenness of a wife was a reproach, and 
 was sometimes considered a sufficient reason for a 
 divorce. True, the birth of a boy was the occasion 
 for more joy than the birth of a girl ; but the girl's 
 education was not neglected (Ecclus. xlii. g, lo). At 
 the hour of birth the father was not present, but he 
 was subsequently admitted, when he took the child 
 upon his knees. If the grandfather were living, he 
 sometimes had this privilege (Gen. 1. 23). It was ex- 
 pressly forbidden to make an exhibition of the chil- 
 dren, a practice of the Greeks and Romans at which 
 the Jews were horrified.* The mothers nursed their 
 infants themselves, and the Talmud enjoins this as a 
 duty (" Cethubboth " 64 a). On the occasion of the 
 weaning of the child Isaac, Abraham made a great 
 feast. And Hagar's greatest distress was occasioned 
 by the apparently inevitable loss of her boy, when 
 " she sat over against him, and lifted up her voice, 
 and wept." (Gen. xxi. 8-17). Palestinian women still 
 prolong the suckling of the child for two or three years ; 
 the practice is regarded as a preservative against the 
 maladies incident to the climate. 
 
 The recognition of the infant by circumcision when 
 eight days old, must have invested him with a rehgious 
 interest to the parents, and have touched with an 
 emphatic sacredness the whole family life. 
 
 * Philo has a chapter on this subject. See Havel (E.), Le jfudaisine, 
 
 P- 437- 
 
 M 
 
162 THE CHILD 
 
 In Hebrew families the education of the child was 
 a domestic affair ; and this would also develop and 
 strengthen those affections which make children so 
 precious. 
 
 There were no public schools for children till a cen- 
 tury before Christ. Shim'on ben Shattach, the pre- 
 sident of the Sanhedrim, brother to Queen Salome, 
 opened the first school in Jerusalem for children. He 
 called it Beth-hassepher (the house of the book). 
 (Jerus., " Cethubboth," VHI. ii). The high priest, 
 Jesus ben Gamala, made the founding of schools 
 obligatory ; every town was to have a primary school. 
 *' Perish the sanctuary," exclaim the Rabbis, in their 
 enthusiasm for the children, " but let the children go 
 to school." (Babyl., '' Shabbath " 119 h). 
 
 Philo made the study of the Law^ of the first im- 
 portance ; and Paul reminds Timothy '* that from a 
 child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures." 
 
 " The mode of education differed widely from ours. 
 As soon as the child could speak his mother taught 
 
 him a verse of the law When the child knew one 
 
 text he was taught another ; then a written scroll of 
 the verses was placed in his hands that he might recite 
 them."* 
 
 The importance attached by the Jews to education, 
 and the instruction of the child from a very early 
 age, demonstrate the preciousness of the child. The 
 '' Pirke Aboth " (V. 21), some parts of which are cer- 
 
 * Stapfer's Palestine in the Time of Christ. 
 
THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL. 168 
 
 tainly anterior to Christianity, thus fixes the various 
 stages of the child's development : — ' At five years of 
 age he should commence sacred studies; at ten he 
 should devote himself to the study of tradition ; at 
 thirteen he should know and fulfil the commands of 
 Jehovah ; at fifteen he should bring his studies to per- 
 fection.'"* 
 
 Rabbi Judas said : — " If a man does not teach his 
 son a trade it is as if he taught him to steal." 
 (Babyl., *' Kiddushin," ch. i.). 
 
 At twelve years of age the boys were taken to th^ 
 Temple ; they observed the Torah, and took the name 
 of Bar Micoah ; they now fasted regularly, especially 
 on the great day of atonement. 
 
 Will it not be found that respect for woman carries 
 with it the greatest regard for children ? A virtuous 
 woman (Proverbs of Solomon) is known by her care 
 for her children. As compared with surrounding 
 nations, the honour given to woman among the Jews 
 is very remarkable. Woman is down-trodden by the 
 Arabs to this day. 
 
 " On the father," says the Talmud, " devolves the 
 duty of circumcising his son, of teaching him the Law, 
 and of instructing him in a trade." 
 
 As illustrative of the honour put upon a child when 
 
 * " These studies did not amount to much. A knowledge of reading, 
 possibly of writing, and the power of repeating by heart the most im- 
 portant passages of the Torah." Stapfer's Palestine in the Time of 
 Christy p. 144. 
 
 M 2 
 
164 THE CHILD 
 
 he is a boy, the author of Domestic Life in Palestine 
 tells us of a skilful carver in Bethlehem, who was 
 indebted to H.B.M. Consul Rogers (her brother) for 
 his start in life and the cultivation of his art. Miss 
 Rogers was introduced to his young wife. She asked 
 the young mother her name. She answered " Miriam 
 is my name." But her mother said " Not so, she is no 
 longer Miriam, but Um Yousef (mother of Joseph) for 
 a son is born unto her whose name is Joseph." 
 
 Some of the games of Jewish children are known to 
 us, of which we get a glimpse in the teachings of Jesus 
 Himself. They were fond of playing with tame birds. 
 (Catullus, ii. 4 ; Plautus, Captiv., Act v. 4, 5). 
 
 " As the head of the household returned on the 
 sabbath eve from the synagogue to his home, he found 
 it festively adorned, the sabbath lamp brightly burning, 
 and the table spread with the richest each household 
 could afford. But first he blessed each child with the 
 blessing of Israel."* 
 
 " It is when we consider the relations between man 
 and wife, children and parents, the young and the 
 aged, that the vast difference between Judaism and 
 heathenism so strikingly appears. Even the relation- 
 ship in which God presented Himself to His people 
 as their Father, would give peculiar strength and 
 sacredness to the bond which connected earthly par- 
 ents with their offspring."t 
 
 * Edersheim's Sketches of jfewish Social Life in the days of Christ, 
 p. 97. f Ibid., p. 98. 
 
THE CHILD OF CHRISTENDOM. 165 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE CHILD OF CHRISTENDOM. 
 
 After a study of the child of the Jewish Church, and 
 marking its advantageous position in the family and in 
 the nation, as compared with the offspring of heathen 
 peoples, we may expect that, with a fuller revelation of 
 the Divine Fatherhood, and all that it implies, there 
 will be a further development of the parental apprecia- 
 tion and care for the families of Christian people. 
 
 If glimpses of the Divine purity, beauty and sweet- 
 ness were suggested, though only somewhat obscurely, 
 through the relation of parent and child, in the Israel- 
 itish nation, we ought to have impressed upon us still 
 more charming ideas of the attractiveness of the child 
 under the teaching of Jesus, and through Christian 
 training. If children were the riches and glory of 
 social life among the Israelites, their *' holiness " 
 (i Cor. vii. 14) will surely light up the home of the 
 Christian family with still more heavenly brightness. 
 
 The paling stars of the Jewish firmament are about 
 to disappear before the effulgence of the Christian sun 
 of righteousness. 
 
 Postponing the consideration of the birth of the holy 
 child Jesus, and its attendant joy, for a subsequent 
 chapter, we may recall the glad emotion which stirred 
 
im THE CHILD. 
 
 the Jewish breast on the occasion of the Baptist's 
 birth. The angel announces to Zacharias : " Fear not, 
 Zacharias ; because thy supplication is heard, and thy 
 wife, Elizabeth, shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt 
 call his name John." We mark the felicitation of the 
 angel : *' Thou shalt have joy and gladness, and many 
 shall rejoice at his birth." And when to Elizabeth the 
 babe was born, " her neighbours and kinsfolk heard 
 that the Lord had magnified his mercy towards her, 
 and they rejoiced with her." Then follows the song of 
 praise of Zacharias (Luke i.). 
 
 The Apostle Paul recognizes God's goodness as 
 much in his first as in his second birth : '* He separ- 
 ated me from my mother's womb, and called me by 
 his grace." 
 
 What could possibly be stranger, with a far fainter 
 disclosure of the Fatherhood of God, in pre-Christian 
 times, than for children, esteemed so great a gift, who 
 in Christian times are discovered to be the hideous 
 little monsters the Church paints them ? 
 
 Of children then we get a joyous key-note, — a note 
 full of good and of hope for the future, in the New 
 Testament; and above all from the great Teacher 
 Himself; — a key-note to which we may expect all sub- 
 sequent teaching in the Christian Church to be at- 
 tuned. 
 
 Let us see what the teaching and practice with re- 
 gard to children is from the writings of the Fathers, — 
 the Fathers, to wit — and ecclesiastical practices, form- 
 
THE CHILD OF CHRISTENDOM. 167 
 
 ing or reflecting the general conception of Childhood, 
 in the Christian Church. 
 
 Now, although Children find an honoured place in 
 our Christian homes, nothing can be clearer than this : 
 that the theory of unbaptized childhood is as gloomy 
 and as terrible a thing as can well be imagined. So 
 far from being up to the level of Jewish conception, it 
 even sinks below the idea of some of the heatlien 
 nations, whose sweet appreciation of Childhood has 
 been illustrated in preceding sections of this work. 
 
 As if to enhance the glory of our Father in heaven, 
 it were the most pious thing possible to endow the 
 new-born babe with the attributes of the devil. As if 
 to exalt Him who took little unbaptized children in 
 His arms, it could best magnify the riches of His 
 grace to regard them as little incarnations of evil. As 
 if to honour the work of the Holy Spirit, it were the 
 justest conception that the babes are naturally the 
 objects of divine wrath and displeasure and candi- 
 dates for an eternity of torture, with perhaps a bare 
 possibility of escape in the uncovenanted mercies of 
 God. 
 
 Possibly, the Christian Church, in its zeal for its 
 theological system, has never thought that there may 
 be parents living among us, who, accepting the fright- 
 fully depreciatory theory of Childhood, as taught by 
 the Churches, find sanction for the cruel treatment of 
 their offspring, such as the newspapers are almost 
 daily bringing to light in our midst : their own abaTi*- 
 
168 THE CHILD. 
 
 doned lives, — ^"with all the sweetness of natural affec- 
 tion obliterated from their characters, looking very like 
 a living testimony to the Church's doctrine of incar- 
 nate evil. This is the compliment we pay to our chil- 
 dren ! We drag these fresh, sparkling embodiments 
 of new life down to our own level of deadness. On the 
 canvas of childhood, after conflicts and often defeats 
 with the powers of evil, we project our own mired 
 humanity, besmirched with the defilements of sin and 
 corruption, and take the children to the font to be 
 washed ! And thus the fathers have eaten sour grapes 
 and the children's teeth are set on edge (Jer. xxxi. 29). 
 No wonder while " the young men bare the mill, the 
 children stumbled under the wood " ! (Lam. v. 13). 
 A little child brought up on the doctrine of original 
 sin, — being assured of a fault by his father, shrewdly 
 retorted : " Well, it was not my fault : it was Adam 
 and Eve's fault " ! Was not this artificial feeding ? 
 
 It is difficult to repress the most scathing language 
 of denunciation of a system which not merely obscures, 
 but which misrepresents the Divine wisdom and be- 
 nignity, and which has not seldom led a despairing 
 mother to destroy her child. 
 
 What has the Christian Church, in almost every 
 section, maintained, as to the nature and the destiny 
 of little children, — even of babes ? The fact is too 
 well known. Let us take a glance at the early testi- 
 mony of the great leaders in Christian Theology and 
 practice, touching Infancy, as brought under notice by 
 
THE CHILD OF CHRISTENDOM. 169 
 
 Tracts for the Times — the outcome and stimulus of the 
 '* catholic revival " during the last half century. 
 
 Tract Ixvii., Ad Clerum. "Our life is, throughout, 
 represented as commencing, v^^hen w^e are by baptism 
 made members of Christ and children of God : that 
 life may, through our negligence, afterwards decay, or 
 be choked, or smothered, or w^ell-nigh extinguished, 
 and by God's mercy be again renewed and refreshed, 
 but a commencement of spiritual life after Baptism, a 
 death unto sin and a new birth unto righteousness, at 
 any other period than that one first introduction into 
 God's covenant, is as little consonant with the general 
 representations of Holy Scripture, as a commencement 
 of physical life long after our natural birth is with the 
 order of His holy providence." 
 
 *' One may, indeed, rightly infer that, since the Jews 
 regarded the baptised proselyte as a new-born child, 
 our Saviour would not have connected the mention of 
 water with the new birth, unless the new birth which 
 He bestowed, had been bestowed through Baptism : 
 but who would so fetter down the fulness of our 
 Saviour's promises, as that His words should mean 
 nothing more than they would in the mouth of the 
 dry and unspiritual Jewish legalists ? or because they, 
 proud of the covenant with Abraham, deemed that the 
 passing of a proselyte into the outward covenant with 
 Abraham, was a new custom, who would infer that our 
 Saviour only spoke of an outward change ? Even some 
 among the Jews had higher notions, and believed that 
 
170 THE CHILD. 
 
 a new soul descended from the region of spirits, upon 
 the admitted proselyte." 
 
 The writer afterwards quotes the testimony of St. 
 Augustine in the same sense. 
 
 " * Most excellently,' saith he, writing against the 
 Pelagians * do the Punic Christians entitle Baptism 
 itself no other than salvation, and the sacrament of the 
 body of Christ no other than life.' "* 
 
 " Baptism is not a mere initiatory rite, but an ap- 
 pointed means for conveying the Holy Spirit. "t 
 
 Alluding to the Apostle Paul's conversion, the same 
 writer says : " By baptism he was filled with the Holy 
 Ghost." Not pardoned or regenerated till he was 
 baptized. 
 
 In a letter to St. Jerome, St. Augustine writes : 
 " Whoever should affirm that infants which die with- 
 out partaking of this sacrament shall be quickened in 
 Christ, would both go against the Apostle's preaching 
 and also would condemn the whole church [universam 
 ecclesiam) I do not say that infants dying with- 
 out the baptism of Christ will be punished with so 
 great pain, so that it were better for them not to have 
 been born, since our Lord spoke this, not of all sinners 
 
 but of the most profligate and impious ones There 
 
 is no middle place where you can put infants so 
 
 that when you confess the infant will not be in the 
 Kingdom, you must acknowledge that he will be in 
 everlasting fire.":|: 
 
 * Ad Clerum, p. 21. f Ibid., p. 37. 
 
 % Epist. 77 ad Hieronem de Sancto Victore, pp. 300-1. 
 
THE CHILD OF CHRISTENDOM. 171 
 
 This somewhat confused and illogical statement is 
 marvellous as an exposition of the teaching of Jesus.* 
 
 Theodoret is quoted with approval. "* Forgive us our 
 trespasses,' this prayer we do not teach the uncon- 
 secrated but the consecrated (baptized) for no uncon- 
 secrated person can dare to say * Our Father ' not 
 having yet received the gift of adoption. But he who 
 has obtained the gift of Baptism calls God * Father,' 
 as being accounted among the sons of grace."! 
 
 St. Gregory of Nazianzum : " Hast thou an infant ? 
 
 Let it be sanctified from a babe. Let it be 
 
 hallowed by the Spirit from its tenderest infancy. 
 Fearest thou the seal of faith on account of the weak- 
 ness of the nature, as a faint-hearted mother and of 
 little faith ? But Hannah devoted Samuel to God, yea 
 before he was born, and when he was born, imme- 
 diately made him a priest Thou hast no need of 
 
 amulets, impart to him the Trinity^ that great and 
 excellent preservative."! 
 
 * " This 'washing of the water' was now deemed absolutely ne- 
 cessary for salvation. No human being could pass into the presence of 
 God hereafter, unless he had passed through the waters of baptism here 
 
 The Pelagian controversy drew out the mournful doctrine, that 
 
 infants, dying before baptism .... were consigned to everlasting fire. 
 At the close of the fifth century this belief had become universal, chiefly 
 
 through the means of Augustine As to the views of individual 
 
 Fathers from the time of Augustine it seems impossible to dispute the 
 judgment of the great English authority Wall On Baptism : ' How hard- 
 soever this opinion may seem, it is the constant opinion of the 
 Ancients.'" — Christian Institutions^ by A. P. Stanley, D.D., 4th Edit., 
 1884. 
 
 *• Ad Cleruni, p. 65. J Ibid., p. 178. 
 
172 THE CHILD. 
 
 St. Ambrose: " In baptism there is one thing done 
 visibly to the eye ; another thing is wrought invisibly 
 to the mind." 
 
 St, Basil : In baptism — " the kingdom of heaven is 
 there set open." 
 
 Chrysostom : " God Himself in baptism, by His in- 
 visible power halloweth thy head." 
 
 St. Gregory of Nyssa : " Baptism, then, is the purifi- 
 cation of sins, remission of offences, the cause of 
 regeneration and renewal." 
 
 That the amazing operation in Baptism should not 
 fail of its efficacy, all that appertains to the observance 
 of the rite must be minutely attended to. The water 
 must not be ordinary water even though it were double 
 distilled. 
 
 Cyprian tells us that "it is proper the water be 
 cleansed and sanctified by the priest that it may have 
 the power in baptism to wash away the sins of him 
 who is baptized." 
 
 And the Council of Carthage decrees : " The water 
 when sanctified by the prayer of the priest washes 
 away sins." 
 
 St. Ambrose says: "The water hath the grace of 
 Christ ; in it is the presence of the Trinity." 
 
 Even so early a writer as Tertullian says: "The 
 Holy Ghost cometh down and halloweth the water." 
 
 In the present book of Common Prayer we have an 
 authoritative exposition of the doctrine of Baptism. 
 Though so familiar, its importance, as bearing on the 
 
THE CHILD OF CHRISTENDOM. 173 
 
 doctrine of childhood, must excuse so lengthy a quota, 
 tion from its pages. 
 
 ** Dearly beloved, forasmuch as all men are con- 
 ceived and born in sin ; and that our Saviour Christ 
 saith. None can enter into the Kingdom of God, except 
 he be regenerate and born anew of Water and of the 
 holy Ghost;" &c. 
 
 What our Lord, the founder of the Christian Church, 
 said, w^as, not that children were conceived and born in 
 sin, but that except His adult hearers became once 
 again, little children they could not enter into the 
 kingdom of heaven, to which little children, as such, 
 belonged. To be born again must be of necessity to 
 become little children again. How can little children, 
 by any process whatever, become what they are already ? 
 Baptism in their case is simply an anachronism.* 
 
 * It is not forgotten that there is a penitential psalm, written pro- 
 bably by David himself after his guilt had been brought home to him by 
 Nathan (Ps. li.) The psalm is not a theological exposition of human 
 nature at all. Its inspiration comes from the depths of a passionate 
 soul, and from an intense consciousness of startling personal moral 
 delinquency. It is the heart-broken utterance of a mind prostrate 
 before the immediate holiness with the black shadow of guilt burdening 
 the stricken conscience. David excuses not himself, when, in the 
 excess of his shame and overwhelming grief, he exclaims : " Behold, I 
 was shapen in iniquity ; and in sin did my mother conceive me." Much 
 less was he deliberately explaining the source and history of his crime, 
 and still less the melancholy genesis of sin in our world. Reason failed 
 him : he had sinned against reason. Language failed him : words 
 could not express the heinousness of his offence before God : explana- 
 tion of himself to himself seemed impossible. Have we not become 
 
174 THE CHILD, 
 
 In the first prayer, we are reminded of the sanc- 
 tification of water to the mystical washing away 
 of sin, and the dehverance of the child from God's 
 wrath, the child — of whom Jesus said '' of such is the 
 kingdom of heaven " ! 
 
 And then, without perceiving the glaring contradic- 
 tion, the Gospel is read, the Gospel in< which these 
 very children of God's wrath are, we find, models of 
 the kingdom of heaven, and as such, are taken up in 
 the arms of the Holy Jesus and blessed. 
 
 Then comes a ministerial exhortation, in which 
 (and before the administration of the rite too !) 
 the child's innocency is declared and held up for 
 imitation. 
 
 This is followed by an address to the godfathers and 
 godmothers, in which they are reminded that they 
 
 painfully familiar with the exclamation of one who has fallen into sin, 
 " I can't think how I came to do it ! " And in David's anguish we have 
 a mirror in which all have seen themselves whose spiritual sensitiveness 
 has been deeply stirred in view of their own grievous departure from the 
 perfect standard of divine holiness. The greatest saints have been the 
 most profoundly affected by " the exceeding sinfulness of sin." There 
 is doubtless a great deal of truth in the doctrine of hereditary taint, and 
 it is ignored neither in the Old nor New Testament. But a generaliza- 
 tion from the fervid expression of a mind almost shattered with a sense 
 of sin, and to accept as God's deliberate utterance the cry of human 
 weakness and remorse, is a remarkable illustration of the blind spirit of 
 Theology. In this instance, as in many other cases, the truth of Holy 
 Writ is verifiable in our own experience or observation. The story is so 
 true ! And yet upon this Psalm one of the most frightful dogmas of the 
 Theology of the Christian Church mainly rests. 
 
THE CHILD OF CHRISTENDOM. 175 
 
 have been praying that the young innocent child may 
 be released from his sins, &c., 
 
 After the baptism the Priest shall say : " Seeing 
 now, dearly beloved brethren, that this Child is re- 
 generate," &c., And then the prayer following: "We 
 yield Thee hearty thanks, most merciful Father, that 
 it hath pleased Thee to regenerate this Infant," &c., 
 
 The concluding paragraph is also worthy of notice : 
 " It is certain by God's Word, that Children which are 
 baptized, dying before they commit actual sin, are 
 undoubtedly saved." 
 
 Can anyone draw the inevitable conclusion from this 
 doctrine of the Church of England, without a shudder 
 of horror ? 
 
 The writer of the Oxford Tract, to which reference 
 has already been made says, with regard to the second 
 Prayer Book of Edward VI., " some things were 
 omitted, which, if retained, had been a blessing to us ; 
 but all our Service which remained, came from the 
 pure sources of Christian Antiquity." What were 
 some of these things ? — and as the Oxford movement 
 is still developing in the English Church, is there not 
 some hope in the hearts of our priests of securing a 
 restoration of the good things omitted in the present 
 Service ? 
 
 Then we may yet see the water exorcised and the 
 devils cast out of the infants. For thus the priest, 
 looking upon the little child, was taught to say : " I 
 command thee, unclean spirit, in the name of the 
 
176 THE CHILD. 
 
 Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, that thou 
 come out, and depart from these infants whom our 
 Lord Jesus Christ hath vouchsafed to call to His holy 
 baptism, to be made members of His body, and of His 
 holy congregation. Therefore, thou cursed spirit, 
 remember thy sentence, remember thy judgment, 
 remember the day to be at hand wherein thou shalt 
 burn in fire everlasting, prepared for thee and thy 
 angels. And presume not hereafter to exercise any 
 tyranny towards these infants, whom Christ hath 
 bought with His precious blood, and by this. His holy 
 baptism, calleth to be of His flock." 
 
 There is no exorcism in the present baptismal ser- 
 vice, but the stipulation of the sponsors is that the 
 child shall renounce the devil and all his works. 
 
 The consecration and exorcism of the water of 
 baptism formed an important part of the baptismal 
 ceremony. 
 
 But we have not quite done with the water yet. 
 According to our Tractarian friend, " it was believed 
 that the element of water at the creation, by the Spirit 
 of God moving upon it, received a peculiar and specific 
 virtue, by which it was especially fitted and appointed 
 to cleanse and sanctify the soul." 
 
 But even this does not seem to have been thought 
 enough, for the doctrine of the Fathers is, that our 
 Lord submitted to baptism, that He might sanctify 
 water to the washing away of sin, and impart to it the 
 power of cleansing the soul. 
 
THE CHILD OF CHRISTENDOM. 177 
 
 But this double sanctification is not enough. The 
 water must be exorcised, and then it must be conse- 
 crated, and we have the prayer; " Sanctify this water 
 to the mystical washing away of sin,'' 
 
 Still something more wonderful from the annals of 
 Church History. Gregory Nazianzen, Basil, Prosper 
 and Jerome, and many others maintain the presence of 
 Christ's blood in the water after consecration- With 
 as good reason " it might be affirmed that the conse- 
 crated water is red as it moves in the blessed font of 
 immortality. Why not say with Isidore, that it is 
 really the water that flowed from the side of Christ?"* 
 
 Where stop at absurdities ? Why not believe with 
 Leo, the Pontiff, that a man after baptism is not the 
 same as he was before, but the body being regenerated 
 becomes the flesh of Him who was crucified ?t 
 
 We get a reminiscence of Leo in the poetry of the 
 Christian Year, but it seems to be more than poetry as 
 quoted by Rev. Dr. Pusey. 
 
 " What sparkles in that lucid flood 
 
 Is water by gross mortals eyed, 
 But seen by faith 'tis blood 
 
 Out of a dear friend's side. J 
 
 It is only fair to the earliest writers on Christian 
 doctrine, to remember that absolute silence about 
 
 * Vide Halley On the Sacraments, p. 221. 
 
 t Leo, Sertn. 14, De Passtone. 
 
 X In answer to the question '* What is faith ? " to a class of Sunday 
 SchooV boysi the answer of a genius was " Believing what isn't true, 
 teacher." • ... 
 
 N 
 
1,78- THE CHILD. 
 
 baptismal regeneration prevails. Clement ; of Rome, 
 Ignatius, and Polycarp are sjlent. No trace of it can 
 be found before Justin Martyr's First Apology, circa 
 A.D. 140 or 150. As a gathering cloud, from that 
 date to the time of Clement of Alexandria and 
 Tertullian, the doctrine began to spreg^d itself over the 
 Christian Church. 
 
 The baptism of infants was unknown to the apos- 
 tolic churches. In patristic times children were only 
 recognized as God's children after Baptism. Dug out 
 of the quarry of humanity, and chiselled by the eccle- 
 siastical sculptors, a little child was henceforth en- 
 dowed with the right to say, " Abba, Father." The 
 logical deduction was that none but these could say 
 the Lord's prayer : nay, the catechumens were strictly 
 forbidden to be present when it was repeated. " From 
 that service, as Chrysostom calls it, all the unbaptized 
 were most scrupulously and rigorously excluded."* 
 
 In the Baptismal Service of the English Church we 
 find words from the Gospel of St. Mark thrust into 
 the midst of the service, which are strikingly opposed 
 
 * Referring to Wordsworth and Keble, Dean Stanley writes : " It is 
 instructive to observe that whilst the sentiments of the two poets on the 
 natural attractiveness of children are identical, Keble often endeavours 
 to force it into a connection with Baptism which to Wordsworth is 
 almost unknown. It is said that Wordsworth, once reading with 
 admiration a well-known poem in the Christian Year, stumbled at the 
 opening line, ' Where is it mothers learn their love ? ' (to which the 
 answer is ' The Font'). ' No, no,' said the old poet, ' it is from their own 
 maternal hearts.' " Christian Institutions, 1884, p. 32. 
 
THE CHILD OF CHRISTENDOM. 179 
 
 to the Church doctrine in which they are imbedded, 
 and which are there as a standing protest against the 
 whole proceeding. 
 
 " The Sacramental principle had been most plainly 
 adopted by our Lord ; the spiritual forces with which 
 He would renew the face of the earth, were to be ex-- 
 cited through material instruments ; and He Himself 
 had secured the principle from uncertainty or vagueness 
 oi* individualism in its expression by appointing, with 
 the utmost weight and penetration of His authority, 
 the definite form of two great ordinances, which were 
 to' begin to advance the supernatural life of His mem- 
 bers, to extend the range of His church, and to main- 
 tain its unity. . . .To be living a life received, nourished 
 and characterised by Baptism and by the Eucharist 
 — this is the distinctive note of a Christian — thus does 
 he differ from other men. The Sacrament by which 
 he became a member of Christ's body must determine 
 throughout the two distinctive qualities of his inner 
 life."* 
 
 Why good Christian men of the second, third, 
 fourth and fifth centuries of the Christian Era, should 
 be held responsible for the life, thought and functions 
 of all Christians to the end of time, seems more than 
 their successors have any right to impose upon them. 
 Personal responsibility cannot be shifted from the in- 
 dividual to any number of saintly men, however 
 
 * Rev. F. Paget, D.D., Professor of Pastoral Theology, On the Sacra- 
 ments, p. 420. 
 
 N 2 
 
160 THE CHILD. 
 
 comfortable it might be thought (as in the case of 
 Cardinal Newman) to be relieved of it. 
 
 Christians are waking up to the fact. The truth is 
 that the Fathers had the misfortune, without knowihg 
 it, to shift the ground of the Christian life and society 
 from its true spiritual basis to an intellectual founda- 
 tion. 
 
 Propositions led to controversy. That was voted true 
 which majorities affirmed. Authority made its demands 
 and anathema fenced authority with its fearful impreca- 
 tions. The subject of the Infinite was defined (!) in 
 the Trinitarian formulary of Athanasius, whatever the 
 poor pretensions or disavowals to metaphysical subtlety 
 of objectors might be. There is all the, difference be- 
 tween love and logic ! The love of Christ constrains 
 and unites. Logical propositions do not touch the 
 sentiments and affections of the soul. From systems 
 of . theology, multitudes are finding their way out of 
 the rnazes of dogma, to the personal living Christ. 
 
 We have thus far confined our inquiry on the 
 subject of Infant Baptism especially to the Church 
 Fathers, and their EngHsh successors, the Oxford 
 Tractarians, of half a century ago ; half a century is 
 more than the average of human life. It might be 
 argued that it is hardly fair to make the Christianity 
 of the present day responsible for the theology and 
 practice of former times. With the progress of clearer 
 perceptions of the Divine Fatherhood, whether in the 
 Church or outside it, our views concerning the nature 
 
THE CHILD OF CHRISTENDOM. 181 
 
 of childhood and its relation to God as revealed in 
 Christ Jesus have been advanced by the modern in- 
 vestigations of physiologists, psychologists, education- 
 ists, and evolutionists. 
 
 It is satisfactory, so far as the English Church is 
 concerned, to find that the water, in which a babe 
 is baptized, is pure enough without being exorcised, 
 that there is no supernatural impediment in actual 
 demoniacal possession by evil spirits to the child's 
 baptism. 
 
 The Presbyterian Church is not very clear on the 
 subject of Infant Baptism, though its Confession of 
 Faith could hardly be used to cover the doctrines and 
 practice of the English Church. 
 
 The baptism of the Presbyterians is " not absolutely 
 to regeneration and salvation," " nor are all that are 
 baptized undoubtedly regenerated." It is required 
 that one or both parents of the child presented for 
 baptism be a believer. 
 
 " Grace is not only offered but really bestowed 
 (whether to those of age or infants) as that grace 
 belongeth unto, according to the counsel of God's 
 own will in His appointed time." It thus appears, 
 that, on compliance with the conditions named, the 
 baptized infant enjoys some privilege, though on the 
 occasion of the baptism the appointed time for its 
 actual bestowal may be future. 
 
 The value of the child's reception into " the bosom 
 of the visible church," to be taught to the congregation 
 
182 THE CHILD. 
 
 must depend entirely upon the meaning attached to 
 the term — visible church. But in the instructions to 
 ministers as to the subjects to be made prominent at 
 the child's baptism, they are to understand that the 
 baptized child is now entered into the household of 
 faith, 
 
 Sacramentarians may find a great deal of support in 
 the Westminster Confession ; may we not say that 
 the Presbyterians are not so very distantly related to 
 them, after all ? 
 
 Thus we have got in direct statement and still 
 more by implication, an idea of what childhood in the 
 Christian Church is. " Original sin," and the possi- 
 bility of "a double dose of it," has even found its way 
 into the British House of Commons, by the mouth of 
 the most eminent British Statesman of our times. 
 Baptismal regeneration has been generally abandoned 
 by the Reformed and Protestant Churches, but with 
 rare exceptions, the child of Christendom has been 
 unreservedly endowed by birth with the repulsive 
 features of Augustine whether we follow him in the 
 Dutch Presbyterian, the Scotch Presbyterian"^ or the 
 Congregational schools of our country. And in the 
 words of " the Shorter Catechism of the Westminster 
 Assembly of Divines," — "All mankind, by the fall, lost 
 communion with God, are under His wrath and curse, 
 
 * " By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory (!) some 
 men and angels are predestinated untcf everlasting life and others fore- 
 ordained to everlasting death." Vit^yittloxi Confession of Faith. - -^ 
 
THE CHILD OF CHRISTENDOM. 183 
 
 and so made liable to all the miseries of this life, to 
 death itself, and the pains of hell for ever." Imagina- 
 tion may depict the mournful procession of little child- 
 ren ! Mark their little tripping footsteps, for in their 
 ignorance they are as light-hearted as can be imagined. 
 There they go ! little scape-graces of Rome : enfants 
 terribles of the English Church ; monstrosities of the 
 American Dutch Reformed Church ;* broods of young 
 serpents of Scotch Calvinism ; and bringing up the 
 rear — last and least — Calvin's own non-elect babes on 
 their way to hell, where, according to his measurement, 
 they may be found a span long. But — stop the pro- 
 cession, for after all, it is only a tragedy of theological 
 romance ; and, baptism or no baptism, our practical 
 humanity, truly Christian in its moral strength and 
 tender affections, is full of the most beautiful specimens 
 of family life. We may join in the old Psalmist's 
 exultant delight : " Happy is the man that hath his 
 quiver full of them." 
 
 Baxter shows how Presbyterianism theologizes :— 
 " None ought to be baptized but those that either 
 personally deliver up themselves in covenant to God 
 the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, professing a true 
 repentance and faith, and consent to the covenant ; or 
 else are thus delivered up, and dedicated, and entered 
 into covenant in their infancy, by those that being 
 Christians themselves, have so much interest in them 
 and power of them, that their act may be esteemed 
 
 ♦ "Conceived and born in sin, and therefore children of wrath/-^ 
 
184 THE CHILD. 
 
 as the infant's act, and legally imputed to them as if 
 themselves had done it."* 
 
 " (2- : Are any children guilty of their parents' sins ? ; 
 
 *M . : Yes ; all children are guilty of the sins which 
 their parents committed before their birth, while they 
 were in their loins. Not with the same degree and 
 sort of guilt as the parents are, but yet with so much 
 as exposeth them io just penalties. 
 
 ** Q, : How prove you that ? -. 
 
 "^.: First by the nature of the case; for though 
 we were not personally existent in them when they 
 sinned, we were seminally existent in them, which is 
 more than causally or virtually ; and it was that semen 
 which was guilty in them, that was after made a 
 person, and so that person must have the same guilt."t 
 
 In so far as it bears on the question of heredity thp 
 following question and answer gives a somewhat hope- 
 ful view of the tendency of the evil virus to vanish frona 
 the race. 
 
 " Q, : Why doth God name only the third and fourth 
 generation ? 
 
 *M.: To show us, that though He will punish the 
 sins of His enemies on their posterity who imitate their 
 parents, yet He sets such bounds to the execution of 
 His justice, as that sinners shall not want encourage- 
 ment to repent and hope for mercy."]: 
 
 " It is the will of God that infants be members of 
 the Christian church, of which baptism is the entrance. 
 
 * Baxter's Works^ vol, v., p, 46. f Vol. xix., p. 176, J Vol. xix., p. 177. 
 
THE CHILD OF CHRISTENDOM. 186 
 
 For there is no proof that ever God had a church on 
 earth in any age, of which infants were not members."* 
 
 " Q, : What the better are infants for being bap- 
 tized ? 
 
 **A»: The children of the faithful are stated by it 
 in a right to the aforesaid benefits of the covenant, the 
 pardon of their original sin, the love of God, the inter- 
 cession of Christ, and the help of the Holy Ghost, 
 when they come to age, and title to the Kingdom of 
 .Heaven, if they die before they forfeit it."t y- 
 
 * Vol. xix., p. 264, - . f 
 
 t The whole of the above from Rd. Baxter's Works. 
 
 UNIVJERSITY 
 
186 THE CHILD. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE VOICE OF THE PROFESSING CHURCH THROUGH ITS 
 CHILDREN'S HYMNS. 
 
 The child of the Christian institutions can hardly be 
 expected to escape the influence of the Church's theo- 
 logy in its religious training. 
 
 Through its catechisms it is taught to say things it 
 cannot believe to be true ; to confess to sins it has 
 never committed ; and to sing songs that, if realised 
 as fact, would crush its little heart. 
 
 And, awful though it be to think of mocking God in 
 forms of worship, it is a comfort to believe that the 
 *' thoughtless tongue " of a child is its salvation from 
 impiety towards the Divine Father while it is its pro- 
 tection against its own mieery. 
 
 As truer and more Christ-like conceptions of the 
 great Father have been adopted in recent times, by 
 nearly all the Christian communities, the grosser, 
 harsher, crueller representations of God have receded 
 into the dark ages, and the many charming hymns and 
 songs of modern writers, at once spiritual and poetical, 
 have been sweetly attuned to the chords of grace and 
 love struck by the Christ Himself. 
 
 But even in the present day the vestiges of a patristic 
 
CHILDREN'S HYMNS. ^ 187 
 
 and mediaeval theology float upon the melodies which 
 little children are taught from the cradle to sing. 
 
 Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Nonconforming 
 bodies are forward in zwdoctrinating their children 
 through the medium of their " Divine songs " with the 
 theology of their respective churches. 
 
 The Baptism of our English Church, as the cause or 
 even as the sign only of a baby's second birth, implies 
 a condition of sin which is washed away in the ad- 
 ministration of the baptismal rite. 
 
 Mrs. Alexander stands deservedly high as a writer 
 of "hymns for children," but the hymn on "Holy 
 Baptism " is not such a hymn as the Christ would 
 regard as a happy expression of His mind touching the 
 unbaptized little child that He held, up as a pattern to 
 the disciples, when He said, " of such is the Kingdom 
 of Heaven." 
 
 Thus the children are taught by Mrs. Alexander to 
 sing :— 
 
 ♦• In the name of God the Father, 
 
 Of the Son and Holy Ghost, 
 He* baptized us then and made us 
 
 Soldiers in our Master's host." 
 
 Again, hymn 72 : — - 
 
 '* We were washed in holy water, 
 We were set Christ's Church within, 
 
 Gifted with .His Holy Spirit, 
 And forgiven all our sin." 
 
 There are other hymns by this gifted composer 
 
 . * The priest. 
 
188 ,' THE CHILD. 
 
 through which the same sacramental grace is trace- 
 able. 
 
 Another child's hymnal of extensive circulation, 
 called The Praises of jfesus, a Hymn Book for Children, 
 contains the following : — 
 
 *' The pure baptismal wave 
 
 Hath washed its sin away ; 
 Unhindered, it may pass , ' r -- 
 
 To glad eternal day " 
 
 implying that the little innocent but unbaptized babe 
 is doomed to eternal night. 
 
 On the same lines in Hymns Ancient and Modern, we 
 learn that, . •.: 
 
 Within the Church's sacred fold, 
 By holy sacrament enroll'd 
 
 Another lamb we lay : 
 An heir before of sin and shame, 
 Now in the Holy Triune name 
 
 His guilt is washed away. 
 * * * * 
 
 O loving Father, Thee we pray 
 
 Look on this babe new-born to-ddy. 
 
 « « * * 
 
 The following verses are from the People's Hymnal. 
 
 Begotten at the font 
 
 By God the Spirit's power 
 A gentle lamb from Satan snatched 
 
 In childhood's helpless hour. 
 
 And all the host of heaven 
 
 Rejoice before the Lord, 
 To see one child of fallen man, 
 
 A child of God restored. 
 
CHILDREN'S HYMNS. 1B9 
 
 Lord, to-day, we bring to Thee, 
 With a cleansed and perfect soul, 
 
 This, Thy little one to be, 
 Entered on Thy muster roll. 
 
 Other hymns there are which teach the children 
 that there could not be a more wretched world to be 
 born into than this. Its parents must be vile, — the 
 stream cannot be better than the fountain, — and the 
 only gleam of hope for the little one comes from an 
 infinitely remote heaven, to which it may go some day, 
 and the sooner the better. 
 
 " There is a happy land 
 Far, far away." 
 
 Again Dr. Watts puts into the mouths of little 
 children to sing, 
 
 ♦' There is a dreadful hell, 
 And everlasting pains, 
 Where sinners must with devils dwell 
 In darkness, fire and chains. 
 
 Can such a wretch as I 
 Escape this cursed end ? 
 . And may I hope whene'er I die 
 
 I shall to heaven ascend ? 
 
 Then will I read and pray. 
 While I have life and breath, 
 . Lest I should be cut off to-day 
 And sent to eternal death." 
 
 So they are taught to sing, " I want to be an angel," 
 though they are occasionally reminded that the devil 
 has his angels too. 
 
190^ : ' THE CHILD. 
 
 The result of it all is most depressing to the child's 
 tender spirit, and utterly confusing to the child's 
 enquiring mind. 
 
 A Nonconformist minister has written a Boy's 
 Hymn^a recoil from the angel type of hymn, which is 
 like a breath of fresh air on coming out of an ill-venti- 
 lated church. It is headed, "A Boy's Hymn : "* 
 
 ; : I want to live to be a man 
 
 . ., - Both good and useful all I can, 
 
 To speak the truth, be just and brave, 
 My fellow men to hefp and save. 
 
 I want to live that I may show 
 My love to Jesus here below ; 
 .... - . . In human toil to take my share 
 
 And thus for angel's work prepare. 
 
 The modern character of Hymn'ody in sweetness 
 and purity and spiritual grace from a hard, theological 
 form of doctrine, marks the progress of the Church 
 of Christ towards the life and action of Apostolic 
 times. 
 
 The catechisms will stand or fall with the creeds 
 and liturgies of the churches. 
 
 * Rev. Newman Hall. 
 
UNIT OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. im 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE UNIT OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN— A LITTLE 
 
 CHILD. 
 
 "And they brought unto him little children, that he should touch 
 them : and the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw it, he wais 
 moved with indignation, and said unto them, Suffer the little children 
 to come unto me ; forbid them not : for of such is the kingdom of God. 
 Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God 
 as a little child, he shall in no wise enter therein. And he took them in 
 his arms, and blessed them, laying his hands upon them." — Mark x/ 
 13—16. 
 
 " And they came to Capernaum : and when he was in the house he 
 asked them, What were ye reasoning in the way ? But they held their 
 peace : for they had disputed one with another in the way, who was the 
 greatest. And he sat down, and called the twelve; and he saith unto 
 them, If any man would be first, he shall be last of all, and minister of 
 all. And he took a little child, and set him in the midst of them : and 
 taking him in his arms, he said unto them. Whosoever shall receive one 
 of such little children in my name, receiveth me : and whosoever re- 
 ceiveth me, receiveth not me, but him that sent me." — Mark ix. 33 — 37. 
 
 How refreshing to escape from the stuffy schoolroom 
 of a heartless Theology, into the free, inspiring air of 
 the presence of the great Teacher, under Heaven's 
 blue sky and by the side of the Lake of Galilee ! 
 
 It is quite true. Jesus is about to found a Kingdom. 
 
 What do men do who propose to raise an institu- 
 tion, to start a company, to establish a dynasty ? 
 
192 ' THE CHILD. 
 
 According to modern notions, the enterprise must be 
 manned by the most influential names that can be 
 brought together; the magnetism of money must 
 attract, and an influential ministry or directorate must 
 be formed. The widest possible foundation must be 
 laid, and the broader the base the more imposing the 
 superstructure. 
 
 What was our Lord's method ? Nobody would ever 
 guess it. It was a method that was never dreamt of 
 in anybody's philosophy. It was the very inversion of 
 the plan devised by the shrewdest scheming. Jesus 
 began not with the philosophical or clever base, but 
 with the apex — a little child ! : 
 
 But, it may be said, " No, Jesus began by calling 
 twelve men, — and with these He began the development 
 of His Kingdom." 
 
 Granted : but, for all that, we have in these twelve 
 men, the almost undefiled elements of childhood ; and, 
 still more strikingly we have the absence of those 
 qualifications which are considered absolutely necessary 
 for the launching of any merely human enterprise. 
 
 I. The fishermen were poor. Children have no 
 money. They come into the world without pockets. 
 Pockets for children are often a retrograde step. 
 Pockets lead to the discovery that all things are not 
 theirs. To the veritable child Paul truly says: "All 
 things are yours." The covetous spirit is often born 
 and bred in a child's pocket. Only think of cramming 
 the world into one's pocket : it is what many are 
 continually attempting. 
 
UNIT OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 198 
 
 2. The fishermen were not learned. Children know 
 nothing. Their minds have no preoccupations. Paul 
 was a perfect child when he wrote : "I determined not 
 to know anything among you, save " — 
 
 3. The twelve were without position or social impor- 
 tance. Children have no idea of superior or inferior. 
 A baby prince and a gutter babe know no distinction. 
 They both have mothers, — that is all, and quite 
 enough for them. 
 
 4. The twelve were unfettered. They were not 
 clothed with civil or ecclesiastical authority. They 
 were free to forsake all and follow the Christ. 
 
 The most delightful time for a little child is when it 
 is just stripped of its clothes. Then it luxuriates in its 
 sense of freedom. How often has vanity sprung up in 
 the heart of a little girl when it has been put into a 
 smart frock ! 
 
 Nicodemus had so far parted with the simple qualifi- 
 cations of childhood, that to him, to be born again 
 had become a necessity. And Nicodemus was only a 
 specimen of other masters in Israel. 
 
 The rich young man, whose conscious integrity in 
 the keeping of the law, gave him, as he thought, a 
 special claim to the eternal life, forgot that he too 
 had pockets ; but alas, they had become so expanded 
 that there was no getting through the only gate for 
 him, the needle's eye, into the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 But the twelve : though in some marked character- 
 istics, like little children, were found wanting. They 
 
 o 
 
194 THE CHILD. 
 
 had not, by any means, escaped the contamination of 
 the worldly spirit. On the contrary, the obscurity, 
 from which they were emerging, had its devious 
 dangers for the childlike spirit. Instead of self-depre- 
 ciation, self-assertive ambition and the race for pre- 
 cedence began to manifest themselves. If they had left 
 all and followed their Lord, in the first warm appre- 
 ciation of their impulsive natures ; cold calculation 
 supervened, and the question — What shall we get by 
 it ? — expressed the ambition and covetousness which 
 are not of the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 The question was put to the Master. Did the 
 mother of Zebedee's children really mean to steal a 
 march on the claims of other disciples in favour of her 
 two sons ? The strife for the mastery — the struggle 
 for priority formed a prominent feature in their lives. 
 How could Jesus cast out this evil spirit ? He could 
 cast out devils, — give sight to the blind, — unstop deaf 
 ears, and even raise to life, with a word. He could 
 still the tempest with " a hush." But this demon of 
 premiership ? 
 
 Again, it may be asked where is the religion or the 
 philosophy that propounds such an antidote for this 
 poison ? This devil is not to be exorcised by mira- 
 culous interposition. The Revealer has the secret. 
 Jesus took a little child and set him in the midst. An 
 object lesson, as profound as it is simple, is enough for 
 a wise and understanding heart. Our Lord could find 
 nothing more fitting, more beautiful, more attractive, 
 
UNIT OF THE KINGDOM OF HE A VEN. 196 
 
 on this earth, than a little child, as an epitome of 
 greatness in the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 Argument seems superfluous in presence of so clear 
 an objective presentation of our Lord's conception of 
 children. 
 
 Can the contempt of the immediate disciples of Jesus 
 for children be the germ out of v^hich has sprung the 
 monstrous theories of the Christian Church ? 
 
 See ! the mothers are bringing the children that He 
 might touch them. The disciples are assuming the 
 function of the police. But the mothers press on with 
 the children. What should be allowed to deter them ? 
 " The benignity of His countenance invites us," says 
 one tender-hearted mother. Another full of the 
 motherhood of God, says : " He can't refuse us." A 
 third:— "His simple touch has healing in it." A 
 fourth says, " Come along, my boy ; I know there 
 must be virtue in the hem of His garment." The 
 disciples may scowl ; but the mothers only see Jesus. 
 But on this occasion they are not brought to Jesus for 
 healing : there is not one mother urged by her anxiety 
 that her child might be made whole; much less are 
 thsy seeking personal help, or some material blessing. 
 They are absorbed in their darling children. Of itself 
 this self-abnegation on the part of the mothers would 
 have made way for the children. They brought them 
 to Jesus that He might simply give them His bless- 
 ing. 
 
 And Jesus took them up in His arms and blessed 
 
 o 2 
 
im THE CHILD. 
 
 them. The most Christian thing that the Christ 
 could do ! 
 
 Could any mother of these little ones have been dis- 
 appointed that He did not exorcise their offspring, or 
 baptize them, or ask for their godfathers and god- 
 mothers ? 
 
 Jesus blessed them. He took them up in His arms 
 and pressed them to His tender heart. The scene has 
 the beauty and fragrance of Paradise about it. It was 
 the outward and visible sign of the atmosphere and 
 bliss of heaven, where their angels do always behold 
 the Father's face. 
 
 " Women and children " have been in all ages 
 classed together in a somewhat sinister sense. 
 Women, especially mothers, and children have 
 received distinguished honour from the Son of man. 
 The depreciation of woman is a reproach which 
 modern Christian civilization has well nigh wiped out. 
 And in social life the prophecy—" a little child shall 
 lead them," receives larger fulfilment. 
 
 "And Jesus took a little child and set him in the 
 midst." The little child is still living, and Jesus is 
 still saying, "Except ye be converted and become as 
 this little child ye cannot enter into the kingdom of 
 heaven." He is still saying, "Now ye are clean through 
 the word which I have spoken unto you." He speaks 
 the word, and He still points to the illustration. Has 
 this been a word of Salvation to us ? Do we believe in 
 the Christ- and in these sayings of His? And have- 
 
UNIT OF THE KINGDOM OF HE A KEN. 197 
 
 they been the means of our conversion ? Has it not 
 often rather been thought that the child has been 
 committed to our care, that we might convert it? 
 What an inversion of the spiritual order ! You have 
 got to change places with the child— you greatest ones 
 in the kingdom of heaven — you have to come down 
 from your self-exaltation that you may find the means 
 of your conversion in the little child. See what you can 
 get out of the child, not what you can cram into it. And 
 do not say this is one of the extraordinary, out-of-the- 
 way lessons taught by Christ to His disciples under 
 peculiar circumstances. Except ye — all ye who want 
 to be more than little children — be converted and be- 
 come as this little child, there is no way of entrance 
 into the kingdom of heaven for you — for any of you — 
 for any of us in all the world and in all time. There 
 are only children in heaven. 
 
 With a delicate apprehension of child-nature, Horace 
 Bushnell writes : " When we preach to little children 
 we are not coming down to them, we are rather com- 
 ing up from the subterranean hells of grown-up sin." 
 
 In a speech by Edward White* he tells us *' Binney 
 said : ' we ought not to teach children that they require 
 to be converted.' He was fond of pointing out our 
 Lord's example when the apostles had been quarrel- 
 ing, as apostles sometimes will : * And He took a little 
 child and set him in the midst of them ; ' and He did 
 not say to the child, * unless you are converted and 
 
 * Independent, July 15, 1891. 
 
198 THE CHILD. 
 
 become like these grown-up people you cannot enter 
 into the kingdom of heaven,' but He said to the grown- 
 up people, ' except you are converted and become like 
 this little child, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of 
 heaven.' " 
 
 John Ruskin has a fine appreciation of childhood. 
 
 He points out four leading features : — i. It is 
 modest. The child does not think it can teach its 
 parents, or that it knows everything. On the contrary, 
 it is always asking questions and wanting to know 
 more. 2. It is faithful. Perceiving that its father 
 knows best what is good for it, gives him its hand^ 
 and will walk blindfold with him, if he bids it. 3. It 
 is loving. Give a little love to a child, and you get 
 a great deal back. You cannot please it so much 
 as by giving it a chance of being useful, in ever so 
 humble a way. And because of all these characters it 
 is cheerful. Putting its trust in its father, it is careful 
 for nothing — being full of love to every creature, it is 
 happy always, whether in its play or its duty. 
 
 " Humility, Faith, Charity, and Cheerfulness. That's 
 what you've got to be converted to. ' Except ye be 
 converted and become as little children,' " ye cannot 
 enter the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 " Backsliding, indeed ! I can tell you, on the ways 
 most of us go, the faster we slide back the better. . . . 
 Back, I tell you ; back — out of your long faces, and into 
 your long clothes. It is among children only, and as 
 children only, that you will find medicine for your 
 
UNIT OF THE KINGDOM OF HE A VpN. 199 
 
 healing and true wisdom for your teaching. There is 
 poison in the counsels of the men of this world ; the 
 words they speak are all bitterness, ' the poison of 
 asps is under their lips,' but 'the sucking child shall 
 play by the hole of the asp.' There is death in the 
 looks of men. ' Their eyes are privily set against the 
 poor : ' they are as the uncharmable serpent, the 
 cockatrice, which slew by seeing. But ' the weaned 
 
 child shall lay his hand on the cockatrice' den' 
 
 There is death in the thoughts of men : the world is 
 one wide riddle to them, darker and darker as it draws 
 to a close ; but the secret of it is known to the child, 
 and the Lord of heaven and earth is most to be 
 thanked in that ' He has hidden these things from 
 the wise and prudent, and has revealed them unto 
 
 babes' it is not out of the mouths of the knitted 
 
 gun, but *out of the mouths of babes and suck- 
 lings' that the strength is ordained, which shall 'still 
 the enemy and avenger.' " 
 
 A few years ago the writer paid a visit to a house 
 in one of the busiest thoroughfares in London, doomed 
 to come down under the fiat of Metropolitan Improve- 
 ments. It had been occupied till recently, by a pro- 
 vision merchant, and the shop on the ground floor, 
 stripped of everything but the counters, egg cases and 
 shelves, and some large casks, looked gloomy and deso- 
 late. But a benevolent lady with warm sympathies for 
 the little waifs and strays of the London streets, saw 
 her opportunity, and on the evening of the visit the 
 
200 THE CHILD, 
 
 desolate-looking shop had been converted into a gar- 
 den of the Lord, and in this unexpected quarter the 
 desert was actually rejoicing and blossoming as the rose. 
 
 For several successive Monday evenings this lady 
 had collected as many boys and girls as liked to come. 
 The counters and egg-boxes had been converted into 
 seats, and every available shelf and cask v^ere occupied 
 by little ones from four to fourteen years of age. 
 
 The singing was good and even sweet. Answers to 
 questions were elicited that testified to the intelligent 
 attention of the children to their teacher's address 
 which was anecdotal and impressive. 
 
 The discipline and order were remarkable. The 
 severest punishment consisted in temporary exclusion. 
 ** My dear boy," said the lady to a lad who was there 
 that night for the first time, " you don't understand 
 our rules. You must go ; but if you will be good, you 
 may come next Monday;" and the disgraced boy 
 walked quietly out in shame, and one could not but 
 perceive in sorrow. Two other boys were dismissed 
 in this way during the evening. 
 
 These children were gutter children, coming from 
 the courts and alleys in the immediate neighbourhood 
 of the densely populated district of Seven Dials. 
 Their faces looked clean ; their clothes — their best and 
 worst — would hardly have constituted a ticket of admis- 
 sion to our nice respectable Sunday Schools. 
 
 What struck the writer was this : these children 
 were growing up under the most unfavourable condi- 
 
UNIT OF THE KINGDOM OF HE A VEN. 201 
 
 tions, physical and moral. Pictures of their surround- 
 ings have been given by Mayhew, Sims and others. 
 They need not be described here. Could anything be 
 more hopelessly discouraging ? 
 
 Swept from the streets into this shop, and packed 
 closely together, what could be expected to be got out 
 of this mass of scum ? 
 
 And yet, looking at the class of no to 120 of such 
 unpromising children, crowding in eagerly, behaving in 
 an orderly manner, listening attentively, and falling 
 into sympathy with the teacher so readily — evidently 
 enjoying the whole thing as a treat, and this after a 
 few meetings, only once a week, what will adequately 
 and fairly explain the phenomenon ? 
 
 To the writer's mind it comes with all the force of 
 demonstration — visible, actual, irrefutable — that below 
 the surface of neglect, in spite of seeds of evil in their 
 early growth, *' good ground " had been reached. In 
 these little ones "the kingdom of heaven was at hand," 
 and the ground was being cleared. 
 
 The children were now, if never before, treated in 
 harmony with the essential principles of their nature. 
 The treatment came to them as more truly natural, 
 than the life they were living in the gutter. They 
 were God's children and they were beginning to 
 realize the fact, under the Christian tact of their 
 teacher. They were now breathing the very air they 
 were born to breathe, and we fancied they looked, 
 some of them, a little surprised that they could breathe 
 
202 THE CHILD. 
 
 it SO freely. The light — quite a surprising light in the 
 midst of their darkness — that now shone upon them, 
 was just the light for which their large, wondering eyes 
 were formed. They were of the kingdom of heaven by 
 birth, and they found themselves entering into the 
 enjoyment of their birthright. 
 
 Few of them, probably, had grasped the idea of 
 fatherhood through their earthly parent, and possibly 
 the divine Fatherhood now being revealed to them 
 would come upon them with all the strangeness of a 
 surprise. But each boy and girl was a child, and the 
 Father is the complement of the child. The children 
 found themselves at home in this old shop. 
 
 Our blessed Lord was ever true to the child — the 
 type of the kingdom of heaven, and after the resur- 
 rection He saluted His disciples as children. 
 
 Manifesting Himself to them at the lake of Tiberias, 
 at the break of day, Jesus stood on the beach, and 
 called to the disciples, who had toiled all the night and 
 caught nothing. The disciple who was of the most 
 childlike spirit, was the first to identify the Master, 
 and he woke up Peter to the fact — " It is the Lord.'' 
 Our Lord asked them, *' Children, have ye aught to 
 eat ? " A very little time had elapsed since the child- 
 lesson had been given to them, and the intense reali- 
 zation of fhe presence of their Lord must have 
 dissipated from their hearts the petty ambitions which 
 had disturbed their peace. 
 
 The Apostle, who called himself " less than the 
 
UNIT OF THE KINGDOM OF HE A VEN. 203 
 
 least," frequently alludes to childhood as carrying with 
 it special advantages. (" Children and heirs/' Rom. 
 viii. 17). And in exhorting the Ephesian Christians: 
 " Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children ; " 
 Eph. V. i; "Walk as children of light : " Eph. v. 8. 
 
 Peter exhorts — "as children of obedience, not 
 fashioning yourselves according to your former lusts in 
 the time of your ignorance ; " and he prefaces the 
 exhortation with " be sober, and set your hope 
 perfectly on the grace that is being brought unto you 
 at the revelation of Jesus Christ;" suggesting emphati- 
 cally that the revelation of the Son, is the hope and 
 blessedness of true childhood. 
 
 And John, of the child-spirit especially, in tender 
 sympathy writes: "my little children;" "ye are of 
 God, little children ; " and declares that he has " no 
 greater joy than to see his children walking in the 
 truth." 
 
 Thus was the type of the Master perpetuated, and 
 illustrated in the writings of His followers. 
 
 An allusion is all that is here necessary to the holy 
 child Jesus. He was the perfect and beloved Son of 
 God — the first-born of every creature. Every lesson 
 He taught was exemplified in His own true life. There 
 is no need to draw upon the apocryphal stories which 
 tradition records. All that He claimed as essential to a 
 child, characterised His own conduct ; and it is only as 
 we grow up with Him in all things, that the true 
 image of a little child reveals itself. 
 
^04 THE CHILD. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE CHILD AS PORTRAYED BY JESUS. 
 ** Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." 
 
 Church dogmas, as we have seen, in theory and 
 practice, could not present to our Lord a child that 
 should at all answer the Master's description, or 
 serve as the specimen to be held up as representative 
 of His Kingdom before His disciples. 
 
 But our Lord did not wait until the churches had 
 decided the question of childhood many centuries 
 after He had left the earth. He could trust the 
 children with the evidence they bore in their con- 
 stitution as to their nature ; and whether before or 
 subsequently to baptism, they were of His Kingdom 
 just the same. 
 
 Let us carefully recall the Kingdom of Heaven as de- 
 fined by the great Teacher. It is not meat and drink, 
 but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. 
 It is spiritual in its righteous peace and joy. It is not 
 an institution at all, it is a condition of heart, and 
 soul, and life. Its essential characteristics are love, 
 faith, hope, as described by St. Paul in i Cor. xiii. 
 
 These are not the qualities which were displayed by 
 
THE CHILD AS PORTRAYED BY JESUS. 205- 
 
 the disciples when they held a council on the road, 
 without waiting to vote anyone to the chair ; not 
 much of the righteousness, or joy, or peace of the 
 kingdom of heaven did they manifest. Faith, hope, 
 charity — these three — were simply inverted and con- 
 centrated on self and not on their Master. They 
 were near Him, but just then a long way from the 
 kingdom in which they were clamouring to be pre- 
 eminent. 
 
 The little child Jesus took up was not only much 
 nearer, but was actually of the Kingdom of Heaven 
 itself. 
 
 We must leave the theologians to settle their differ- 
 ence with the Friend of the children, and proceed to 
 enquire how are little children of the Kingdom of 
 Heaven ? 
 
 All will agree with the writer that faith, hope, and 
 love are essential attributes of the Christian. Why 
 should we not agree that these qualities inhere in 
 every child that is born in a healthy condition ? These 
 qualities incipiently characterize every babe that is 
 born into our world. 
 
 A natural mother loves her babe — the babe in- 
 stinctively loves the mother. The babe trusts the 
 parent, as the natural father challenges the confidence 
 of the child. And hope, springing perennial in the 
 human breast, is inspired by the mutual love and faith 
 of both parent and child. 
 
 Developing intelligence under human, kindly influ- 
 
^206 THE CHILD. 
 
 ences, will tend to expand and strengthen these beau- 
 tiful, divine attributes, and the child will grow in 
 favour with God and man. 
 
 Unfortunately the Christian church almost univers- 
 ally, has philosophised on these essential facts of life, 
 till these charming qualities of our true humanity are 
 dissected with the theological knife, hung up on 
 Church Articles, and the child is passed through the 
 mysterious processes which result in its being some- 
 thing less than when it came fresh from Heaven. 
 
 Is there any truer, better, more real sense in which 
 children can be held up to men— to disciples even — 
 as samples of the kingdom of Heaven ? How, indeed, 
 are our Lord's words to be held in any way as true, 
 besides this ? 
 
 That they are true, we can at any time verify for 
 ourselves. 
 
 Take a little child, and take a man who has had 
 some experience of human life. Cannot you feel sure 
 at once of the vocal response of a little child to your 
 sympathetic approach to it ? The child has an openness 
 which expresses its faith — is pleased as you touch its 
 affection, and as the wonder of hopeful expectation is 
 awakened. 
 
 On the other hand, the man of experience knows 
 enough to be hesitant, doubting, uncertain — even sus- 
 picious ; he will not wear his heart upon his sleeve 
 before his fellow men. It cannot be helped in this 
 social imperfect evil state. But who does not envy 
 
THE CHILD AS PORTRAYED BY JESUS. 207 
 
 the little one who is, as yet, uncorrupted by the world, 
 and needs no regeneration? 
 
 We take for consideration these three divine virtues. 
 They are attributes of a human soul as yet uncorrupted 
 by bad education or example. 
 
 We take them as St. Paul took them. No Bible 
 reader is more familiar with any passage in the Book 
 than that portion of his first epistle to the Corinthians, 
 in which he discourses on the nature and action of 
 love. He discusses " charity " as what it is or what it 
 is not, and as it comports itself under every variety of 
 circumstance. It is not a theological essay, but an 
 analysis of the most beautiful phenomenon in the 
 universe — in its highest, purest and sweetest form. 
 
 It comes from the heart of God ; it was embodied in 
 Christ Jesus ; and it never faileth, as it comes to us in 
 a little child. 
 
 Again, we have faith, in the eleventh chapter of the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews, treated in the same philoso- 
 phical spirit. But instead of being analyzed as love is, 
 by St. Paul in i Cor., we have it illustrated in human 
 life and character. The principle of faith is the same 
 whether we detect it in Rahab and Samson, or in 
 St. Paul and St. Peter. 
 
 Both love and faith are brought under our notice by 
 these writers, quite apart from any theological system, 
 whether of High Church, Broad Church, or Low 
 Church, or no church at all. These are essential to 
 the humanity of which Jesus is the head.* 
 
 * " The head of every man is Christ." — i Cor. xi. 3. 
 
208 THE CHILD. 
 
 And these qualities of the soul, apart from educa- 
 tional influences, are to be found as Jesus found them 
 — in little children ; and it is simply on this broad 
 ground that children are claimed by Jesus as of the 
 kingdom of heaven. 
 
CONCLUSION. 209> 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 That the child is essentially the same in all ages, is an 
 affirmation in perfect harmony with the analogy of 
 nature. The ascent and song of the lark under the 
 canopy of heaven is the same now as it has ever been. 
 
 Man is the only animal that can live under every 
 variety of climate ; and although his nature may 
 undergo modifications due to climatic variation and 
 mode of existence, he is essentially the same in the 
 constitution of his nature. 
 
 He develops according to the Civilization in which 
 he is reared, but the broad outlines of his nature 
 remain. 
 
 The colour of his skin may suggest his geographical 
 relations. His dress may tell of his political and social 
 surroundings. His occupations and habits may indi- 
 cate his mental calibre and his means of living. But 
 notwithstanding all the circumstances of his being, the 
 unity of man, as man, is the same. 
 
 What that unity is it has been the object of the 
 foregoing pages to illustrate and maintain. 
 
 It is admitted that the varieties due to the influences 
 by which childhood is surrounded can hardly be de- 
 
 p 
 
^10 THE CHILD. 
 
 fined, such is the wide range of training — from simple 
 barbarism to wisest culture, but whatever the strange 
 extremes under which the human being is developed, 
 the essential attributes of humanity remain. 
 
 The savage may fatten the baby for a honne bouche ; 
 the slave-holder may protect it and hold it as a bit of 
 useful property ; the infanticide may get rid of it as an 
 encumbering nuisance ; the priest may exorcise it as the 
 abode of devils, and cleanse it in the baptismal font ; 
 but if the conviction is, by the perusal of these pages, 
 fortified, that the child is what the Great Teacher 
 claimed for it — the child as such — the child essentially 
 — the object of the writer is attained. 
 
 The child as such is capable of possessing and 
 expressing the Spirit of Christ. Of all human beings 
 on this earth a child is most closely allied to the Christ 
 in the most essential attributes of the nature of Christ 
 — Trust, Hope and Love. 
 
 How soon, alas, in the little child are distrust, 
 doubt, and suspicion engendered by the injudicious, 
 often wicked conduct of those who have control over it! 
 
 How early are' its springs of happy hopefulness 
 polluted, and sometimes dried up, by the hopeless 
 wretches who grudge the little ones the innocent pros- 
 pects of joy and mirth inviting them to larger life. 
 
 And how the unfolding affection of childhood to 
 sweet and kindly parental love, and even to all 
 sympathetic tenderness, is frozen by the cold blast of 
 hatred or indifference of self-enclosed hearts. 
 
CONCLUSION. . 211 
 
 The age in which we Hve has given us a theology of 
 childhood which presents a gratifying contrast to the 
 theology of the dark ages. 
 
 The Christian ideal, through the Hymnology of our 
 modern Sunday Schools, is happily realized, not only 
 in its better sentiment and truer poetry, but even more 
 remarkably by the exclusion of hymns which make 
 children little devils, only fit for a world of devils. 
 
 The clouds of demoniacal darkness which had ob- 
 scured, and sometimes obliterated the Eternal Father 
 from the horizon of childhood, have largely been swept 
 away, and a little child can now behold the divine 
 glory in the face of Jesus Christ. 
 
 So far from overdrawing the picture of the loving 
 Son of God the attempt has been quite inadequate. 
 But let it be realized in a small degree that Jesus is 
 what He proclaimed Himself to be, and the greatest 
 stimulus will be given to parents and all who have the 
 management of children, to value them as they have 
 never done before. 
 
 We see our Lord in the hungry and thirsty, in the 
 sick and in prison — let us not fail to see Him in the 
 little child. 
 
 The great question discussed in these pages is most 
 practical. As is the conception formed of the nature 
 of the child so will be the method adopted in its reli- 
 gious education. 
 
 If childhood be explained by the doctrine on which 
 John Wesley's dictum is founded : — 
 
 p 2 
 
212 THE CHILD. 
 
 " As a rule children ought never to play," 
 
 or on Augustus Toplady's definition : — 
 
 " Bubbling fountains of iniquity," 
 
 the education of the child would logically necessitate a- 
 very different method from that which we now pursue, 
 under guidance such as that of Henry Ward Beecher,- 
 who says : — 
 
 " In dealing with children have confidence in them. — 
 Do not try to corner a child into a lie. — I have been 
 cornered into a good many lies. — / knew I was right,. 
 and I was whipped until / confessed I was wrong. 
 
 If a child has done something that is wrong, as far 
 as possible avoid bringing an issue by which the fear of 
 the frown or the whip shall make him dodge into de- 
 ception, and try to hide. That is characteristic of the 
 animal nature— that is what the fox and hare do, and 
 that is what the child does under such circumstances. 
 
 Take care of your tenderness. The child may be 
 driven into a sin by you ; whereas by kindness and 
 gentleness you can lift him over the hard spot, and 
 set him down intact on the other side." 
 
 The following wise words from P. T. Forsyth are to 
 the point : — 
 
 " We have more faith than we used to have in 
 education. The natural man may he Christianised by 
 a conversion of some violence ; but the natural child, 
 if you would only begin in time, and respect its natural-- 
 ness, is Christianised by education. 
 
CONCLUSION. 213 
 
 " Except ye be converted and become as little child- 
 ren &c." — The man is converted to the child, but the 
 <:hild is educated to the ' man in Christ Jesus.' " 
 
 That the divine-human view of childhood is the 
 true one, is strikingly corroborated in the remarkable 
 practical unanimity with which men of all shades of 
 opinion express themselves, outside their ecclesiastical 
 and theological definitions and limitations. Cardinal 
 Manning writes : " The holiness of children is the very 
 type of saintliness ; and the most perfect conversion 
 is but a hard and distant return to the holiness of a 
 •child."* 
 
 If the Venerable Bishop who wrote the following put 
 his thought about children into practice, one might 
 put the training of his offspring into the Bishop's care 
 with considerable satisfaction, regardless of his theo- 
 logical commitments : " No man can tell but he who 
 loves his children, how many delicious accents make a 
 man's heart dance in the pretty conversations of these 
 dear pledges ; their childishness, .their stammering, 
 their little angers, their innocence, their imperfections, 
 their necessities are so many little emanations of joy 
 and comfort to him that delights in their persons and 
 society." 
 
 If the child is much indebted to those who discharge 
 their responsibilities to it, there is a very large ac- 
 count per contra, due to the child. This is briefly and 
 well put by the Rev. Thomas Binney : 
 
 * Towards Evening. Kegan Paul & Co., i88g. 
 
214 THE CHILD. 
 
 " Every infant comes into this world like a delegated 
 prophet, the harbinger and herald of good tidings, 
 whose office it is to draw *the disobedient to the 
 wisdom of the just.' Infants recall us from much that 
 engenders and encourages selfishness, that freezes the 
 affections, roughens the manners, and indurates the 
 heart ; they brighten the house, deepen love, invigorate 
 exertion, infuse courage, and vivify and sustain the 
 charities of life." 
 
 Among the practical considerations arising out of 
 this subject, especially in the present day of forced 
 marches, of cramming, of prodigies, of spectacled boys 
 and girls, and spinal affections, are the over-working 
 and over-developing whips of tutors and examina- 
 tions. 
 
 The Hon. Miss Murray in her Notes on Education, 
 writes : " It once happened that an anxious mother 
 asked Mrs. Barbauld at what age she should begin to 
 teach her child to read ? * I should much prefer that 
 a child should not be able to read before five years of 
 age,' was the reply. — 'Why then have you written books 
 for children of three ?' ' Because, if young mammas 
 will be over-busy, they had better teach in a good way 
 than a bad one.' — I have known clever precocious 
 children at three years dunces at twelve, — and dunces 
 at six particularly clever at sixteen ! — One of the most 
 popular authoresses of the present day could not read 
 when she was seven. Her mother was rather uncom- 
 fortable about it, but said, that as everybody did learn 
 
CONCLUSION. 215 
 
 to read with opportunity, she supposed that her child 
 would do so at last. By eighteen this apparently slow 
 genius paid the heavy but inevitable debts of her father 
 from the profits of her first work and before long had 
 pubHshed thirty volumes." 
 
 What would L. E. Landon say to the forcing pro- 
 cesses of modern education, who wrote years ago of 
 the children ? 
 
 How much they suffer from our faults, — 
 
 How much from our mistakes, — 
 How often, too, " misguided zeal " 
 
 An infant's misery makes. 
 We over-rule, and over-teach, — 
 
 We curb and we confine, — 
 And put the heart to school too soon 
 
 To learn our narrow line. 
 No ; only taught by love to love, 
 
 Seems Childhood's natural task; — 
 Affection, gentleness and love. 
 
 Are all its brief years ask. 
 
 It cannot be too intensely realized, or too urgently 
 enforced, that a little infant will never be, except when 
 abnormally excited, more delicately sensitive than in 
 its early stages of life. It is true of the organs of 
 special sense. It is true of the brain, and of the 
 formation of ideas. It is not less true of the emotions. 
 And, above all, it is true of its spiritual faculty. Tom 
 Hood recalls the fact, in his really delicate little poem, 
 " I remember, I remember," which ends with the 
 pathetic lines : 
 
216 THE CHILD. 
 
 •' It was a childish ignorance, 
 
 But now 'tis little joy 
 To know I'm farther oif from heav'n 
 
 Than when I was a boy." 
 
 We may be thankful that the evolution proceeds at 
 a diminishing and not an increasing ratio, for only thus 
 it is that earliest impressions are not only profoundest 
 but most enduring. 
 
 "For the child," Richter remarks, "the most im- 
 portant era in life is that of childhood, when he begins 
 to colour and mould himself by companionship with 
 others. Every new educator effects less than his pre- 
 decessor, until at last we regard all life as an educa- 
 tional institution. A circumnavigator of the world is 
 less influenced by all the nations he has seen than by 
 his nurse." 
 
 In the progress of the infant's development, the 
 lower part of its being takes precedence of the higher. 
 Its physical wants claim immediate attention. The 
 child readily yields to the more imperative objective 
 stimuli : as light to the eye, air to the lungs, food to 
 the stomach, &c. But though its higher faculties are 
 not so quickly developed, the most permanent effects 
 are produced on the soul ; and the strongest forma- 
 tive forces are those which touch its sentiments and 
 awaken its affections. For the child, not less than the 
 man, " does not live by bread alone." And as it 
 advances in healthy development, what happens ? The 
 lower nature at length becomes subordinate to the 
 
CONCLUSION. ^ 217 
 
 higher, and the body comes to be regarded and treated 
 as the humble servant of the soul. 
 
 But now, gentle reader, while we are contemplating 
 the little child, we may ask where is God most truly 
 seen ? 
 
 You say He is seen as He rides upon the storm ; — 
 as He flies on the wings of the wind. I say He is 
 perceived in the still, small voice. Do you see Him 
 in the midnight glory of the starry heavens ? I see 
 Him more in the tender twinkle of a little child's eye. 
 Do you trace His voice in the majestic roll of the 
 thunder, as it reverberates from cloud to cloud ? I 
 hear His utterance, not distant but as a whisper in my 
 ear, in the loving tones of a tender mother. Does the 
 manifestation of His mighty mind impress you in the 
 scathing flash of lightning ? I think it is infinitely 
 nearer to me in the flash of wit which sometimes may 
 be seen darting out of the clouds of ignorance of 
 the humble peasant. The lightning may shatter the 
 nerves. The earthquake may shake the clay taber- 
 nacle. But God is not in the earthquake. He is not 
 in the thunder, to the highest part of our being He 
 never can be. The soul has no eye for physical light- 
 ning, — no sense for earthquakes, — no ear for thunder, 
 but is most susceptible to appeals to conscience, — to 
 its affections— to its mind. 
 
 The subject which it was proposed to discuss, it is 
 hoped has not been unfairly treated, in view of many 
 accepted theories of human nature and misconceptions 
 
218 THE CHILD. 
 
 of the Wise Creator of our species, and the Holy 
 Redeemer of our race. 
 
 The education of a child has not been the immediate 
 purpose of the writer. Principles have been suggested^ 
 which must be based upon a true conception of the 
 child's nature ; and it cannot be denied that a just 
 apprehension of the nature of a child must lie at the 
 foundation of any true theory and any wise and judi- 
 cious practice of education. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 AflFection, 63, 95 
 Africa, childhood in, 132 
 Ambrose, St., on baptism, 172 
 Arab children, 135 
 Arnold, Thomas, 34 
 Art, the child of, 153 
 Artists, boy, 67 
 Athanasius, 180 
 Augustine, St., 170 
 
 Baby, love of liberty, 15 
 
 the new-born, 6 
 
 Bacon, ig, 35 
 
 Baptism of children, 167, 170 
 Baptismal regeneration, 178, 182 
 Barbauld, Mrs., on teaching, 214 
 Basil, St., on baptism, 172 
 Baxter, 183 
 Bidder, George, 33 
 Binney, Thomas, 197, 213 
 Bushnell, Horace, 197 
 
 Canova, 67 
 Carlyle, 16 
 Carthage, Council of, and baptism, 
 
 172 
 Cavendish, 21 
 Chalmers, 137 
 Character, discrimination of by 
 
 children, 12 
 Child, Mrs., 12 
 
 Child and man compared, 206 
 environment of the, loi 
 
 nature, spirituality of, 13 
 
 preachers, 34 
 
 spoiled, 86 
 
 the, as portrayed by Jesus-,- 
 
 204 
 Children of Africa, 132 
 
 ancient Greece, 106 
 
 Arab, 135 
 
 China, 126 
 
 Egypt, 104 
 
 India, 116 
 
 Israel, 159 
 
 Japan, 140 
 
 Madagascar, 148 
 
 New Guinea, 137 
 
 Persia, 118 
 
 Roman, 114 
 
 Children's baptism, 167 
 dress, 94 
 
 faith, 22, 23,94 
 
 heroism, 49 
 
 hymns, 186 
 
 love, 95 
 
 prayers, 22, 83 
 
 reasoning, 45, 47 
 
 sayings, 10 
 
 trust, 94 
 
 China, children of, 126 
 Christ and His disciples, 192 
 
 and the child, 191, 204 
 
 childhood of, 203 
 
220 
 
 THE CHILD. 
 
 Christ, gentleness of, 140 
 Christendom, the child of, 165 
 Chrysostom, on baptism, 172 
 Church and children's hymns, 186 
 Church, the, and the child, 165 
 Clothes, 15, 193 
 Common Prayer (Book of) and 
 
 doctrine of baptism, 172 
 Contentment, 20 
 Conversion, ig6, 213 
 Cruelty, 79 
 Crying, 29 
 Cunning, 83 
 Curiosity, 35 
 Cyprian on baptism, 172 
 
 Damien, Father, anecdote of, 23 
 Davy, Sir Humphrey, boyhood of, 
 
 21 
 Dennis, verses by, 9 
 Disciples, characteristics of the, 
 
 192 
 Disobedience, anecdote of, 24 
 Dress, 94 
 
 of Persian children, 124 
 
 Drummond, Henry, 97 
 Dulness, 44 
 
 Education among the Jews, 162 
 
 in Persia, 125 
 
 of children, 91, 212 
 
 Plato's views of, 106 
 
 Egypt, children of, 104 
 Emotions, development of, 98 
 Environment, loi 
 Envy, 82 
 Evolution, 97 
 
 Faith in children, 22, 23, 94 
 Faraday, 68 
 
 Ferguson, James, 68 
 
 Ferrier, 3 
 
 Flaxman, childhood of, 32 
 
 Genius, early indications of, 32, 
 
 33 
 
 Gladstone, anecdote of childhood, 
 21 
 
 God as Father, 159 
 
 God, revelation of, in childhood, 
 17. 217 
 
 Godliness, 23 
 
 Greece, ancient, 106 
 
 Gregory, St., of Nazianzum, 171 
 
 Gregory, St., of Nyssa, on bap- 
 tism, 172 
 
 Handel, boyhood of, 66 
 
 Heaven, 17 
 
 Heredity, 96, 97 
 
 Heroism of childhood, 49, 52 
 
 Hinton, J., 57 
 
 Hogg, James, 12 
 
 Holiness, 24 
 
 Houzeau, 3 
 
 Humility in the child, 93 
 
 Hymns, children's, i85 
 
 Imitation, 42 
 
 India, children of, 116 
 
 Infant baptism, 178 
 
 Infant, development of the, 216 
 
 Inventions of children, the loom, 
 40 ; the stethoscope, 38 ; the 
 telescope, 37 ; the valve-lever, 
 
 39 
 Israel, children of, 159 
 
INDEX. 
 
 221 
 
 Japan, children of, 140* 
 Jesus, see Christ 
 Jewish children, 159 
 Johnson, Dr., and children recit- 
 ing, 93 
 
 Keble, 178 
 
 Laennec and the stethoscope, 38 
 Landon, L. E., verses by, 215 
 Lawrence, Sir T., 67 
 Liberty and restraint, 25 
 Lippersheim and the telescope, 37 
 Literary children, 34 
 Loom, invention of, 40 
 Love, a child's, 95 
 Lying, 82 
 
 Macaulay, boyhood of, 44 
 Madagascar, children of, 148 
 Manners, 69 
 
 Chinese, 131 
 
 Manning, Cardinal, on children, 
 
 23, 24, 213 
 Memory, 42 
 Mental evolution, 98 
 Mind in infancy and childhood, 6 
 Mozart, childhood of, 41 
 Musical faculty, loi 
 Musician, young, 41, 66 
 
 New Guinea, 137 
 
 Orderliness, 21 
 
 Paget, Rev. F,, 179 
 Palestine, child life in, 135 
 Parental control of children, 210 
 
 love, 95 
 
 Pascal, childhood of, 36 
 
 Patagonians, 139 
 
 Paul, St., on love and faith, 207 
 
 Perez, 3 
 
 Persia, children of, 118 
 
 Pity, 18 
 
 Plato, 104, 106, 159 
 
 Potter, Humphrey, 39 
 
 Power-loom, invention of, 40 
 
 Praise, injudicious, 94 
 
 Prayers, children's, 22, 83 
 
 Preaching proclivities, 34 
 
 Precocity, 43 
 
 Prejudice, 54 
 
 Pride, 82 
 
 Punishment, capital, 2 
 
 Punning, 42 
 
 Quintilian, 115 
 
 Raphael, 38 
 
 Reason, 45 
 
 Receptivity of a child, 60 
 
 Recitation before company, 93 
 
 Resentment, 79 
 
 Restraint and liberty, 25 
 
 Richter on childhood, 216 • 
 
 Roman children, 114 
 
 Romanes, 98 
 
 Ruskin, 35, 198 
 
 Sanctification of water in baptism, 
 
 172, 174 
 Sand, George, childhood of, 13 
 Schools in Persia, 125 
 Scientific observation, 68 
 Sculptors, boy, 67 
 Self-sacrifice, 27, 28 
 Shaftesbury, Earl of, 11, i^, 84 
 
-222 
 
 THE CHILD. 
 
 Sin, in infants, 167 
 
 washing away in baptism, 
 
 172, 177 
 Smeaton, boyhood of, 41 
 Social distinctions, 55 
 Spencer, H., 3 
 Spoiled child, the, 86 
 Stanley, Dean, 171, 178 
 Stethoscope, invention of, 38 
 •Sully, 3 
 Sunday school, the, 87, 211 
 
 Telescope, invention of, 37 
 Tertullian, 172 
 •Theodoret, 171 
 Tiedemann, 6 
 Tracts for the Times, 169 
 Training of children, 212 
 ^Trust, a child's, 94 
 
 Trust of children, 59 
 
 Valve-lever, invention of, 39 
 
 Washing away of sin in baptism, 
 
 172, 177 
 Water, in baptism, 172, 176, 181 
 Watt, James, 39 
 Watts, Dr., 189 
 Waugh, Rev. B., 5 
 Weismann, 100 
 Westcott, 140 
 Will, the, 66 
 Wordsworth, 8, 178 
 
 Zulus, 134 
 
 '^^^^l^^ 
 
 XJTKIVERSITT 
 
Just published, Fourth Edition, pp. 121, Imperial 8vo, Cloth, 
 Price 2s. 6d. nett. 
 
 SONGS FOR LITTLE SINGERS 
 
 IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL AND HOME 
 
 COMPOSED BY 
 
 HENRY KING LEWIS. 
 
 NOTICES OF PREVIOUS EDITIONS. 
 
 " Here are words and melodies admirably suited for the children in our homes and 
 schools. Just the sort to make them sing with delight rather than as a task. Parents 
 could not do better than purchase this volume." — Word and Work. 
 
 " Expresses the real feelings of childhood. The melodies are simple and pretty and 
 such as children enjoy." — Church Times. 
 
 " We can heartily recommend this pretty book as supplying a want that has long 
 been felt in giving the children songs to sing which they can understand and enjoy, 
 and which express the real feelings of childhood." — Practical Teacher. 
 
 " The author has evidently sympathetic acquaintance with childhood and its needs, 
 and simplicity and melody, without silliness, have been attained."— TAc Wesleyan 
 Methodist Magazine. 
 
 "A delightful selection of songs and accompaniment very suitable for children at 
 home or school." — The British Friend. 
 
 " The songs are varied from grave to gay, from the time for worship to the time for 
 laughter and fun. The melodies are simple without being silly, and the harmonies 
 are all within the range of young players." — The New Age. 
 
 " The words and music are alike within the comprehension of little ones, and are 
 bright and joyous in character." — Christian Leader. 
 
 " It has evidently won its way to success by its merit. The composer has beautifully 
 executed an idea of his own. Many of the melodies and accompaniments are really 
 beautiful." -Christian Commonwealth. 
 
 " Its popularity is deserved, for the songs are all good, and the music is good also. 
 This book is beautifully printed and bound. One of the cheapest and best things we 
 have seen for a long time." — Family Chiirchman. 
 
 " A book with charming rhymes and sweet music. We have read and we have 
 listened with pleasure. It will prove a favourite in the home." — Baptist Messenger. 
 
 " An excellent collection of songs and hymns for young folks. The words of the 
 songs breathe happiness, beauty and love, and the melodies are usually admirably 
 suited to the words." — The Friend. 
 
 " Mr. Lewis has studied the requirements of the children, and has fully met them in 
 this delightful volume. Will be welcome wherever it goes." — Methodist Sunday School 
 Record, 
 
 " We gladly recommend this charming book, which though originally intended for 
 use in infant classes at school, is a welcome addition to the pleasures and instruction 
 of home." — Early Days. 
 
 " We do not know of any collection of children's songs better adapted to its purpose 
 than this one. It combines all the qualifications necessary to render it attractive to 
 young learners— exquisite melody, simple yet effective harmony, and a perfect agree- 
 ment between the words and the music."— Educational Times. 
 
NOTICES OF PREVIOUS EDITIONS {continued). 
 
 " Admirably arranged, and excellent in moral and spiritual tone. We have never 
 
 seen a work of the kind we like better It should be circulated by thousands 
 
 Parents, you should by all means purchase this." — Evangelical Magazine. 
 
 " A book of song thoroughly adapted to the little singers for whom it is intended. 
 It consists of hymns and cheerful songs, not any of them above the capacity of intelli- 
 gent children, set to airs which will be easily caught and remembered. We commend 
 it to mothers, and to all who have the care and training of the young." — Congregational 
 Magazine. 
 
 "Joyous songs are not only the delight but the requirement of childhood. Quick to 
 recognise this, Mr. Henry King Lewis made a selection of the brightest and best, 
 added a few of his own composition and set the whole to music, the airs being in strict 
 keeping with the simplicity of the words. What infant-class would grow weary of 
 singing, say with pianoforte accompaniment, such melodies as ' Suppose the Little 
 Cowslip,' and lessons learned in song make an abiding impression ? " — Simday iichocl 
 Times. 
 
 "This collection of songs is vastly superior to much that 'little singers' are con- 
 demned to learn and sing in the present day. In fact there is an originality about 
 some of Mr. Lewis's compositions that is quite refreshing. Amongst others we may 
 mention the ' Morning Hymn,' ' Among the Children,' ' Alice's Supper,' ' Bethlehem,' 
 ' The Grasshopper,' and ' Thy Kingdom Come,' as being superior both in the words and 
 in the music to the general stock pieces which appear in programmes of many of the 
 children's Choral Festivals which are of such frequent recurrence. 
 
 " We recommend all who have to do with these gatherings to obtain Mr. Lewis's 
 book of Songs. Most of the pieces are capable of being sung by Sunday-School 
 children, and what makes taem especially valuable is that the composer has not 
 sacrificed the educational object which all such gatherings should have in view to the 
 mere gratification of the senses." — The Church Sunday School Magazine. 
 
 " Brightness, melody, simplicity, and adaptation to the child-nature, are the chief 
 charms of this collection." — General Baptist Magazine. 
 
 " Mr. Lewis is evidently just the right person to write songs for the little ones 
 
 His idea is thoroughly worked out. Though nowhere soaring above the capacity of 
 his audience, his songs will be thoroughly appreciated by the elder ones. In tact, 
 viewed as abstract musical compositions, they possess great intrinsic value. They are 
 bright, melodious songs, which will be a long continuing source of the greatest 
 pleasure to young and old." — The Schoolmaster. 
 
 "Persons who expect to find in this capital work songs of the 'Here we suffer' 
 kind, are not likely to meet with much ot what they want, but parents and teachers 
 who wish to obtain words and music thoroughly adapted to the capacities and pro- 
 clivities of children, will find such here in abundance Simple and lively, without a 
 
 trace of vulgarity. The work is intended more especially for infant class use, but will 
 suit older children : and before publication most, if not all, the songs have duly under- 
 gone the scrutiny of a committee of 200 juvenile musicians, have been performed by 
 them in public, and have pleased young and old alike." — The Quaver. 
 
 " This is a charming book for the young folk, and will prove a delightful present for 
 the approaching season. Mr. Lewis is a wise and practical enthusiast in the matter of 
 children's worship-song. Both the songs and music of this volume have borne the 
 practical test of use in a large gathering of children, and those who have been privi- 
 leged to hear the young singers know how well these compositions have borne that 
 most searching of all tests. Some of the songs and all the music, are from the pen of 
 the editor, and reflect very great credit upon his skill and taste. It should be added 
 that the printing and binding of the volume are both very attractive."— CAm^tan 
 World. 
 
 " We welcome any special effort in the direction of songs and music for infants, for 
 too often the ordinary hymns of the schools are theirs also. Mr. Lewis recognizes the 
 claims of the little ones to more special provision, and he does ^omewhat to meet them 
 here by this collection, which contains some new hymns, and soipe old favourites, but 
 all set to music by himself. We heartily thank him for what he has done." — Sunday 
 School Chronicle. 
 
 LONDON : 
 SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTOlSf, KENT & Co., Ltd. 
 
 ^^ OF THE '^ 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS 
 
 WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN 
 THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY 
 WILL INCREASE TO SO CENTS ON THE FOURTH 
 DAY AND TO $1.00 ON THE SEVENTH DAY 
 OVERDUE. 
 
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