and to learn how to get to it the one thing needful. You know Who said it. Not for a moment, as you perceive, would I imply that that other education is not essential. It is essential, and in the highest degree. We are placed in the world to work; our talents were bestowed upon us to cultivate and use to the uttermost. The mischief lies in our forgetting that another world has to be also prepared for. And it is so easy to forget-seemingly as almost without sin-amid the noise and strife and social obligations of life. But that other world, remember, will be our eternal home; this one is but the short journey to it. How can your son, whether a child or youth or man, learn the way to heaven unless he be taught? If he is not shown in childhood that it is a desirable place, he may never acquire any anxious wish to got hither,—may never of himself discover the road to it. Cultivation is necessary in all things. Look at the watchful care, late and early, bestowed by a gardener on some flower that his skill has made rare. It might have been, untended, a very commonplace flower, a hedge-blossom growing by the road side; but the constant, untiring culture has made it beautiful. Compare the little insignificant strawberry, trailing in woods, with the magnificent specimens sold at half a guinea a plate. In what lies the difference?-in care, in training, in cultivation. And ought the soul of a child to be the only thing in this world that is not cultivated,-watchfully, anxiously, untiringly? Oh, my friends, what shall it profit him if he gain the whole world and lose his soul? As soon as your child can comprehend, begin. Have a place apart. A little quiet room that, may be, is not used for much else: failing such a room use your own chamber. At the same hour, as nearly as can be, take the child daily; say, after breakfast in the morning, and (as often as you can) after tea at night. Put him upon your knee, and in a low, loving, gentle voice, tell him of God, of his Saviour, of heavenly things. Show him, in simple language adapted to him, what he must do to please God, to gain heaven. Impress upon him, I say, the great facts that God is ever near him, watching him; that Jesus waits to welcome him. Show him that this world is not our home, but only a state of probation to fit us for the real home to come. Teach him not to fear death, only to try and be ever ready for it. Practically inculcate on him his duties to his fellow-creatures that elbow him in the world: kindness, forbearance, gentleness, love, preferring their convenience to his own; humanity to dumb animals; fearless truth, honour, uprightness, patience, unselfishness. Read to him pretty Bible stories; let them pave the way for the Bible itself, and for other books telling of God. The sitting need not be long,-ten minutes, or so; but let it be persevered in from day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year. You can have no idea how intensely the teachable and impressionable little child will learn to love these short moments, and to look for them; you can have still less idea of the blessing they may prove to him in his future life,-the safeguard they may be. As your other children come on, take them also to join him their eager faces, upturned to yours, will form a picture as they sit around your knee. There is no other teaching can supplant this: you may read the Bible amidst your household, you may hold family prayer, but that cannot make up for the neglect of this. This is what will lay the good foundation for the time to come. It will be some trouble to you, costing a little time and a good deal of patient perseverance, but you will be working on for a rich reward. Watch the children when they are with you at other times; subject them to discipline; stop the quarrelsome word, the rising temper, but always stop it gently, and reason with the child for a minute, showing him how wrong and foolish it is. A child's temper may be brought under discipline as well as its mind. Never let them hear a truly unkind word from you, or tones raised in passion. Oh, mothers! ladies of high degree, women of humble station, for your own peace' sake, train your child! There must arise an hour when the recollection of this most vital duty will come home to you, bringing to your heart comfort or despair, according to the manner in which you shall have sought to fulfil it. “A child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame," says that great and wise king to whom God gave more than earthly wisdom. Look out into the world, mark and note, and you will see that it is only too true. Your untrained, untaught son-trained only for himself and the world, that is, not for God-may not bring you to outward shame in the sight of men, but he will bring you to shame and remorse of heart. "Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it." Nothing can be fraught with more earnest truth than this injunction. Precepts imparted in childhood, trained with the child, become part and parcel of his nature. You cannot root them out. They are his for life. They grow with his growth, and strengthen with his strength. Though he may yield for a while to the sins society recks of, in the hot blood of his spring-time, when life's morning is fair and young, and evil wears its most specious aspect to delude the inexperienced aud unwary, he will return when he is old. Believe me, for I tell you truth. Take your child's heart to Heaven in his early years, and to Heaven he will turn in his later ones. Do you think that God will let him be lost? No. He has heard the prayers of that child, and seen that his heart was set aright. He has heard your prayers for him and though the snares of the world may have drawn him astray for a time, God will assuredly bring his : heart home again ere the last final scene shall come. That is a beautiful saying,-one I like to believe in that the child of a praying mother will never be lost. Yes. Those early lessons will come back again in the time of need, for they were implanted within him in characters of adamant. What a child learns in infancy he learns for life. When man is old and his faculties begin to fail, it is not the present daily occurrences he remembers and dwells upon. Perhaps he will hardly recal what has happened the day before. But question him on the memories of his childhood, and you will find his recollections vivid and bright as ever. They cannot leave him; he holds to them with clinging fondness; believes in them, cherishes them, takes them down with him to the grave. No power in earth-I had almost written in heaven-can disenchant us in regard to our childhood's home. We believe in the grand hills around; in the green fields; in the bright flowers growing amid the tall grass; in the shrubs and trees; in the old rooms, be they ever so homely. We learnt to believe in them with our earliest years, as being the dearest and best objects the world contained, and they became part and parcel of ourselves, not to be effaced in after-life. Dormant they may lie for the most part, but they are there within us. And thus it is with our childhood's lessons, the precepts we learnt at our mother's knee. What she impresses upon the teachable young heart is impressed for ever. Can I say more than I have already said? Is it, or is it not essential to train our children so that they may not fail in gaining the life after this life? Christ calls it the one thing needful; the treasure hid in a field; the pearl of great price, which pearl, when found, the finder in his joy sells all that he has, and buys it. How inestimable must be this treasure! What can compare with the joy of the finder? to know that he possesseth it, and is saved, and will live for ever! O mothers! help your dear ones to find it! You can only do it when they are young. Delay it, and they will miss the way. No duty laid upon you is so impressive as this; no neglect is so irredeemable if you pass it by. Do not weary in it. It will make your own journey in life pleasant, whatever may be that life's vicissitudes; it will soothe its cares: for while you are striving untiringly to bring your children to God, God will not forget you. For your own sake, and your children's sake, I pray you, neglect it not. And whenever you yourself may be called away, be it sooner or later, you will have the unspeakable comfort of knowing that you may with confidence leave your children in Heaven's hands. For you have given unto their hearts a safeguard; you have taught them to love and fear God, to rely upon their Saviour; and you know that He who has begun a good work in them shall assuredly make it complete.-Abridged from Sunday Magazine. THE DRESS OF CHILDREN. RESS is a very important part of a child's education, in a moral and mental, as well as in a physical point of view. And here I might take up the pen of a censor, and dilate on absurdities innumerable. But I will rather take the pen of a kind monitress to warn the unwary; and while I point out errors, deplore the necessity of noting them. This part of a child's education is prepared for even before it is born, for numerous fine things are got ready for the expected infant. The clothes are made so long and full, the quiltings and linings are so thick, that the dress must bear a very undue proportion to the weight of the dear little infant. What can be the use of so much attire? is a question not easily answered while the injury it occasions must be obvious; for what grown person could sustain a weight of clothing so disproportionate? Those who have seen infants in warm climates are more aware of this mischief than others can be. There, the infant, instead of having its limbs encumbered by dress, has the free use of them, and turns it to good account by crawling on the floor at four or five months old. : Look into your own hearts, dear young mothers; scrutinise your motives. Is not vanity at the root? Are not the long robes, the elegant mantles, etc., etc., sent out for your neighbours to admire? If you would really consider your infants as sacred deposits, you would anxiously try every thought and intent of your hearts by the word of God. In doing so, how often might you find that you are (without knowing it) under the influence of motives your better feelings would disclaim. How often, for instance, is a mother influenced by her nurse, whose vanity is flattered by the notice taken of her little charge. "This would look so mean; "" that would not be fit for a tradesman's child," etc., are the everyday speeches to which undue importance is attached. It is true, that during the first few months the infant's mind can receive no injury from these measures; but they will have an influence on the mind of the mother. She, having yielded to custom, fashion, and the opinions of her servants, will be less prepared to withstand them in future; and whatever her good sense or judgment may prescribe, will generally be overruled by those to whom she ought to dictate without appeal. ; The child, then, will be dressed in ribbons, laces, and feathers its hair will be tortured into curls before it can speak; and people will admire, because they will conclude that admiration is expected, when so much expense and pains are bestowed to obtain it. Many mothers of observation know how soon their children are impressed by what they hear in this way; and some of them deplore the want of caution in their visitors. But how many, on the other hand, through a blind partiality are ready to believe much more than the politeness of their friends leads them to affirm; and are even so imprudent as to repeat, or allow the nurse to repeat, in the presence of the children, what has been said of them. From the beginning of my career I have noticed the effects of vanity in very young children. Among the first I took charge of was a little girl, four years of age, who had been told by some one that she was very pretty, though her parents were very cautious in this respect. Frequently, on going to my room, I found the looking-glass turned, as if some one had been viewing her feet. This was unaccountable to me, till one day when I entered and found this little girl admiring herself before the glass, which she had pushed down for that purpose. A little boy (who had heard the tailor scolded for not making his clothes to fit well) attached at all times much importance to his dress; and on one occasion gave a striking proof of it. He came into the schoolroom one morning in a very pretty dress, which was quite new; but as we made a point of not fostering his vanity, neither his sisters nor I took any notice of it. I called him to me, as usual, to repeat his little morning prayers and a hymn. He got through them pretty well, till he reached the third verse of his hymn, "So like the sun would I begin here he paused, his eyes were fixed on his buttons; and the word "clothes was substituted for the word "day." Poor little fellow! I was, of course, obliged to reprove his negligence and his vanity, and to show him what sad effects they produced. This kind of conceit is not so dangerous in boys as in girls, because not so like to grow up with them; but it is very disagreeable in both, as it destroys all the beautiful simplicity of childhood. In girls it leads to affectation, display, and many little arts by which attention may be attracted; all tending to form a character replete with duplicity and insincerity. I knew a little girl in her seventh year, who, with the air of a little woman showed her silk frock, and told her cousin it was made according to the last fashion. The same child, after taking a walk in Hyde Park, came home and told us exultingly that a lady had remarked what a pretty figure she had. Would a child of her age have known anything about beauty of form or face if she had not been very imprudently dealt with? Some time after, I was with her in the country, and on one occasion observed her in the garden, practising some of her little airs. She was quite alone, therefore I was anxious to know whom she expected to admire her. Going out, and looking in the direction her eyes indicated, I saw a woman servant at the window of the adjoining house, who was regarding little miss with some complacency. So true is it |
