“No babe within our arms to leap,
    No little feet towards slumber tending;
  No little knee in prayer to bend,
    Our loving lips the sweet words lending.

  “Life’s song indeed would lose its charm,
    Were there no babies to begin it;
  A doleful place this world would be,
    Were there no little people in it.”

And if children have so great an influence in the world it was wise in Jesus to desire to have them brought early to him that they might learn to use that influence in the best possible way.

And then it was wise in Jesus to desire this, again, because bringing children to him prevents great trouble, and secures great blessing.

We are all familiar with Dr. Watts’ sweet hymn, which says: 

“’Twill save us from a thousand snares
  To mind religion young.”

Here is a striking illustration of this truth in the history of: 

“One Neglected Child.”  A good many years ago, in one of the upper counties of New York, there was a little girl named Margaret.  She was not brought to Christ, but was turned out on the world to do as she pleased.  She grew up to be perhaps the wickedest woman in that part of the country.  She had a large family of children, who became about as wicked as herself; her descendants have been a plague and a curse to that county ever since.  The records of that county show that two hundred of her descendants have been criminals.  In a single generation of her descendants there were twenty children.  Three of these died in infancy.  Of the remaining seventeen, who lived to grow up, nine were sent to the state prison for great crimes; while all the others were found, from time to time, in the jails, the penitentiaries, or the almshouses.  Nearly all the descendants of this woman were idiots, or drunkards, or paupers, or bad people, of the very worst character.  That one neglected child thus cost the county in which she lived hundreds of thousands of dollars, besides the untold evil that followed from the bad examples of her descendants.  How different the result would have been if this poor child had been brought to Jesus and made a Christian when she was young!

“The Result of Early Choice.”  Here is a short story of two boys, of the choice they made when young, and the different results that followed from that choice.

A minister of the gospel was preaching on one occasion to the convicts in the state prison of Connecticut.  As he rose in the desk and looked around on the congregation, he saw a man there whose face seemed familiar to him.  When the service was over he went to this man’s cell, to have some conversation with him.

“I remember you very well, sir,” said the prisoner.  “We were boys in the same neighborhood; we went to the same school; sat beside each other on the same bench, and then my prospects were as bright as yours.  But, at the age of fourteen, you made choice of the service of God, and became a Christian.  I refused to come to Christ, but made choice of the world and sin.  And now, you are a happy and honored minister of the gospel, while I am a wretched outcast.  I have served ten years in this penitentiary and am to be a prisoner here for life.”