evolving into the strength of maturity those powers of her child which will be wielded for happiness or for misery.  Her babe is an “embryo angel, or an infant fiend.”  We behold in that fragile form, the bud of the strong man,—­the possibility of one who may in a few years arouse with his thrilling eloquence a slumbering nation, or with the torch and sword of revolution, overturn empires and dethrone kings, or with his feet upon the walls of Zion, and the words of life upon his lips, overthrow the strongholds of Satan, and bring the rebel sinner in penitence to the feet of Jesus.  Yea, we see in that wailing infant of a week, the outspringing of an immortal spirit which may soon hover on cherub-pinion around the throne of God, or perhaps, in a few years, sink to the regions of untold anguish.  Oh, it is this which gives to the cradle of infancy such a thrilling interest.  The star of those new-born hopes, which hangs over it, will set in eternal night, or rise with increasing splendor, till it is lost in the full blaze of eternal day!

Infants are a great, a dangerous and responsible trust.  They are the property of God,—­“an heritage from the Lord,” given to their parents as a loan, a “talent of trust to be rendered back with interest.”  The infant is especially the mother’s trust.

  “Though first by thee it lived, on thee it smiled,
  Yet not for thee existence must it hold,
  For God’s it is, not thine!”

Given by its Creator in trust to her, it is her task to bring it up for God.  Here especially do we see the holy mission of the mother.  None but the mother’s heart and love can give security for this trust.  The father is unfit by nature for the delicate training of infancy.  The mother’s hand alone can smooth the infant’s couch, and her voice alone can sing him to his rosy rest.  Her never-wearied love alone can watch beside him “till the last pale star had set,”

  “While to the fullness of her heart’s glad heavings
  His fair cheek rose and fell; and his bright hair
  Waved softly to her breast.”

She is the ministering angel of infancy, and the priestess of the nursery of home.  She sets the first seal, makes the first stamp, gives the first direction, supplies the first want, and soothes the first sorrow.  To her is committed human life in its most helpless and dangerous state.  Touch it then with the rude hand of parental selfishness; let it grow up in a barren soil, amid noxious weeds, under the influence of unholy example; and the delicate tints of this blossom will soon fade; the blush of loveliness will soon give way to the blight of moral deformity.

[Illustration:  Teaching the scriptures.  J. Porter]

Hence every babe will be the parent’s glory or the parent’s shame, their weal or their woe.  If entrusted to them, God will hold them responsible for its moral training.  He will require it from them with interest.  Their trust involves the eternal happiness or misery of their child.  The productions of art will perish; the sun will be blotted out, and all the glory and magnificence of the world will vanish away, but your babe will live forever.  It will survive the wreck of nature, and either shine as a diadem in the Redeemer’s crown of glory, or dwell in the blackness and darkness of perdition forever.