To you, Christian parents, as the stewards of God, this precious being is entrusted.  The care of its body, mind and spirit is committed to you; and its character and destiny in after life will be the fruit of your dealings with it.  It looks to you for all things.  It confides in you, draws its confidence from your protection, relies on your known love, takes you as the pattern of its life, imitates you as its example, learns from you as its teacher, is ruled by you as its governor, is measured by you as its model, feels satisfied with you as its sufficiency, and rests its all upon you as its all and in all.

Thus you are the very life and soul of its being, and hence in its maturity, it will be a fair exponent of your character.  You are the center around which its life revolves, the circumference beyond which it never seeks to go.  What, therefore, if you are unfit to move and act in its presence!  What, if in its imitation of you, its life be a progressive departure from God!  Oh, what, if in the day of judgment, it be an outcast from heaven, and, as such, bear the impress of a parent’s hand!  God will then hold you accountable for every injury you may have done your child.

Begin, therefore, the work of training that infant, now, while its nature is pliable, susceptible, yet tenacious of first impressions.  “With his mother’s milk the young child drinketh education.”  What you now do for your child will be seen in all future ages.  “Scratch the green rind of a sapling, or wantonly twist it in the soil, the scarred and crooked oak will tell of thee for centuries to come.”  “It will not depart from the ways in which you train it.”  If, therefore, you would be a blessing to your child, and avert those terrible judgments of God which rest upon parental delinquency, begin now, while your infant is in the cradle, to sow the seeds of life.  Prune well the tender olive plants, and direct its evolving life in the way God would have it go.

  “Soon as the playful innocent can prove
  A tear of pity or a smile of love,”

teach it to lisp the name of Jesus and to walk in His commandments.  But alas! how many Christian parents are recreant to this duty!  How many destroy their children by the over-indulgence of a misdirected love and sympathy, and by procrastinating the period of home-education.  Forgetful of the power of first impressions, they wait until their children are established in sin, and the seeds of evil are sown in their hearts.

This is the reason why so many reckless and wicked children come out of Christian homes.  Their parents permit their misdirected fondness to absorb all their thoughts and apprehensions of danger and responsibility.  Their love for the body and mind of their children seems to repel all love for, or interest in, their soul.  The former they tenderly nurse, fondly caress, and zealously direct.  But the soul of the infant is unhonored, unloved and uncared for.  It is