influences or the contagion of bad example, and poisoned by no bad atmosphere, he develops naturally towards a manhood which is rooted in healthy tastes, affections unspoilt, and in good habits. Thus you see what the very young have a right to claim at the hands of all their elders—that they should be careful not to mislead them, and should see that they live in pure air, and feed their growing instincts and activities in wholesome pastures.
During the stage of earliest growth it would be a sign of unhealthy precocity if a child were much occupied with the continuity of things, or the close union of to-day with to-morrow, or of all our thoughts, acts, pleasures, and tastes, with the bent of character which is being silently but surely formed in us; and it would be equally unnatural if his thoughts were to dwell much on the essential shortness of our life, and the flight of opportunity which does not come back to us.
It is part of the happiness, or, I fear, it must be said sometimes, part of the pain
of early life, that the time before it seems so long. The day is long with its crowded novelty or intense enjoyment, or possibly with its dreary and intolerable task-work; to-morrow, with all its anticipations of things desired or to be endured, seems long; and the vista of years, as they stretch through boyhood and youth, manhood and age, seems to lose itself in the far distance of its length. So, viewed from its beginnings, life is long.
But with the approach of manhood all this begins to change. As we grow out of childhood our self-conscious and reflective life grows; and thus there rises in us the feeling of moral responsibility never to be shaken off again. Not, however, that we should leave all our childhood behind us. It hardly needs to be said that there are some characteristics of our earliest years which every man should pray that he may retain to the end. Unless he retains them his life becomes a deteriorating life.
And first among these is the reverential
or filial habit. This deserves our careful attention, because we sometimes see an affectation of silly and spurious manliness, which thinks it a fine thing to cast it off. This reverential or filial feeling, which is natural to the unspoilt and truthful nature of the child, is preserved in every unspoilt manhood; only with a difference.
It is raised from the unreflective, instinctive trust in a father’s guidance or a mother’s love to that higher feeling which tells us that, as is the child in a well and wisely ordered home, so is each of us in that great household of our heavenly Father. This spirit of true piety, which uplifts, refines, strengthens, and gives courage to manhood, as nothing else can do, is the natural outcome and successor of a child’s trustfulness, as we rise through it to the feeling that we are encompassed by a Divine consciousness, and that our life moves in a holy presence. Or again, we pray that we may not lose that simplicity and freshness of nature which is at once a special charm of childhood, and,
wherever it is preserved, the chief blessing of a man’s later years.
These qualities and characteristics of our infancy—trust, filial reverence, freshness, simplicity—are not qualities to be left behind, but the natural forecast of that religious spirit which is the highest growth of maturity, and our own safeguard against the hardening and debasing influences of the world and the flesh. And this was the Saviour’s meaning when He said, “Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in nowise enter therein.” And if there is one thing more than another that constitutes the special curse of any depraved influence acting on young lives, it is that it robs the later life of these childlike qualities which are the gifts of God to bless us in youth and age.