Then we tired aged people—born and reared in this atmosphere of cold weariness; shake our heads and say—
"No. Life is hard. Life is dreary. Life is one long grind!"
That is where we are wrong, and the children are right. They come in new every time. The earth is as young to them as it was to Adam.
If we would but once face the dignity and beauty of childhood instead of looking down on it as we do—then we could take advantage of that constant influx of force, instead of doing our best to crush it down.
This brings us sharply back to our Christmas—the festival of the Child.
It is. If celebrates the real new year; the new-born year, the opening of another season of Life.
Dimly, very dimly, we have glimpsed this now and then, in the old triune godhead of Isis, Osiris and Horus; and in our modern worship of the Madonna and Child.
The time is coming very near when we shall see the meaning of The Child more fully; and make our worship wiser.
What we see in all our thousand homes is "my child." What the doll-taught mother sees is a sweet pretty dressable object; far more time and effort being given—even before its birth—to the making of clothing, than to the making of its constitution or character.
Then we see children as "a care," and a care they are to our worldwide incompetence. How pathetic is the inadequacy of the young mother! She would never dare to undertake to run a racing stable with no more knowledge and experience than she brings to run a family.