As soon therefore as a child begins to reason and to ask questions, "Who made this?" and "who made that?" it can understand that "the great and good God made heaven and earth." Indeed this truth is so self-evident that the heathen who have not the Bible are said to be without excuse if they do not love and worship the only living and true God, as God.
The man, therefore, of fourscore years, though he may understand all things else,—how to chain the lightning, to analyze all earthly substances, to solve every problem in Euclid, yet in matters of Gospel faith, before he can enter the kingdom of God, must come down to the capacity of a little child, and take all upon trust, and believe, and obey, and acquiesce, simply on the ground, "My Father told me so."
One of the first things I remember with distinctness as having occurred in the nursery, related to the matter of prayer. One night when a sister a year and a half older than myself had, as usual, repeated all our prayers suited to the evening, which had been taught to us, from a sudden impulse I made up a prayer which I thought better expressed my feelings and wants than any which I had repeated. My sister, who was more timid, was quite excited on the occasion. She said that as I did not know how to make up prayers, God would be very angry with me. We agreed to refer the case in the morning to our mother. When we came to repeat our morning prayers, the preceding transaction came to mind, and we hurried as fast as possible to dress, each one eager first to obtain the desired verdict.
Almost breathless with excitement, we stated the affair to mother. Her quick reply was, "The Bible says that Hezekiah, king of Israel, had been sick, and he went upon the house-top, and his noise was as the chattering of a swallow, but the Lord heard him." Without asking any further questions, ever after we both framed prayers for ourselves.
Soon after this occurrence a sudden death occurred in our neighborhood, and my mind was deeply affected. I went stealthily into our spare chamber to offer up prayer, feeling the need of pardon. Just as I knelt by the bedside, my eldest sister opened the door. Seeing her surprise at seeing me there and thus engaged, I was about to rise, when she came up to me, put her arms about my neck, kissed me, and without saying anything, left the room. This tacit approval of my conduct, so delicately manifested, won for her my love and my confidence in her superior wisdom; and though nearly sixty years with all their important changes have intervened, yet that trifling act is still held in grateful remembrance.
One such incident is sufficient to show the immense influence which an elder brother or sister may have, for weal or for woe, over the younger children. The smothered falsehood, the petty theft, the robbing of a bird's-nest, the incipient oath, the first intoxicating draught, the making light of serious things, with the repeated injunction—"Don't tell mother!" may foster in a younger brother the germ of evil propensities, and lead on till some fatal crime is the result.
When I was nine years old a letter was received by my father, the contents of which set us children in an uproar of joy. It was from our father's elder brother, who resided in a city seventy miles distant from our country residence. This letter stated if all was favorable we might expect all his family to become our guests on the following week, our aunt and cousins to remain in our family some length of time, and be subjected to the trial of inoculation from that dreaded disease—small-pox. We were all on tip-toe to welcome our friends, and especially our uncle, who from time to time had supplied us with many rare books, so that we had now quite a valuable library of our own. All our own family of children were at the same time put into the hospital. I shall never forget "O dear," "O dear, I have got the symptoms, I have got the symptoms!" that went around among us children.
I cannot but take occasion to offer a grateful tribute of thankfulness that we are not now required by law, as then, to subject our children to such an ordeal and to such strict regimen. Who ever after entirely recovered from a dread of "hasty pudding and molasses" without salt?
When all was safely over, and my uncle came to take his family home, there seemed to have been added a new tie of affection by this recent intimacy, and it was agreed that my uncle's eldest son, a year or two older than myself, should remain, and for one year recite to my father, and that I should spend that time in my uncle's family, and become the companion of a cousin three years younger, who never had a sister.
I have often wished that such exchanges might be more frequently made by brothers and sisters and intimate friends. It is certainly a cheap and admirable method of securing to each child those kind and faithful attentions which money will not always command. I needed the polish of city life—the freedom and the restraints imposed in well-disciplined schools, where personal graces and accomplishments were considered matters of importance as well as furniture for the mind; while my cousin would be benefited in body and mind by such country rambles, such fishing and hunting excursions, such feats of ball-playing, as "city folks" know but little about. Some fears were expressed lest this boy should lose something by forsaking his well-organized school, and fall behind his classmates. But I have heard that cousin say, as to literary attainments, this year was but the beginning of any high intellectual attainments; for till now he had never learned how to study so that intellectual culture became agreeable to him. And what was gratifying, it was found on his return home that he was far in advance of his classmates. So needful is it often to have the body invigorated, and the mind should receive a right bias, and that such kind of stimulants be applied as my father was able to give to the wakeful, active mind, of his aspiring nephew.