CHILDHOOD.

BY STEPHEN OLIN, D. D.

THERE is not in the wide world a living thing more helpless and unpromising than man in his infancy. He is feeble and dependent beyond any other animal, and for a much longer period. He is utterly unable to perform any good offices for himself. He cannot defend himself against the most insignificant enemy, or the most inconsiderable danger. He must inevitably perish, upon whatever spot his frail body may happen to repose, unless some careful hand feed, protect, and cherish him. Of the tact and skill which are to form the endowment of riper years, he does not now manifest the faintest trait. He is even less gifted than brutes of his own age, with the instincts which in the absence of a higher intelligence, guide every other living creature. He breathes, utters some inarticulate sounds, swallows the simple food that is put into his mouth, and makes some unmeaning muscular movements, and that is all he can do to announce to the spectator that this embryo immortal possesses even the lowest of the attributes of things that live.

Such is man physically, at his entrance upon a career in

which he is appointed to act so important a part, and fulfil so unfathomable a destiny. Nor of the higher faculties which he is to develop and exercise in after life does the slightest glimmering now appear. He exhibits nothing like character, whether good or evil. He has no reason, no conscience, no moral or immoral habits, no religion, no opinions, no ideas. His mind is a blank.

His heart is

a mere organ for the performance of animal functions. Yet is there something wonderful and even sublime in this embryo man. He may become a hero, a philosopher, or a saint, a scourge, or a benefactor of his race. He is likely to become an active and competent agent in human affairs, and to perform a part in the drama of the world; and he will assuredly become a partaker either of endless life or of eternal death. Great faculties lie concealed under such unpromising aspects. They are seen by the eyes of God; "yet being unperfect, in his book are they written; they are fashioned in continuance, when as yet there is none of them." They are not substances nor powers, but merely susceptibilities. To develop these latent capacities to bring them out for action and enjoyment-to transform this helpless, insignificant thing into a good and wise man, fitted to serve God and his generation on earth, and to enjoy him for ever in heaven, is the work of education. This is a task which it has pleased God to devolve upon parents, and to it they are bound by obligations as sacred as any that rest upon a moral being.

The duty of bestowing careful, timely culture upon infancy and childhood, is clearly indicated by their exceeding delicacy and susceptibility. Physical developments will indeed proceed very well with only the slightest attention on the part of the parent, or with none at all. The nursery, the play-ground, the field, and the work-shop, invite the bodily organs into due action, and impart vigor, skill, and activity. The intellect, too, however neglected by the teacher, imbibes knowledge from a thousand sources. Each of the senses becomes an inlet for valuable ideas. Business, social converse, human example, even inanimate nature, the sky, the air, and the earth, the elements in all their changes and activities, the vegetable kingdom,in a word, the visible world, and all that is, or is transacted, in it, become sources of instruction, which freely tender their lesson to the opening mind in contact with them, and force their teachings upon it, in its most passive states, and even in spite of indifference or reluctance. From all this it occurs, that every human being who grows up in a civilized community, attains a measure of intelligence sufficient for the common purposes of life, of the intelligence that guides the race in the satisfaction of its most pressing wants, and which must, on that account, rank high in comparison with that class of acquisitions and accomplishments which we are wont to dignify with the name of education. Divine Providence has thus mercifully ensured to the human being such degrees of physical

and mental development as are indispensable in the performance of those functions which pertain to self-preservation, and on which society is dependent for its being and material prosperity. For the higher culture which gives the mind enlargement, and elevation, and refinement, and opens before it a career of worthy occupations and enjoyments, years of patient labor and assiduous teaching are requisite; and parents are, unquestionably, bound by all the motives which duty and affection impose, to give to their offspring the best education which their providential positions and circumstances will allow.

Without stopping to enforce, by argument or inculcation, one of the plainest and least controverted of duties, we proceed to add, that the highest of the parent's obligations finds its sphere in the moral and religious training of his offspring. The superior importance of this department of education is sufficiently apparent, from the consideration, that whilst both the mind and the body, left to themselves, spontaneously acquire, from their own activity, and from the business and conflicts of the world, the discipline, as well as the knowledge and skill, most valuable in the pursuits of after life, the moral susceptibilities, if neglected by parent and teacher, are always perverted and corrupted. The most careful and unremitted culture is requisite to preserve them from irreclaimable deterioration. They come to no good by any spontaneous, unguided efforts or essays of their own, they will not remain in a state of embryo or

torpor, till genial influences and a plastic hand woo and guide them into kindly manifestations. To let the child alone, is to ensure both precocity and proficiency in evil. It affords demonstrative evidence of the constitutional depravity of man, as well as of its universality, that early childhood ever betrays a strong proclivity to wrong,—that it never fails of growing up in sin, except under decided counteracting influences.

This susceptibility to both moral and to demoralizing influences exists to an extent, and at an age, little suspected by inattentive observers. We give no countenance to the extravagant speculations of those who teach us that the character of the man, both moral and mental, is fixed in infancy, anterior to the dawn of reason; but we think it demonstrable that the bias which shapes our earthly and eternal destinies is usually received in early childhood. This is the obvious teaching of the Holy Scriptures; and all careful observation goes to confirm it. The mind at that early period is exquisitely susceptible to moral impressions. The delicate surfaces on which the daguerreotype so exactly portrays the human countenance, with no pencil or colors but reflected sunbeams, are not half so impressible as the unsophisticated spirit of childhood. The mind at that tender age is not only open to all influences, good and bad, but it spontaneously invites them to write upon its expanding capacities their own image and superscription. It longs for impressions, as the parched cornfield for genial