children and similar measures educates the populace to sympathise with and protect all helpless innocence and guard social purity as a thing essential to the nation's welfare. Savage indeed must be the heart that does not lose something of its savageness in dealing with a little child, foul indeed if it does not feel its foulness rebuked by that spotless innocence. Does not the very worst man feel something of shame in uttering a word that would contaminate it, and the better man feel that the presence of a little child condemns even an unhallowed thought?

If you have read the most charming of George Eliot's novels, you will remember how the miserly weaver of Raveloe, soured by false accusation and mistreatment, is redeemed by his efforts to rear the little waif whose golden curls he finds one night lying in the place whence his treasured coins had been stolen. And perhaps you may recall Bret Harte's story of the little maid born and left motherless in the "Roaring Camp," gradually transforming those Californian miners by her unconscious influence as they try to "do right by the little 'un "-the sole representative of her sex in those wild surroundings.

If that is fiction, it is at any rate true to nature, and what follows is fact. In one of our gaols there was a woman who was the terror of the warders and the despair of the governor-stubborn, sullen, and addicted to violent transports of rage as though possessed by a demon. All kinds of punishment had been tried in vain. One day she had been taken out with the other women for exercise in the prison court, and the governor's wife happened to pass

across it with her baby in her arms. With one bound the woman sprung upon her and tore the child away. The warders thought she was going to destroy it, and hastened to the rescue. "Oh let me keep it," she cried-" let me keep it just a few minutes." She smothered the soft cheeks with kisses and hugged the babe to her breast. Separated from her own offspring, the mother-instinct hungered wildly for satisfaction. The governor had no more trouble with that woman. To carry his little one in her arms for ten minutes once a day was a reward that stimulated her to marvellous self-control. To be denied it was the one punishment she dreaded, and it was only twice necessary. Gradually her whole nature softened. The little child led her into the paths of quietness and hope.

There is leading and discipline for us even in the faults of our children, not only in the exercise they give to our patience, firmness and self-control, but that we often see our own faults reproduced in them, and I am compelled to believe (in spite of Professor Weissmann), that even acquired moral characteristics may be transmitted. As that belief spreads and is more deeply pondered, it will induce mẹn and women from youth upwards arduously to cultivate virtue in themselves for the sake of their offspring; and so in a new sense, the little child— the child that is to be-shall lead them.

III. Hitherto I have spoken of the leading only in its moral aspects, but the religious ones must not be overlooked. It would have been interesting to discuss at the opening of our discourse what part the little child has played in the evolution of religion

B

in the earliest period of human history. But let us now go no farther back than to the advent of Christianity, nor let us even pause to dwell upon the significance of Bethlehem, where the world's Redeemer came as a little child. Let us remember his word "Of such is the kingdom of heaven." Let us recognize that the centrepoint of his revelation is that man stands to God in the relation of child to father, thereby supplying us with a double key to the interpretation of religion and the mysteries of life. A double key I say; for on the one side, when we look at our own fatherhood with its depth of yearning tenderness, its intense solicitude, its capacity for sternness and at the same time of boundless self-sacrifice, its forbearance, its sense of oneness with our offspring, it dimly reflects the divine nature in its relation to us, and gives an image of God truer than any that can be gained merely by surveying the field of nature or working out the conclusions of philosophy. On the other side, when we look at our children, especially the little ones, and mark their ready gratitude, their affection, their absolute trustfulness, their boundless belief in what we are able to do, how vivid the picture of what we must strive to be in relation to God!

Friend, dost thou dread the morrow? Has it in store for thee some great trial? Dost thou stand helpless, hopeless in prospect of the difficulties that surround thee? See that little child carried across the road down which the traffic pours incessantly, doomed to destruction indeed if left to himself; but he is not. His arms are about his father's neck; his eyes are fixed, not on the strange faces or on the

rattling vehicles, but on his father's countenance. He is not alarmed. He is calm, content, happy, Where, then, should thy faith be fixed, whither thine eyes turned, in the rush and roar of life, in the torrent of adverse circumstances? Let the little child lead thee.

Art thou conscience-stricken, burdened with a sense of guilt? Does memory refuse to banish that dark deed thou hast done? Behold at thine own knee the little maiden who looks up with tearful eyes and sobs out the confession that can no longer be kept secret, who has kept away from thee in shame and fear, but can keep away no longer, nor rest till thou hast pressed her to thy bosom and wiped away those tears with a kiss of forgiveness. Thus go to thy heavenly Father and meet with like response.

Or art thou perplexed, confounded by the mysteries of life—so complex its plan, so conflicting its motive impulses, so dark its problems, so inexplicable thy own experience that thou even askest at times-Why am I here at all? Well, what saidst thou yesterday to thy boy, fresh home from his first term at boarding school, who came to thee with just such a tale of disorder and confusion, of rules hard to keep and sometimes conflicting, lessons hard to learn and useless when learned, needless restrictions, unnecessary hardships, evil example and right overborne by might, winding up with the question," Why did you send me there?" Was not thy answer, "My boy, you must wait to know. I cannot explain all now. By-and-by when you are older you will understand." And thou, least child in the great

school of the Universe, dost thou expect to comprehend it all? Canst thou accept thine own answer coming back from the lips of thy heavenly Father. Thou shalt know hereafter.

'Take it on trust a little while,

Soon shalt thou read the mystery right

In the full sunshine of His smile."

Let the little child lead thee. Oh, the children are always teaching us if we are willing to be taught and led, with their far-reaching questions revealing the depths of our own ignorance, with their artless simplicity and directness rebuking our evasiveness and deceptiveness, with their ready faith in what they cannot see condemning our captious unbelief, with their dreamland in which their fancy plays showing how much brightness imagination may lend to life-aye, and often with their innate spirituality uplifting us, for truly of some children, it is manifest that "heaven lies about them in their infancy, and trailing clouds of glory do they come from God who is their home."

And when they return thither their leading is not ended. It is only in a new sense begun. The treasure lifted up draws the heart after it. An oriental traveller relates that he once saw a shepherd trying to lead his flock across a broad, though shallow river. At first he failed. The sheep hung back. Then, taking under each arm a little lamb, he stepped himself into the stream. The two bleating mothers followed, and then the whole flock. A parable. The death-river looks dark and threatening. The rich pastures on the other side are unheeded. Our