of the Shadow of Death before years shall have blunted the
point of its terrors, or religion robbed them of their sting,--it is
only not atrocious because so unwittingly wrought.

And bodily health is only one of the possessions which every child has a
right to claim from its parents. Not merely health, but dispositions,
traits, lie within human control far beyond the extent of common
recognition. We say that character is formed at fourteen or sixteen, and
that training should begin in infancy; but sometimes it seems to me,
that, when the child is born, the work is done. All the rest is
supplementary and subordinate. Subsequent effort has, indeed, much
effect, but it cannot change quality. It may modify, but it cannot make
anew. After neglect or ignorance may blight fair promise, but no after
wisdom can bring bloom for blight. There are many by-laws whose workings
we do not understand; but the great, general law is so plain, that
wayfaring folk, though fools, need not err therein. Every one sees the
unbridled passions of the father or mother raging in the child.
Gentleness is born of gentleness, insanity of insanity, truth of truth.
Careful and prayerful training may mitigate the innate evil; but how
much better that the young life should have sprung to light from seas of
love and purity and peace! Through God's mercy, the harsh temper, the
miserly craving, the fretful discontent may be repressed and soothed;
but it is always up-hill work, and never in this world wholly
successful. Why be utterly careless in forming, to make conscious life a
toilsome and thankless task of reforming? Since there is a time, and
there comes no second, when the human being is under human
control,--since the tiny infant, once born, is a separate individual, is
for all its remaining existence an independent human being, why not
bring power to bear where form is amenable to power? Only let all the
influences of that sovereign time be heavenly,--and whatever may be true
of total depravity, Christ has made such a thing possible,--and there
remains no longer the bitter toil of thwarting, but only the pleasant
work of cultivating Nature.

It is idle, and worse than idle, to call in question the Providence of
God for disaster caused solely by the improvidence of man. The origin of
evil may be hidden in the unfathomable obscurity of a distant,
undreamed-of past, beyond the scope of mortal vision; but by far the
greater part of the evil that we see-