her, in the nursery,
is ever evolving into the strength of maturity those powers of her child
which will be wielded for happiness or for misery. Her babe is an "embryo
angel, or an infant fiend." We behold in that fragile form, the bud of the
strong man,--the possibility of one who may in a few years arouse with his
thrilling eloquence a slumbering nation, or with the torch and sword of
revolution, overturn empires and dethrone kings, or with his feet upon the
walls of Zion, and the words of life upon his lips, overthrow the
strongholds of Satan, and bring the rebel sinner in penitence to the feet
of Jesus. Yea, we see in that wailing infant of a week, the outspringing of
an immortal spirit which may soon hover on cherub-pinion around the throne
of God, or perhaps, in a few years, sink to the regions of untold anguish.
Oh, it is this which gives to the cradle of infancy such a thrilling
interest. The star of those new-born hopes, which hangs over it, will set
in eternal night, or rise with increasing splendor, till it is lost in the
full blaze of eternal day!

Infants are a great, a dangerous and responsible trust. They are the
property of God,--"an heritage from the Lord," given to their parents as a
loan, a "talent of trust to be rendered back with interest." The infant is
especially the mother's trust.

"Though first by thee it lived, on thee it smiled,
Yet not for thee existence must it hold,
For God's it is, not thine!"

Given by its Creator in trust to her, it is her task to bring it up for
God. Here especially do we see the holy mission of the mother. None but the
mother's heart and love can give security for this trust. The father is
unfit by nature for the delicate training of infancy. The mother's hand
alone can smooth the infant's couch, and her voice alone can sing him to
his rosy rest. Her never-wearied love alone can watch beside him "till the
last pale star had set,"

"While to the fullness of her heart's glad heavings
His fair cheek rose and fell; and his bright hair
Waved softly to her breast."

She is the ministering angel of infancy, and the priestess of the nursery
of home. She sets the first seal, makes the first stamp, gives the first
direction, supplies the first want, and soothes the first sorrow. To her is
committed human life in its most helpless and dangerous state. Touch it
then with the rude hand of parental selfishness; let it grow up in a barren
soil, amid noxious weeds,