under the influence of unholy example; and the
delicate tints of this blossom will soon fade; the blush of loveliness will
soon give way to the blight of moral deformity.

[Illustration: TEACHING THE SCRIPTURES. J. Porter]

Hence every babe will be the parent's glory or the parent's shame, their
weal or their woe. If entrusted to them, God will hold them responsible for
its moral training. He will require it from them with interest. Their trust
involves the eternal happiness or misery of their child. The productions of
art will perish; the sun will be blotted out, and all the glory and
magnificence of the world will vanish away, but your babe will live
forever. It will survive the wreck of nature, and either shine as a diadem
in the Redeemer's crown of glory, or dwell in the blackness and darkness of
perdition forever.

To you, Christian parents, as the stewards of God, this precious being is
entrusted. The care of its body, mind and spirit is committed to you; and
its character and destiny in after life will be the fruit of your dealings
with it. It looks to you for all things. It confides in you, draws its
confidence from your protection, relies on your known love, takes you as
the pattern of its life, imitates you as its example, learns from you as
its teacher, is ruled by you as its governor, is measured by you as its
model, feels satisfied with you as its sufficiency, and rests its all upon
you as its all and in all.

Thus you are the very life and soul of its being, and hence in its
maturity, it will be a fair exponent of your character. You are the center
around which its life revolves, the circumference beyond which it never
seeks to go. What, therefore, if you are unfit to move and act in its
presence! What, if in its imitation of you, its life be a progressive
departure from God! Oh, what, if in the day of judgment, it be an outcast
from heaven, and, as such, bear the impress of a parent's hand! God will
then hold you accountable for every injury you may have done your child.

Begin, therefore, the work of training that infant, now, while its nature
is pliable, susceptible, yet tenacious of first impressions. "With his
mother's milk the young child drinketh education." What you now do for your
child will be seen in all future ages. "Scratch the green rind of a
sapling, or wantonly twist it in the soil, the scarred and crooked oak will
tell of thee for centuries to come." "It will not depart from the ways in