is seen here; so let us look up as to a Father's
fare, take hold of his hand, go in and out and lie down securely in his
presence, and cherish faith. If children only teach us to do this, how
beautiful and how great is their mission!

III. Children waken in us new and powerful affections. Nobody but a
parent can realize what these affections are, can tell what a fountain
of emotion the newborn child unseals, what chords of strange love are
drawn out from the heart, that before lay there concealed. One may
have all powers of intellect, a refined moral culture, a noble and
wide-reaching philanthropy, and yet a child born to him shall awaken
within him a depth of tenderness, a sentiment of love, a yearning
affection, that shall surprise him as to the capacity and the mystery of
his nature.

And the relation of a mother to her child; what other is like it?
Without it, how undeveloped is the great element of affection, how small
a horn of its orb is filled and lighted! What was she until that new
love woke up within her, and her heart and soul thrilled with it, and
first truly lived in it? Of all the degrees of human love, how amply is
this the highest! In all the depths of human love, how surely is this
the nethermost! When illustrations fail us, how confidently do we seize
upon this! The mother nurturing her child in tenderness, watching over
it with untiring love! O! that is affection stronger than any of this
earth. It has a power, a beauty, a holiness like no other sentiment.
When that child has grown to maturity, and has gone out from her in
profligacy and in scorn; when the world has denounced him, and justice
sets its price upon his head, and lovers and companions fall off from
him in utter loathing-we do not ask, we know, there is one heart that
cannot reject him. No sin of his can paralyze the chord that vibrates
there for him. No alienation can cancel the affection that was born at
his birth, that pillowed him in his infancy, centred in him its life,
clasped him with its strength, and shed upon him its blessings, its
hopes, and its prayers.

And no one feels the death of a child as a mother feels it. Even the
father cannot realize it thus. There is a vacancy in his home, and a
heaviness in his heart. There is a chain of association that at
set times comes round with its broken link; there are memories of
endearment, a keen sense of loss, a weeping over crushed hopes, and a
pain of wounded affliction. But the mo