If there is one time more than another when children ought to hear only loving words from their parents, and be helped to feel that theirs is a home of love and gladness, it is when they are going to bed at night. Good-night words to a child ought to be the best of words, as they are words of greatest potency. Yet not every parent realizes this important truth, nor does every child have the benefit of it.

The last waking thoughts of a child have a peculiar power over his mind and heart, and are influential in fixing his impressions and in shaping his character for all time. When he turns from play and playmates, and leaves the busy occupations of his little world, to lie down by himself to sleep, a child has a sense of loneliness and dependence which he does not feel at another time. Then he craves sympathy; he appreciates kindness; he is grieved by harshness or cold neglect.

How glad a true child is to kneel by his mother’s knee to pray his evening prayer, or to have his father kneel with him as he prays! How he enjoys words of approval or encouragement when they precede the good night kiss from either parent! With what warm and grateful affection his young heart glows as he feels the tender impress of his mother’s hand or lips upon his forehead before he drops asleep. How bright and dear to him that home seems at such an hour! How sorry he is for every word or act of unkindness which he then recalls from his conduct of the day! How ready he then is to confess his specific acts of misdoing, and all his remembered failures, and to make new resolves and purposes of better doing for the future!

Whatever else a child is impatient to grow away from, he does not readily outgrow the enjoyment of his mother’s good-night. As long as she is willing to visit his bedside, and give him a kiss, with a loving word, just before he goes to sleep, he is sure to count that privilege of his home as something above price, and without which he would have a sense of sad lack. And at no time is he more sure than then to be ready to do whatever his mother would ask of him; at no time do gentle, tender words of loving counsel from her sink deeper into his heart, or make an impression more abiding and influential.

There are young men and women, still at their childhood’s home, who look for their mother’s coming to give them her good-night kiss, with no less of interest and grateful affection than when they were little boys and girls. And there are many more people—both young and old—away from their homes, who thank God with all their hearts for the ineffaceable memories of such tokens of their dear mother’s love, while yet they were with her.

Notwithstanding this, however, there is perhaps no one thing in which parents generally are more liable to err than in impatient or unloving words to their children when the little ones are going to bed. The parents are tired, and their stock of patience is at the lowest. If the children are not as quiet and orderly and prompt as they should be, the parents rebuke them more sharply than they would for similar offenses earlier in the day. Too often children go to bed smarting under a sense of injustice from their parents, and brood over their troubles as they try to quiet themselves down to sleep. Their pillows are often wet with their tears of sorrow, and their little hearts are, perhaps, embittered and calloused through the abiding impressions of the wrong they have suffered, or the harshness they have experienced, while they were most susceptible to parental influences for good or ill.

It is a simple matter of fact that some parents actually postpone the punishment of their children for the misdeeds of the day until the leisure hour of twilight and bed-time. A great many mothers besides the “old woman who lived in a shoe,” in providing for a large family of children, have often “whipped them all soundly, and sent them to bed.” Perhaps children, as a rule, receive more whippings at bed-time than at any other of the twenty-four hours. And unquestionably they then have more scoldings.

“Do you hear me, children?” sounds out the voice of many a mother into the nursery as the children are getting to bed. “If you don’t stop playing and talking, and go right to sleep, I’ll come up there and just make you.” And that is the echo of that mother’s voice which rings longest in her children’s ears.

Again, there are mothers who, without any thought of unkindness, are unwise enough to deliberately refuse a good-night kiss to their children, as a penalty for some slight misconduct; not realizing the essential cruelty of withholding from the little ones this assurance of affection, at a time when the tender heart prizes it above all else. The first effect of such a course as this is to cause bitterness of grief to the children. The repetition of such a course is liable to loosen the parent’s loving hold on the little ones, and to diminish the value of the good-night kiss. It is, indeed, probably true, that more children out of reputable homes are soured, and estranged, and are turned astray, through harshness and injustice, or by unwise severity, at their bed-time hour, than from any other provoking cause in their home-life.

Even where there is no harshness of manner or severity of treatment on the part of the parents, there is often an unwise giving of prominence, just then, to a child’s faults and failures, so as to sadden and depress the child unduly, and to cast a shade over that hour which ought to be the most hopeful and restful of all the waking hours. Whatever is said by a parent in the line of instruction toward a better course, at such a time, should be in the way of holding up a standard to be reached out after, rather than of rebuking the child’s misdoings and shortcomings in the irrevocable past. The latest waking impressions of every day, on every child, ought to be impressions of peace and joy and holy hope.

A sensitive, timid little boy, long years ago, was accustomed to lie down to sleep in a low “trundle-bed,” which was rolled under his parents’ bed by day, and was brought out for his use by night. As he lay there by himself in the darkness, he could hear the voices of his parents, in their lighted sitting-room, across the hall-way, on the other side of the house. It seemed to him that his parents never slept; for he left them awake when he was put to bed at night, and he found them awake when he left his bed in the morning. So far this thought was a cause of cheer to him, as his mind was busy with imaginings in the weird darkness of his lonely room.

After loving good-night words and kisses had been given him by both his patents, and he had nestled down to rest, this little boy was accustomed, night after night, to rouse up once more, and to call out from his trundle-bed to his strong-armed father, in the room from which the light gleamed out, beyond the shadowy hall-way, “Are you there, papa?” And the answer would come back cheerily, “Yes, my child, I am here.” “You’ll take care of me to-night, papa; won’t you?” was then his question. “Yes, I’ll take care of you, my child,” was the comforting response. “Go to sleep now. Good-night.” And the little fellow would fall asleep restfully, in the thought of those assuring good-night words.

A little matter that was to the loving father; but it was a great matter to the sensitive son. It helped to shape the son’s life. It gave the father an added hold on him; and it opened up the way for his clearer understanding of his dependence on the loving watchfulness of the All-Father. And to this day when that son, himself a father and a grandfather, lies down to sleep at night, he is accustomed, out of the memories of that lesson of long ago, to look up through the shadows of his earthly sleeping-place into the far-off light of his Father’s presence, and to call out, in the same spirit of child-like trust and helplessness as so long ago, “Father, you’ll take care of me to-night; won’t you?” And he hears the assuring answer come back, “He that keepeth thee will not slumber. The Lord shall keep thee from all evil. He shall keep thy soul. Sleep, my child, in peace.” And so he realizes the twofold blessing of a father’s good-night words.

A wise parent will prize and will rightly use the hour of the children’s bed-time. That is the golden hour for good impressions on the children’s hearts. That is the parent’s choicest opportunity of holy influence. There should be no severity then, no punishment at that time. Every word spoken in that hour should be a word of gentleness and affection. The words which are most likely to be borne in mind by the children, in all their later years, as best illustrating the spirit and influence of their parents, are the good-night words of those parents. And it may be that those words are the last that the parents shall ever have the privilege of speaking to their children; for every night of sleep is a pregnant suggestion of the night of the last sleep. Let, then, the good-night words of parents to their children be always those words by which the parents would be glad to be remembered when their voices are forever hushed; and which they themselves can recall gladly if their children’s ears are never again open to good-night words from them.