What wonderful provision has God made for the happiness, safety, and well-being of infants. He has implanted in the human breast a natural love of offspring, and has provided for each child parents, who should be of mature age, and who should have been so trained by their parents, that by combined wisdom, sagacity and experience, it may be duly watched over and cared for, and so trained as to answer life's great end, viz., "To glorify God and enjoy him forever."

Then how wisely is the body framed, and most wonderfully adapted to answer all the purposes of life, and especially during the period of infancy and childhood, when the body must be more or less exposed to accidents; while therefore it is destitute of experience, and cannot take care of itself, its bones are all soft and yielding, and more particularly of the skull which incloses and protects the brain, and those of the limbs are made flexible, so that if it falls they may bend and not break.

We see daily some new development of wonderful powers and faculties in every new-born infant. An infant has a natural and instinctive desire to exercise its limbs, its voice, and indeed all its bodily functions. How soon it begins to laugh and coo like a little dove, to show you that it is social in its disposition, asking for your sympathy in return.

It is curious and interesting to watch a young child when it first opens its eyes upon the light of day or the light of a candle. With what evident satisfaction does it slowly open and close its eyelids, so adapted—to say nothing of the wonderful mechanism of the eye itself—to let in sufficient light to gratify desire, or to shut out every ray that would prove injurious to the untried organs.

What incipient efforts are first made to feel and examine different objects, and how very soon even infants become possessed of some of the elementary principles of the most abstruse sciences, and that without a teacher. How many thousands of times will you see it endeavor to put up its little hands before its face, before it is able to control its movements so as to be able to examine them critically.

We propose to dwell, hereafter, somewhat minutely upon the all-important subject of infant training, and in a way to show the care and attention which both parents should bestow upon each child, so as to provide proper food, clothing, and the means of self-culture and amusement, and absolute control over it at the earliest possible period—the earlier the better, so as to secure "a sound mind in a sound body."

It is really pitiable to find so large a proportion of young parents who seem to think that but little instruction can be imparted, and in fact that but little is needed in the care and management of infants, whereas their education commences, in very many respects, and in a very important sense, as soon as they are born.

Man is a complex being, composed of mind, soul and body, mysteriously united as to their functions, in beautiful harmony with each other, yet so distinct as absolutely to require widely different methods of training, that each shall do its office without encroaching upon the others, and in a way to secure a symmetrical character.

No wonder the proper training of children should become painfully interesting to Christian parents, when they consider the pains-taking, the watchfulness, the restraints, the self-denial, and the encouragement which may be requisite for this. The faith and prayers which may be necessary to bring their children into the fold of the Good Shepherd, who in his last commission to his disciples did not forget to remind them, saying, "Feed my lambs," and whose promise and prediction, before his coming into the world, was, "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings I have ordained praise." The Scriptures inform us that it was the purpose of God when he "set the solitary in families," to "seek a goodly seed."

How delightful and consoling then is the thought, in this world of sin and temptation, where there are three mighty obstacles to the final salvation of our children—the world, the flesh and the devil, that angels, ministering spirits, are appointed to "keep their watchful stations" around the families of the just. "Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister to them who shall be heirs of salvation?"

When parents cheerfully fall in with the great designs of God, and in dependence upon him in the use of the divinely appointed means, in his preparing a people to himself, what a glorious combination there is in all this to fulfill his gracious purposes. Not only God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, but the angelic hosts, and all good people by their prayers and labors, help forward this grand and glorious design.

When beyond this sublunary sphere, and the vail is removed which now hides from our view the realities of the unseen world, with what different emotions may we suppose parents will look upon their mission on earth. It will indeed seem wonderful that they should have been thus intrusted with the care and guardianship of children, which in a peculiar sense is their own, and in this respect widely differing from the angelic band, whose happiness, though they are permitted to minister to the saints, in such efforts and experience, must be inferior to that which parents will feel in training their own offspring—even emulating the all-wise Creator in his preparing a people for himself. It is certainly but natural to suppose that the happiest souls in Heaven will be those parents who are the spiritual parents of their own children.

The benefits which must result to parents in the careful training of infants—children who are, by means of parental faith and fidelity, converted in early life, can scarcely be apprehended, certainly not fully, in this world, even by the most judicious Christian parents.

Considering the instinctive love of offspring which God has implanted in the parental bosom, it is most painful to see the utter dislike which so many persons at the present day, who have entered the marriage relation, evince to the care and responsibility which the guardianship of children must ever involve.

There is something in all this manifestly wrong. It is unnatural. It is even monstrous—even below the brute creation. It interferes with the whole economy of nature, and frustrates the wise and benevolent designs of the Creator, when he set the solitary in families. No person who takes into view eternal realities and prospects, can, while so doing, indulge in such selfish, carnal and sordid views. Those who are without natural affection are classed by Paul with the enemies of all righteousness. We cannot therefore but look suspiciously upon all such as deny the marriage relation, cause of abuses (this is not the way to cure them), or, for any pretext, profess to plead the superior advantages of those who, for reasons best known to themselves, may choose a state of "single blessedness," however plausible or cogent their arguments may appear in favor of such a choice. We may not do evil that good may come, or in other words, "root up the tares, lest we also root up the wheat."

Original.