Our text at this time is Children and their treatment, or as it sounds better to our ears, Bairns, and how to guide them. You all know the wonder and astonishment there is in a house among its small people when a baby is born; how they stare at the new arrival with its red face. Where does it come from? Some tell them it comes from the garden, from a certain kind of cabbage; some from "Rob Rorison's bonnet," of which wha hasna heard? some from that famous wig of Charlie's, in which the cat kittled, when there was three o' them leevin', and three o' them dead; and you know the Doctor is often said to bring the new baby in his pocket; and many a time have my pockets been slyly examined by the curious youngsters,--especially the girls!--in hopes of finding another baby. But I'll tell you where all the babies come from; _they all come from_ _God_; his hand made and fashioned them; he breathed into their nostrils the breath of life,--of his life. He said, "Let this little child be," and it was. A child is a true creation; its soul, certainly, and in a true sense, its body too. And as our children came from him, so they are going back to him, and he lends them to us as keepsakes; we are to keep and care for them for his sake. What a strange and sacred thought this is! Children are God's gifts to us, and it depends on our guiding of them, not only whether they are happy here, but whether they are happy hereafter in that great unchangeable eternity, into which you and I and all of us are fast going. I once asked a little girl, "Who made you?" and she said, holding up her apron as a measure, "God make me that length, and I growed the rest myself." Now this, as you know, was not quite true, for she could not grow one half-inch by herself. God makes us grow as well as makes us at first. But what I want you to fix in your minds is, that children come from God, and are returning to him, and that you and I, who are parents, have to answer to him for the way we behave to our dear children,--the kind of care we take of them.