The thought of Jesus, as a child, has great weight with children who have learned to think of him at all. In thinking of him, they form an image of all that the morning of a pure and fervent life should be and bring. In former days I knew a boy artist, whose genius, at that time, showed high promise. He was not more than fourteen years old; a slight, pale boy, with a beaming eye. The hopes and sympathy of friends, gained by his talent, had furnished him with a studio and orders for some pictures. He had picked up from the streets a boy still younger and poorer than himself, to take care of the room and prepare his colors; and the two boys were as content in their relation as Michael Angelo with his Urbino. If you went there you found exposed to view many pretty pictures: a Girl with a Dove, the Guitar Player and such subjects as are commonly supposed to interest at his age. But, hid in a corner, and never, shown, unless to the beggar page, or some most confidential friend, was the real object of his love and pride, the slowly growing work of secret hours. The subject of this picture was Christ teaching the doctors. And in those doctors he had expressed all he had already observed of the pedantry and shallow conceit of those in whom mature years have not unfolded the soul; and in the child, all he felt that early youth should be and seek, though, alas! his own feet failed him on the difficult road. This one record of the youth of Jesus had, at least, been much to his mind. In earlier days, the little saints thought they best imitated the Emanuel by giving apples and coats; but we know not why, in our age, that esteems itself so enlightened, they should not become also the givers of spiritual gifts. We see in them, continually, impulses that only require a good direction to effect infinite good. See the little girls at work for foreign missions; that is not useless. They devote the time to a purpose that is not selfish; the horizon of their thoughts is extended. But they are perfectly capable of becoming home missionaries as well. The principle of stewardship would make them so. I have seen a little girl of thirteen,--who had much service, too, to perform, for a hard-working mother,--in the midst of a circle of poor children whom she gathered daily to a morning school. She took them from the door-steps and the ditches; she washed their hands and faces; she taught them to read and to sew; and she told them stories that had delighted her own infancy. In her face, though in feature and complexion plain, was something, already, of a Madonna sweetness, and it had no way eclipsed the gayety of childhood.