What charms and momentous interests surround the cradle of infancy! When the first wailing of dependence reaches the listening ear, what new-born sympathies spring up in the parent's bosom! What a thrill of rapture the first soft smile of her babe sends to the mother's heart! It is this, the parents' likeness unsullied by their faults and cares; it is this, their living love in personal being,--their love breathing and smiling before them, lisping their names; it is this,--their new-born hope and care,--that gives to infancy such a charm, such a never-dying interest, and causes the parent to cling to it with such fond tenacity. "Can a mother forget her sucking child?" Never, while she claims a mother's heart! The couch of her babe is the depository of all those fond hopes and joys and cares and memories to which a mother's heart is sacred. The infant is the most interesting member of the Christian home. It is the first budding of home-life, disclosing every day some new beauty, "the father's lustre and the mother's bloom," to gladden the hearts of the family. "As the dewy morning is more beautiful than the perfect day; as the opening bud is more lovely than the full blown flower, so is the joyous dawn of infant life more interesting than the calm monotony of riper years." It is the most interesting, because the purest, member of the household. It is the connecting link which binds home to its great antitype above. "Ye stand nearest to God, ye little ones," nearer than those who have tasted the bitter cup of actual sin. They are the budding promises, the young loves, the precious plants of home; they are its sunshine, its progressive interest, its prophetic happiness, the first link in the chain of its perpetuity. Like the purple hue of the wild heath, throwing its gay color over the rugged hill-side, they cast a magic polish over the spirit of the parent, causing the home-fireside to glow with new life and cheerfulness. Infants are emblems of the loved and sainted ones in heaven. "Of such is the kingdom of heaven." "Except ye become as this little child, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven." This is based upon proper principles. The heart of the child is purely devotional and confidential. It is a helpless dependent upon the parent. It abdicates its self-will with joy; silently do the laws of home control it; its reverence and love are the melody of its being; its life is an exchange of obedience for protection. Its path is chosen for it by the lamp of parental experience, and the calm pure light of a mother's love. How close it keeps to the heart that loves it, and to the hand that leads it! It looks without doubt or suspicion in the parent's eye, and makes the parent's home and interest its own.