It looks to you for all things. It confides in you, draws its
confidence from your protection, relies on your known love, takes you as
the pattern of its life, imitates you as its example, learns from you as
its teacher, is ruled by you as its governor, is measured by you as its
model, feels satisfied with you as its sufficiency, and rests its all upon
you as its all and in all.
Thus you are the very life and soul of its being, and hence in its
maturity, it will be a fair exponent of your character. You are the center
around which its life revolves, the circumference beyond which it never
seeks to go. What, therefore, if you are unfit to move and act in its
presence! What, if in its imitation of you, its life be a progressive
departure from God! Oh, what, if in the day of judgment, it be an outcast
from heaven, and, as such, bear the impress of a parent's hand! God will
then hold you accountable for every injury you may have done your child.
Begin, therefore, the work of training that infant, now, while its nature
is pliable, susceptible, yet tenacious of first impressions. "With his
mother's milk the young child drinketh education." What you now do for your
child will be seen in all future ages. "Scratch the green rind of a
sapling, or wantonly twist it in the soil, the scarred and crooked oak will
tell of thee for centuries to come." "It will not depart from the ways in
which you train it.
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