And as home is
the nursery of the state as well as of the church on earth and in heaven,
we must see that it is a physical, intellectual and religious nursery. We
shall briefly consider it in these aspects. Indeed the Christian home
cannot be considered in a more interesting and responsible light. The
little child, dedicated to God in holy baptism, is entirely helpless and
dependent upon the ministrations of the nursery. There is the department of
its first impressions, of its first directions, of its first intellectual
and moral formation, of the first evolution of physical and moral life.
There the child exists as but the germ of what is to be. It grows up under
the fostering care and plastic power of the parents. God's commission to
them in the nursery is, to bring up these germs of life, in His nurture
admonition.
"Take the germ, and make it
A bud of moral beauty. Let the dews
Of knowledge, and the light of virtue, wake it
In richest fragrance and in purest hues."
The nursery is the department of home in which the mother fulfils her
peculiar mission. This is her special sphere. None can effectually take her
place there. She is the center of attraction, the guardian of the infant's
destiny; and none like she, can overrule the unfolding life and character
of the child. God has fitted her for the work of the nursery. Here she
reigns supreme, the arbitress of the everlasting weal or woe of untutored
infancy.
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