The Argosy — page 291: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Inestimable Loans. 233 in an instant ; and remember it takes longer to rouse a lion than a lamb. As Carlyle wisely remarks: “The quickest and completest vegetable is the cabbage.” Nature is slow but sure in her developments ; and the higher the development, the slower she often is. One day’s sunshine opens the bud of a wild anemone ; but years of sunshine and shower, of wind and calm are required for the full development of the oak. God has not put a ready-made character into your hands, but He has placed that httle human life with you that you may lead it higher and higher to the light from whence it came, and whence it has to make its way back again. | For I often think we are here somewhat in the position of a child who is being taught to walk. The mother sets it on its feet, not very far away from her ; though to the little one, full of unconscious dread at being abandoned even for so short a time by the loving hand, the walk seems never-ending. It has been put from its mother’s arms to find its way back, and when it gets there all the misery is forgotten in the long kiss of endearment which is reward enough for its brave effort. This, however, is a digression: a short allegory, if you will. What I wanted to show is that God has placed your child in your care in order that you may teach it to return to Him from whom it came: and this you can only do thoroughly when it is young; for in the course of nature you must one day leave it, and it must fight for itself, and in its turn lead others. If you have one child in your family, not as pretty, not as bright and not as engaging as the others, do not turn away ; for as the sun shines on the dandelion as well as the lily of the valley, so ought a mother’s care and love to be shed upon @éf/ her children, be they what they may. You never can tell. That nature, which to you appears morbid and morose, may be so formed in order to bear future crosses and privations, trials that, may be, your bright, careless, impulsive child would sink under, or, worse still, grow cynical and sceptical under. I despise partiality where children are concerned. But if your nature is so constituted that it must be more forbearing, more loving and more devoted to one child than another, then let it be for the one who needs it the most. Not the favoured child, endowed with nature’s outward gifts, but that other, who, if deprived of the precious blessing of a mother’s love, will begin to think the world is loveless, and will enter into the struggles of life under this impression, and gradually —unless some softening influence of either friend or teacher step in—through the belief that there is no love in your heart towards them, will gradually lose their belief in the love of God. This may sound nonsense, but it is not, for we judge God by our earthly relationships, and by our own feelings towards those relationships. There is no surer way of making a child a sceptic than by denying it the love which ought to be a type of that Higher Love, but which GOGO S (SO) _ i”