Only let the springs of reverence well up in your child's soul, and
then, and then only, will you be able to give your boy what, after all,
must always be the greatest safeguard from shipwreck in this perilous
world--religious faith, that stops him at the very threshold of
temptation with the words: "How can I do this great wickedness and sin
against God?" Your very attitude as you kneel by his side with bowed
head and folded hands while he says his little evening and morning
prayer will breathe into his soul a sense of a Divine Presence about our
bed and about our path. Your love--so strong to love, and yet so weak to
save--can lead his faltering childish feet to that Love which is deeper
than our deepest fall, "which knows all, but loves us better than it
knows." You can press your child against the very heart of God, and lay
him in the Everlasting Arms, that faint not, neither are weary; and,
with the mother of St. Augustine, you may know that the child of such
prayers and such tears will never perish.

"Happy he
With such a mother! faith in womankind
Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high
Comes easy to him, and though he trip and fall
He shall not blind his soul with clay."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 8: This is the case with our recognized medical manuals; I do
not know whether it is equally true of American manuals.]

[Footnote 9: Vol. ii. See chapter on "The Position of Women."]