mislead, spoil or degrade him in any way; do anything to rob a child of
any of these Divine gifts, rob him of his innocence, or trustfulness, or
his guileless heart, and sow the seeds of evil habits or tastes in their
place, and you know the denunciation or curse which the Divine voice has
laid upon you for your evil deed.

A child, then, is, as it were, a living symbol of that which draws to us
the love of Christ, and we cannot doubt that he is so by virtue of his
innocence, his obedient spirit, his guilelessness, or simplicity of
character, his trustfulness, and by all the untarnished and unspoilt
possibilities of goodness in him.

It is in the blessed endowment of such gifts as these that the little
child looks in the face of Christ, and is embraced in the arms of His
love.

And these are, or they once were, your gifts. As you love the better
life, and hope for good days, hold them fast and cherish them, or if any
of them be unhappily lost, let it be your endeavour to recover it.

As we contemplate such a scene as this in our Lord's life with the little
child in the midst, and listen to the Saviour's words, all the commands
and injunctions to keep innocency, to keep the spirit of obedience, to
keep a guileless and trusting and loving heart, gain a new force. They
seem to speak to us with new voices; for if the true life, the life that
has in it the hope of union with Christ, must be a life endowed with
these gifts, whether in youth or age, what a blessed thing it will be for
you if you have never lost or squandered them. We cannot too soon learn
this lesson; for if under the influence of any wrong motives, or
following any wrong ideals, or misled by any bad example, you go astray