These qualities and characteristics of our infancy--trust, filial
reverence, freshness, simplicity--are not qualities to be left behind,
but the natural forecast of that religious spirit which is the highest
growth of maturity, and our own safeguard against the hardening and
debasing influences of the world and the flesh. And this was the
Saviour's meaning when He said, "Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom
of God as a little child shall in nowise enter therein." And if there is
one thing more than another that constitutes the special curse of any
depraved influence acting on young lives, it is that it robs the later
life of these childlike qualities which are the gifts of God to bless us
in youth and age.

But assuming that we bear all this in mind, and hold fast to these
fundamental gifts, and so escape those lower and baser forms of life
which we meet all about in the world, spoiling the manhood and
embittering the age of so many men, we cannot forget the essential
difference between mature years and the years of early growth.

As we grow towards manhood our life necessarily loses its childlike and
unreflecting spontaneity in the ferment of thought, desire, and passion,
and in the light of experience; and therefore it becomes a matter of no
slight importance to estimate the value of that which we hold in our
hands to-day, the nature of the web which our conduct is weaving, and the
fateful character of any mistake in the purposes, notions, ambitions, or
tastes that are, as a matter of fact, fixing the drift and direction of
our life. But to do this amidst all the daily temptations of life is not
always an easy matter; and it is certain that we shall not do it if we do
not fully recognise, while our life is still young and unhampered, the
importance of these two very obvious reflections, which, in fact, resolve