bears through life precisely the same dispositions, or is at all times
equally under the same influences or governed by the same motives. The
gentle and amiable by nature may come into circumstances which shall
induce unwonted irritability and ill-humor; the irascible and
passionate, surrounded in some favored time, by all that heart can wish,
may seem as lovely as though no evil tempers had ever deformed them; and
the children who may be the offspring of these episodes in life, may
bear indeed a character differing wholly from the usual character of
their parents, but altogether corresponding to the brief and unusual
state which ruled their hour of beginning life. So is it also in
physical constitution. The feeble and sickly have sometimes intervals of
health, and the robust see months of languor and disease. Hence,
perhaps, the differences which are observable many times in the children
of the same family with regard to health and natural vigor.

We cannot enter into the subject. It is wide and extended as human
nature itself. It is also, apart from the Gospel of God's grace, a very
discouraging subject to the parent who contemplates it with
seriousness, and with an earnest desire to ascertain the path of duty.
"How useless," we may be tempted to exclaim, "any attempt to gain an end
which is so uncertain as the securing any given constitution, either of
body or mind, for my children. To-day I am in health, full of
cheerfulness and hope; a year hence I may be broken and infirm, a prey
to depressing thoughts and melancholy forbodings. My mind is now
vigorous and active; who knows how soon the material shall subject the
intellectual and clog every nobler faculty? What will it suffice that
to-day I feel myself controlled by good motives, and swayed by just
principles, and possessed of a well-balanced character, since in some
evil hour, influences wholly unexpected may gain the ascendancy, and I
be so unlike my present self that pitying friends can only wonder and