ng.

But when we turn from the Gospel and these thoughts which it stirs in us
to our common life of every day, does it not rather seem sometimes as if
this teaching of the Lord were all a dream and had no reality? And yet
there is hardly one of us but would confess that, having once seen this
revelation of the Lord, we are put to shame if, as happens sometimes, a
young soul comes amongst us endowed with these very gifts of innocence,
and high purpose, and trust, and promise of all goodness, which so won
the Saviour's heart, and is met, when he comes, in school or house, not
by care, or sympathy, or guidance, or protection, as of an elder
brother's love, but by experiences of a very different sort. You would
agree that it is a shame to us if such an one comes only to find the
misleading influence of some thoughtless or bad companion, or to have
held up before him some bad tradition as the law which should rule his
life here.

I have known--which of us in the course of years has not known?--such
cases in our school experience. A child has come from a refined and
loving home, but only to meet with roughness or coarseness; and instead
of retaining those gifts and qualities of childhood, which are the
godlike qualities of life and meant to be permanent, he has been led to
grow up utterly unchildlike, depraved, debased, hardened; and there is no
sadder sight to see than a growth of this kind. And if you have ever
seen it; if you have ever noticed the falling away from childlike
innocence to sin, from purity to coarseness, from the open, ingenuous,
trusting spirit to sullen hardness, from happiness to gloom, you know how
terribly in earnest the Saviour must have been when He denounced that woe
on any one who causes such debasement of a young soul--"Whoso shall
offend one of these little ones, it had been better for him that a
millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of
the sea."

III. THE BREVITY OF LIFE.

"I must work the works of Him that sent Me, while it is day: the night
cometh."--ST. JOHN ix. 4.

There are few things more commonly disregarded by us in our early years
than the brevity of our life through all its successive stages, and the
fleeting nature of its opportunities.

In childhood we are almost entirely unconscious of both these
characteristics of life. Indeed, it would hardly be natural if it were
otherwise. That reflective habit which dwells upon them