is the result of
our experience, and comes later. It is enough for a child if he follows
pure and safe instincts, and lives without reflection a healthy,
unperverted life, under wise guidance and good teaching. Growing in this
way, free from corrupting influences or the contagion of bad example, and
poisoned by no bad atmosphere, he develops naturally towards a manhood
which is rooted in healthy tastes, affections unspoilt, and in good
habits. Thus you see what the very young have a right to claim at the
hands of all their elders--that they should be careful not to mislead
them, and should see that they live in pure air, and feed their growing
instincts and activities in wholesome pastures.

During the stage of earliest growth it would be a sign of unhealthy
precocity if a child were much occupied with the continuity of things, or
the close union of to-day with to-morrow, or of all our thoughts, acts,
pleasures, and tastes, with the bent of character which is being silently
but surely formed in us; and it would be equally unnatural if his
thoughts were to dwell much on the essential shortness of our life, and
the flight of opportunity which does not come back to us.

It is part of the happiness, or, I fear, it must be said sometimes, part
of the pain of early life, that the time before it seems so long. The
day is long with its crowded novelty or intense enjoyment, or possibly
with its dreary and intolerable task-work; to-morrow, with all its
anticipations of things desired or to be endured, seems long; and the
vista of years, as they stretch through boyhood and youth, manhood and
age, seems to lose itself in the far distance of its length. So, viewed
from its beginnings, life is long.

But with the approach of manhood all this begins to change. As we grow
out of childhood our self-conscious and reflective life grows; and thus
there rises in us the feeling of moral responsibility never to be shaken
off again. Not, however, that we should leave all our childhood behind
us. It hardly needs to be said that there are some characteristics of
our earliest years which every man should pray that he may retain to the
end. Unless he retains them his life becomes a deteriorating life.

And first among these is the reverential or filial habit. This deserves
our careful attention, because we sometimes see an affectation of silly
and spurious manliness, which thinks it a fine thing to cast it off. This
reverential or fi