ons that he
tends to become like his environment?
Contrast such a child with one that is brought up in an atmosphere of
purity, refinement, and culture, and whose mind is always filled with
noble, uplifting suggestions of the true, the beautiful, and the
lovely. What a difference in the chances of these two children, and
without any special effort or choice of their own! One mind is trained
upward, towards the light, the other downward, towards darkness.
What chance has a child to lead a noble life when all his first
impressionable years are saturated with the suggestion of evil, when
jealousy and hatred, revenge, quarreling and bickering, all that is low
and degrading, fill his ears and eyes?
How important it is that the child should only hear and see and be
taught that which will make for beauty and for truth, for loveliness
and grandeur of character!
We ought to have a great deal of charity for those whose early lives
have been soaked in evil, criminal, impurity thoughts.
The minds of children are like the sensitive plates of a photographer,
recording every thought or suggestion to which they are exposed. These
early impressions make up the character and determine the future
possibility.
If you would encourage your child and help him to make the most of
himself, inject bright, hopeful, optimistic, unselfish pictures into
his atmosphere. To stimulate and inspire his confidence and
unselfishness means growth, success, and happiness for him in his
future years, while the opposite practice may mean failure and misery.
It is of infinitely more importance to hold the right thought towards a
child, the confident, successful, happy, optimistic thought, than to
leave him a fortune without this. With his mind properly trained he
could not fail, could not be unhappy, without reversing the whole
formative process of his early life.
Keep the child's mind full of harmony, of truth, and there will be no
room for discord, for error.
It is cruel constantly to remind children of their deficiencies or
peculiarities. Sensitive children are often seriously injured by the
suggestion of inferiority and the exaggeration of defects which might
have been entirely overcome. This everlasting harping against the bad
does not help the child half as much as keeping his little mind full of
the good, the beautiful, and the true. The constant love suggestion,
purity suggestion, nobility suggestion will so permeate the life
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