MUSINGS and MEDITATIONS

New Zealand Graphic, 6 April 1907, Page 18

MUSINGS and MEDITATIONS

By

Dog Toby

THE CHILDREN'S REST.

"■T 4k E arc..told that the thousandth 11/ '■aby to outer the children’s ■M/ Rost at the Ghristehurcb Ex- * f hibition received a silver mug suitably inscribed. What the suitable inscription was we are not told; probably it was a verse or two of the song “They left the baby on the shore, a thing which they bad never done before.” 'The system of establishing places where we can leave what the papers in their advertising columns euphemistically term “eneunibcranees” is one capable ot almost indefinite expansion. Why, for instance, when ministers go for a holiday cruise to the Islands or the Sounds, or to various “conferences” in other countries, shoul.d they not. have a creche provided for them where they can leave their various bills to be eared for, and coddled in their absence, and called for on their return? Some ministerial parents might forget to eall for their oilspring, or they might lose the ticket, or the different parliamentary babies might get mixed and call for a second judgment of Solomon to decide the true ownership. This would only add to the excitement of life for the members of our House of Representatives, and a Home of Re.A. for most of our recent legislative enact-

ments. could not fail to be welcomed by the community as a whole. In social life some place where we could leave inconvenient companions to be called for would be much patronised. The married man could leave his mother-in-law, and unmarried couples could drop the often inconvenient chaperon. The astute confidence man might leave his victim in one of these halls of rest whilst he himself walked round the corner with bis victim’s watch and purse, and the gifts cs mugs to the inmates would in such eases be singularly appropriated. At Easter time, when our thoughts arc turned for a space tt things beyond this woidd, many of us will let memory wander back t ollie nay when we saw our love-lamp blown about the night, and angel arms caught- up our little one and carried it upwards to tho Children’s Rest. There is a pathos in the death of little childion such as there is in nothing else. Their love whilst they were with us was so entirely free from all selfseeking. so trustful, and so confiding. Where shall we find the like in the loves mid affections of maimer lives? More intense, move conscious, more knowingly capable of sacrifice, the love of wedded life may be; but it is the look of pure affection shining out of wildered eyes that we find in childhood, and nowhere else. Who can read the ehlid mind? Who knows what it has cost the baby soul to ke. p back the tears when it has had to surrender some new found joy, because mother would lie so vexed? For

children arc so eagerly anxious that we should share their pleasures with them, they bring us all their baby treasuscs that we, too. may share in their finds. When baby has picked up some particularly precious morsel on the lloor, or unearthed it from the place where we thought it had been so carefully hidden, how gleefully does it run to mother that she may have dome too. In thisworld, with its clouding earcs we too seldom know the angel inlluoices that are with

us till we sec the white wings lessening up the skies. What it means to watch by that little eot, when the little feet that used to patter over the house are still; when the parched lips that used to lisp our names are faintly moaning between their gasps for breath; when we would give our all to be able to call our little one back to health, and our thoughts keep wandering to the time when the baby arms weie round uh, and the baby voice was calling—only a mother’s heart can tlel. Ere the sun) loosed from its last ledge of life. Her little face peered round with anxious eyes, Then, seeing aU the old faces, dropped conlent. The mystery dilated in her look. Which on the darkening ilealliground, faintly caught Some likeness of the angel shining near. Ami all in her babe beauty forth she went, Her budding spring of life in tiny leaf, Her faint dawn whitened ju the perfect day; Bearing her life-scroll folded, without stain. And only throe words -written on it, —two Our names! Ah may they plead for us in heaven! And Easter cornea to bring us the message of hope, the message that the divine within us is immortal; and the little one in going to heaven has but opened a pathway thither, down which goodness comes streaming into our own souls. And when in after years we stand by the grave of the babe we lost in other days, should not we feel that in this stainless life taken from us, ero sin could blight or sorrow fade, we have really one of the most precious gifts that. God can give—the memory of unselfish love to make us less self-seeking in our Jives, the memory of innocent purity to make us less wedded to the baser passions of mankind. The life has returned io God who gave it, and returned as He gave it, unspotted by the world. We have a weary way to travel, seeing the sights and exhibitions of this life. Often will we be fain to stop and rest, but we are hurried on from corridoor to corridor, seeing much, finding interest in little, till our day of weary sight-seeing is done, and we pass once more through the gates to a wider and fresher world. And as we make with tired feet and stained robes, towards tho portals that shall open to us the great beyond, shall we not feel thankful that while we were wandering gloomily and wearily among the mazy corridors of life, God called our little one, in all its stainless purity, and took it to Himself to the bright and tearless Children’s Rest?