man's life is blessed—even now, disordered as it is by his own wilfulness and sin; consider how numerous and various those delights are, and behold in them the benignity of man's Maker and Heavenly Father. And in taking this wide survey, where shall we begin? what spot in the landscape is not clothed with green? what portion of man's life has not the dew of Divine blessing upon it?
Let us begin, then, with the beginning of life: let us contemplate man in infancy. The babe is sleeping. Watch his little unconscious motions. Note the light movements of the lips. First, he draws them down slightly, knitting at the same time his tiny eyebrows—a look of momentary sadness: it was but for a moment, for now a smile breaks over the face, that little dream-cloud is dispersed, and heaven's full sunshine beams on his infantile spirit: he even laughs out. What pretty pictures does he see? Are angels talking to him in their own language, which he seems to unstand better than man's, as being yet nearer to heaven than earth? That pretty Irish legend of angels whispering to infants would almost seem to be the truth. What else makes him smile so? what else causes those changes of expression to pass so rapidly over his little countenance, like cloud-shadows chasing each other over a landscape? His eyes are shut; it is nothing of earth that he sees; it is nothing earthly that he hears. His little thoughts, whatever they be, are all from the world of spirit,—that is plain: may we not believe they are from heaven, and caused by the presence of attendant angels? Are we not indeed told expressly that there are angels who are attendant upon little children, and who, as it were, belong to them?
