How Old Are You?
Nineteen years old? Have you reckoned the number of minutes that have elapsed since your birth? The number is startling: nine million, three hundred and thirty-three thousand, two hundred. Each of those minutes has flown to God; and He has examined them, and weighed them, and for them you must give account. Each minute bears its own impress (as a coin bears the impress of the sovereign) and only those marked with the image of God will avail you for eternity.
—Anon.
The Infinite Value of Time in Childhood
I will protect childhood, that it may not, as in earlier generations, be pinioned, as in a strait-jacket, in garments of custom and ancient prescription that have become too narrow for the new time. I shall show the way and shape the means, that every human soul may grow of itself, out of its own individuality…
From each object of nature and of life, there goes a path toward God…
The first groundwork of religious life is love—love to God and man—in the bosom of the family.
Childhood is the most important stage of the total development of man and of humanity.
Without religious preparation in childhood, no true religion and no union with God is possible for men.
The lovingly cared for, and thereby steadily and strongly developed human life, also the cloudless child life, is of itself a Christ-like one.
—Friedrick Froebel.
Alternate Reading: I John 3: 1-8.