Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 64:254 (Apr 1907)
Article: Education And Character
Author: Walter E. C. Wright

BSac 64:254 (April 1907) p. 353

Education And Character

Professor Walter E. C. Wright

The human infant is a most helpless creature. How much less he can do for himself than many a young animal! The colt, as soon as it is born, can stand on its clumsy legs and walk with awkward gait. The fishes of the sea can swim from the start and forage for themselves. A chicken, the moment it escapes from the shell, can run about and pick up its own food. But the child of proud man can only lie where he is placed and feed on what is given him. To be sure the same is true at first of many young birds, but with them the helpless condition is gone by in a few days. In the case of the child it is months before he can even creep. He may walk in a year, but many years must pass before he can provide for himself.

Nevertheless the possibilities of the child are immeasurably beyond those of the whole animal world. The mature, developed man is the highest of all creatures on the earth and has dominion over all the works of God. Look with awe upon the infant! This now helpless creature may attain a place among the great. Once such an one as he, became in thirty years the world-conquering Alexander. Such another became Plato, and yet another, Shakespeare. How puny the creature lying in the arms of Jocabed, the bondwoman, in Egypt! Let . him not perish by the cruel edict of Pharaoh. This is Moses,

BSac 64:254 (April 1907) p. 354

who may become the deliverer of a nation and the lawgiver of the world.

The contrast between an acorn and the oak into which it may grow, is infinitesimal, compared with the difference between that babe in Egypt and the leader of Israel. The transformation of the acorn into the oak is simply a matter of growth. Also in the passage from infancy to manhood a striking feature is the growth of the body, and far more marvelous is the development of the mind. The senses of the infant are little more than rudimentary. If warm and well fed and blessed with good digestion, this little germ of humanity will pay so little attention to sights and sounds as to sleep on by the hour amid all the stir of the family life. After sight and hearing develop, there is no judgment of the distance of visible objects, or of the direction of sounds. He has no language but a cry. Months pass before muscular activity can be coordinated enough to turn the body in the cradle. Yet in twenty or thirty courses of the sun through the zodiac the infant Raphael has developed the sense of sight to paint a Sistine Madonna, the infant Beethoven has developed the sense of hearing to compose his immortal music, the infant Paganini has attained such power of coordinating the muscles of arm and fingers that he can thrill an audience by successive tones from the four strings of a violin. In th...