"--Matthew xviii., 10.
No threats so terrifying as those aimed at men who should harm
little children:
"It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about
his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the
sea."--Matthew xviii., 6.
It is impossible now to conceive the horrid indifference to
childhood's rights which preceded the birth of Christianity.
Infanticide was not the exception, but a settled custom. So much
so, that in Rome the "exposure" of children in desert places was
almost a virtue, since it gave the child some slight chance of
surviving.
Not a few, but thousands and tens of thousands of children were
thus "exposed." They fell a prey to wild beasts, or to the human
beasts, still more ferocious, who took the children to make
slaves or criminals of them.
Jesus came, and a miracle was worked--a miracle that no man will
deny.
This was the miracle:
Jesus said:
"For I say unto you, their angels behold the face of my Father
which is in heaven."
Jesus spoke, and thousands of millions of men, through nineteen
centuries, have believed, and obeyed the command.
Every man was warned that the child dying goes straightway into
the presence of God, and there, looking upon His face, bears
witness to the treatment meted out to him here.
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