‘The Shout of a King.’––Let them grow up, too, with the shout of a King in their midst. There are, in this poor stuff we call human nature, founts of loyalty, worship, passionate devotion, glad service, which have, alas! to be unsealed in the earth-laden older heart, but only ask place to flow from the child’s. There is no safeguard and no joy like that of being under orders, being possessed, controlled, continually in the service of One whom it is gladness to obey.
We lose sight of the fact in our modern civilisation, but a king, a leader, implies warfare, a foe, victory––possible defeat and disgrace. And this is the conception of life which cannot too soon be brought be before children.