The Child That Does Not Stumble

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917 edition. Excerpt: ... THE CHILD THAT DOES NOT STUMBLE THE CHILD MUST NOT STUMBLE PHYSICALLY "Ample childhood makes rich youth, and rich youth glorious manhood, and these, taken together, form the perfect life.... The process of childhood must concern itself physically, with birth, nutrition, and growth." C. Hanford Henderson. The stern caution of the Master against causing "one of these little ones, that believe on me, to stumble" (Matt. 18: 6) suggests the modern scientific view-point regarding the child. "To stumble" implies the interruption of progress. We think of the child now as a traveler from far realms of being. He is a little stranger--a pilgrim--having come a long journey, and still to pursue a further one. To cause him to stumble is to make him fall down upon his journey, to impede his movements, to obstruct his path. During his prenatal journey the child traverses with amazing swiftness long periods of development hinted at in the words of Boyesen: "I am the child of earth and air and sea, My lullaby, by hoarse Silurian storms was chanted, And through endless changing forms of tree and bird and beast The toiling ages wrought to fashion me." To be born into the world a human baby, is to have completed a most dramatic stage of the biological career. The little child has been thought of as an adult in miniature. The better informed see that to have longer arms, longer legs, and larger head are not the most important changes that must befall him as a growing creature. They see that the transitions of growth correspond to vast periods in the history of organic development. He has indeed a long journey to go on the road to becoming a finished human product. Bergsen's definition of time as marking qualitative rather than quantitative changes will help...