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Early Influences

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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 11, 1863

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 22, No. 11.

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Early Influences

By Dr. Oldham

EARLY INFLUENCES.—There can be no greater blessings than to be born in the light and air of a cheerful, loving home. It not only insures a happy childhood—if there be health and a good constitution but it also makes sure a virtuous and happy manhood, and a fresh young heart in old age. I think it every parent's duty to try and make their children's childhood full of love and childhood's proper joyousness; and I never see children destitute of them through poverty, faulty tempers, or wrong notions of their parents, without a heartache. Not that all the appliances which wealth can buy are necessary to the free and happy unfolding of childhood in body, mind and heart—quite otherwise, God be thanked; but children must at least have love inside the house, and fresh air, and good play, and some good companionship outside; otherwise young life runs the greatest danger in the world of withering, or growing stunted, or at best prematurely old and turned inward on itself.—Dr. Oldham, at Greystones.