Chapter XVII—Family Habits.

Much of the character, usefulness and happiness of home depend upon home habits. No one is without habits, good or bad. They have much to do with our welfare here and hereafter. Hence the importance of establishing proper habits.

Habit is a state of any thing, implying some continuance or permanence. It may be formed by nature or induced by extraneous circumstances. It is a settled disposition of the mind or body, involving an aptitude for the performance of certain actions, acquired by custom or frequent repetition. There are habits of the body, of the mind, of action; physical, mental, moral and religious habits. All these are included in the term home-habits.

Habit has been considered an "ultimate fact," that is, one of those qualities of life which are found to exist, and beyond which no investigation can be made. Habit may be referred to the law of action which pervades all vital being. Nature demands the repetition of vital action, and habit arises from this demand and from the manner in which it is supplied. It is the fruit of the operation of the law of repetition of action in all life. Hence it is, that habit becomes a part of our very existence, and that the well-being and happiness of our existence depend so much upon it.

The facility of action depends upon habit. In proportion as the actions of life become a habit, they will be easily performed, and performed with pleasure. The capacity to establish habits is the consequence of the power given us to promote our own welfare. This capacity is designed to bind us to that course of action which will accomplish the purposes of our existence. If rightly used, it is the guardian of our happiness; but if misused it will be our certain ruin. It will delight and fascinate until it subjugate our will, and lead us on, as in the case of the drunkard and the gambler, to infamy and to hell.

Home-habits are easily formed and established. Some kind, either good or bad, are being established every day. They are often secretly and unconsciously formed. All the principles and rules of conduct there introduced become at once the nuclei of future habits. Those increase in power and supremacy as they are formed. We see this in the use of tobacco and intoxicating drink. These are, at first, disagreeable, and the victim has the power of repelling and overcoming them; but soon the habit is formed, when their use becomes pleasant, and he is made a willing slave to them.

The same may he said of the habits of industry, of study, of frugality, yea, of all the moral and religious acts of the Christian. It is easy to form such habits in children. Evil habits are more easily established, because we are naturally inclined to all evil; and when once formed, no parental interposition can break them up. Hence the importance of an early training up to good. If parents but leave their children to their own ways, they will run into evil habits; for sin is an epidemic. Profanity and falsehood and all other outrages against God will soon become the controlling habits of their lives. But when taken early, parents have complete power over their offspring. It is, therefore, a gross abuse of the Christian home when parents become indifferent to the formation of habits. It is their duty to crush every evil habit in its incipient state.

The forming of a good habit may not at first be congenial with our feelings. It may be irksome. But if we persevere in it, that which at first was painful and difficult will soon be a source of enjoyment. Thus the habit of family prayer may at first be repulsive even to the Christian parent; a feeling of delicacy and the sense of unworthiness may, at the family altar, repress the feelings of enjoyment experienced in the closet; but soon the habit of this devotion will be formed, when it will be enjoyed as an essential part of home. To abandon it would be like breaking up the tenderest ties which bind the members together. The same may be said of the omission of a duty. How easily can the Christian form the habit of omitting family prayer or any other duty! Every such omission but forms and increases the habit, until it gains an ascendancy over our sense of duty, and at last exhibits its sovereign power in our total abandonment of the duty. Each omission has the power of reproducing itself in other and more frequent omissions. In this way Christian homes insensibly become unfaithful to their high vocation, and degenerate finally into complete apathy and estrangement from God. That indulgence which the misguided sympathy of too many parents prompts to, and which does away with all parental restraint, is the cause of children coming under the curse of evil habits. In this way parents often contribute to the temporal and eternal ruin of their offspring. This indulgence is no evidence of tender love, but of parental infatuation. It shows a blind and unholy love,—a love which owns no law, which is governed by no sense of duty, and which excludes all discipline; and hence unlike the love of God, who "chastiseth every one whom He loveth and receiveth."

The force and influence of home-habits will teach us the importance of establishing such only as receive the sanction of God. Habits, as we have seen, are much more easily formed than broken. When once established they enslave us to them, and subject our character to their iron despotism. They become the channel through which our life flows. The stream of our existence first forms the channel, and then the channel rules, guides and controls the current of the stream. The deeper the channel is wrought, the greater is its moulding and controlling influence over the stream. Thus our habits become our masters, and are the irrevocable rulers of our life. This is true of good, as well as of bad habits. We come into voluntary subjection to them, until we shrink from the first proposal to depart from them.

"Habit," says the Rev. C.C. Colton, "will reconcile us to everything but change, and even to change, if it recur not too quickly. Milton, therefore, makes his hell an ice-house, as well as an oven, and freezes his devils at one period, but bakes them at another. The late Sir George Staunton informed, me, that he had visited a man in India, who had committed a murder, and in order not only to save his life, but what was of much more consequence, his caste, he submitted to the penalty imposed; this was, that he should sleep for seven years on a bedstead, without any mattress, the whole surface of which was studded with points of iron resembling nails, but not so sharp as to penetrate the flesh. Sir George saw him in the fifth year of his probation, and his skin then was like the hide of a rhinoceros, but more callous. At that time, however, he could sleep comfortably on his bed of thorns, and remarked that at the expiration of the term of his sentence, he should most probably continue that system from choice, which he had been obliged to adopt from necessity."

This illustrates the force of established habit, and the pliability of our nature in yielding a voluntary subjection to it. What is at first involuntary, painful, and a self-denial to us, wall when it passes into a habit, become agreeable, because the habit bends our nature to it, chains us down to it, infatuates the will, and thus becomes, as it were, a second nature. If so, it is very plain that our habits are either a blessing or a curse. When good they are a safeguard against evil, give stability to our character, and are the law of perseverance in well-doing. Such habits in the Christian home form, an irresistible bulwark against the intrusions of temptation and iniquity. But when they are bad, they chain us to evil, and impel us onward and downward to ruin. Hence from his habits we can easily estimate the merit or demerit of a person, know all his weak points and idiosyncrasies, and what will be the probable termination of his existence.

The same may be said of the habits of a family. They enter into its very constitution, rule and direct all its activities and interests. They cling to each member with more than magic power, and become interwoven with his very being; and by them we may easily ascertain the moral and spiritual strength of that family; we can tell whether the parents are faithful to their mission, and whether its members will be likely to pass over from the home of their childhood to the church of Christ. Who has not felt this power of habit? Who has not wept over some habits which haunt him like an evil spirit; and rejoiced over others as a safeguard from sin and a propellor to good? Is it not, therefore, a matter of momentous interest to the Christian home, that it establish habits of the right kind and quality?

It should never be forgotten by Christian parents, and they cannot be too careful to impress it upon their children, that habit engenders habit,—has the power of reproducing itself, and begetting habits of its own kind, increasing according to the laws of growth, as it is thus reproduced. A habit in one member of a family may produce a like habit in all the other members. The habits of the husband may be engendered in the wife, and those of the parents, in their children. If so, then are we not responsible for our habits? And shall any other kind save Christian habits, be found in the Christian home? These we cannot give in detail. It is plain that those habits only are Christian, which receive the sanction of God’s Word and Spirit, and find a response in the Christian faith and conscience. Here, for instance, is a habit being formed,—habit of thought: is it pure? Here is a habit of conversation: is it holy? Here is a habit of action: is it godly? And if not, it does not belong to the Christian home.

See, then, ye members of the Christian home, to the habits you are forming. Form the habit of "doing all thing’s decently and in order." Let the work and duties of each day be done according to method. This is essential to success in your pursuits and aims. Without this, your Christian life may be blustering and stormy, but you will accomplish little, and will be as unstable as water. One duty will interfere with another. You may have family prayer and instruction to-day, but something will prevent it to-morrow. Establish the habit of Christian industry. Be diligent; not slothful in business. Industry must be the price of all you obtain. You must be instant in season. The Christian home cannot be an indolent, idle home. Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might. Press forward.

It is said of Rutherford that "such was his unwearied assiduity and diligence, that he seemed to pray constantly, to preach constantly, to catechise constantly, and to visit the sick, exhorting from house to house, to teach as much in the schools, and spend as much time with the students in fitting them for the ministry, as if he had been sequestered from all the world, and yet withal, to write as much as if he had been constantly shut up in his study." Such should be the industry of each Christian home. Without it, temptation will beset the members. "A busy man is troubled with but one devil, but the idle man with a thousand."

Establish the habit also of perseverance in well-doing. "Be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord." "Be not weary in well-doing." Let the strata of your home be made up of the immovable Rock. He only that continueth unto the end shall be saved. Having done all, stand! Let your motto be, Perseverando vinces. Form the habit of contentment with your home and condition in life. "Godliness with contentment is great gain." If your home is humble, and not adorned with the embellishments and luxuries of life, yet it may be holy, and hence, happy. Avoid all castle-building. Do not fancy a better home, and fall out with the one you enjoy. Never permit the flimsy creations of a distorted imagination to gain an ascendancy over your reason and faith. Live above all sentimentalism and day-dreaming; and in all the feelings and conduct of your household, submit to the guidance of a superintending Providence, walking by faith and not by sight, assured that your present home is but probationary and preparatory to a better home in heaven.

Chapter XVIII—Home-Government.

Home is a little commonwealth jointly governed by the parents. It involves law. The mutual relation of parent and child implies authority on the one hand, and obedience on the other. This is the principle of all government. Home is the first form of society. As such it must have a government. Its institution implies the prerogatives of the parent and the subordination of the child. Without this there would be no order, no harmony, no training for the state or the church; for—

The relation of the parent to the child is that of a superior to an inferior. The right of the parent is to command; the duty of the child is to obey. Hence it is the relation of authority to subordination. This relation includes the principles of home-government. The parent is not the author of his authority. It is delegated to him. Neither can he make arbitrary laws for home; these must be the laws of God. It is as much the duty of the parent to rule as it is for the child to be ruled.

The principle of home-government is love,—love ruling and obeying according to law. These are exercised, as it were, by the instinct of natural affection as taken up and refined by the Christian life and faith. This government implies reciprocity of right,—the right of the parent to govern and the right of the child to be governed. It is similar in its fundamentals to the government of the state and church. It involves the legislative, judicial and executive functions; its elements are law, authority, obedience, and penalties. The basis of its laws is the Word of God. We may consider the whole subject under two general heads, viz., parental authority, and filial obedience.

1. Parental authority is threefold, legislative, judicial and executive. The two latter we shall more fully consider under the head of home-discipline. The legislative authority of the parent is confined to the development of God’s laws for the Christian home. He cannot enact arbitrary laws. His authority is founded on his relation to his children as the author of their being; "yet it does not admit," says Schlegel, "of being set forth and comprised in any exact and positive formularies." It does not, as in the old Roman law, concede to the parent the power over the life of the child. This would not only violate the law of natural affection, but would be an amalgamation of the family and state. Neither is the parental authority merely conventional, given to the parent by the state as a policy. It is no civil or political investiture, making the parent a delegated civil ruler; but comes from God as an in alienable right, and independent, as such, of the state. It does not, therefore, rest upon civil legislation, but has its foundation in human nature and the revealed law of God; neither can the state legislate upon it, except in cases where its exercise becomes an infringement upon the prerogatives of the state itself.

Parents are magistrates under God, and, as His stewards, cannot abdicate their authority, nor delegate it to another. Neither can they be tyrants in the exercise of it. God has given to them the principles of home-legislation, the standard of judicial authority, and the rules of their executive power. God gives the law. The parent is only deputy governor,—steward, "bound to be faithful." Hence the obligation of the child to obey the steward is as great as that to obey the Master. "Where the principal is silent, take heed that thou despise not the deputy."

Here, then, we have the extent of the parent’s authority, and the spirit and manner in which it should be exercised. His power is grafted on the strength of another, and should not extend beyond it. Its exercise should not run into despotism on the one hand, nor into indifferentism on the other. According to the vagaries of some religious sentimentalists and fanatics, it is supposed that religion supersedes the necessity of parental government. They think that such authority runs counter to the spirit and requisitions of the gospel. But this is asserted in the broad face of God’s Word. The promptings of such sentimentalism are to permit children to do as they please, and to bring them up under the influence of domestic libertinism. Honor thy father and thy mother, is a command which explodes such a gaudy theory; and he who does not obey it, brutalizes human nature, dishonors God, subverts the principles of constitutional society, throws off allegiance to the prerogatives of a divinely constituted superior, and overthrows both church and state. Hence the severe penalties attached, in the Mosaic law, to disobedience of parental authority. "He that curseth his father or mother, shall surely be put to death." "The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it." And hence also that affectionate obedience which Joseph yielded to his aged father, and that profound veneration with which he kneeled before him to receive his dying blessing.

2. Filial obedience is the correlative of parental authority. If parents have authority, children must yield obedience to it. This is not only necessary to home-government, but also to the proper formation of the character of the child. It must be trained up under law and authority to prepare it for citizenship in the state. This must be the obedience of confidence and love. It does not imply the subordination of the slave.

As the father’s authority is not that of the despot, so the obedience of the child is not that of the servile, trembling subject. It is not unnatural,—no infringement upon the rights and liberties of the child. His subordination to the parent is the law of his liberty. He is not free without it. The home in which filial obedience is not yielded to parental authority is "a marvel of permitted chaos," and will soon become desolate, a scene of anarchy and strife. The members live in a state of lawlessness, destitute of reciprocated affection,—the parent unhonored, the father and mother despised and cursed, and the child untrained, uncared for, lawless, and unfit for the state or the church.

If, therefore, God has constituted governmental relations in the Christian home, and invested the parent with authority over his children, who will deny the coördinate obligations of the child to yield reverence, submission and gratitude to the parent? "Children, obey your parents in all thing’s; for this is well pleasing unto the Lord."

This is called the first commandment with promise. It is one of promise both to the parent and the child. Children are bound to obey their parents in all things, that is, in all things lawful and in accordance with the revealed will of God. The child is not bound to obey the parent’s command to sin,—to lie, steal, or neglect the means of grace; because these are express violations of God’s law; and in such instances the authority of God supersedes that of the parent. Obey God rather than man.

But, on the other hand, the obligation of the child is, to obey the parent in all things lawful and Christian. Where this is not done the Christian home becomes a curse. What an evil is a refractory child! How often does the parental eye weep in bitterness over such a child! How often have such children brought their parents down in sorrow to the grave! Let them think of this. Let parents think of this before it is too late. Let them think of the fearful criminality which is attached to parental indulgence and filial disobedience.

We may neglect and abuse the home-government in two ways, either by over-indulgence, or by the iron rod of tyranny. When we make it lax in its restraints and requisitions, it becomes merely nominal, and its laws are never enforced and obeyed. Often parents voluntarily relinquish their right and duty to rule their household; and as a consequence, their children abandon the duty of obedience, and grow up in a lawless state; or if they do command, they never execute their commands, but leave all to the discretion of their children. They violate their laws with impunity, until all influence over them is lost, and the child becomes master of the parent. The self-will of the former takes the place of the authority of the latter, until at last the home-government becomes a complete farce and mockery. Such parents are always making laws and giving commands; but never enforce them; they complain that they cannot get their children to obey them; and this cannot is but the utterance and exponent of their unfaithfulness and disgrace.

The opposite abuse of home-government is parental despotism,—ruling with a rod of iron, making slaves of children, acting the unfeeling and heartless tyrant over them, assuming towards them attitudes of hard task-masters, and making them obey from motives of trembling, fear and dread.

There is no christianity in all this. It engenders in them the spirit of a slave; it roots out all confidence and love; their obedience becomes involuntary and mechanical. They shrink in silent dread from the presence of their parents, and long for the time when they can escape their galling yoke. The parental rod destroys the filial love and confidence. Hence the obedience of the latter is servile; and home loses its tender affections and sympathies, and becomes to them a workhouse, a confinement; its restrictions are a yoke; its interests are repulsive, and all its natural affinities give way to complete alienation. The children of such homes, when grown up, are the most lawless and reckless, ready at once to pass over from extreme servitude to libertinism.

The government of the Christian home lies in a medium between these two extremes. It is mild, yet decisive, firm; not lawless, yet not despotic; but combines in proper order and harmony, the true elements of parental authority and filial subordination. Love and fear harmonize; the child fears because he loves; and is prompted to obedience by both. "But give thy son his way, he will hate thee and scorn thee together."

Christian parents! be faithful to the government of your household. Like Abraham, command your household. Without this, your children will be your curse and the curse of the state. Wherever they go they will become the standard-bearer of the turbulent, and brandish the torch of discord, until at last, perhaps, they will die in a dungeon or upon the gibbet. And then the curse will recoil upon you. It will strike deep into your hearts. It will come to you in the darkness of unfulfilled promises and blighted hopes and injured affections and desolated homes and wounded spirits and disgraced names and infamous memories! And you, in the face of these, will go down with bleeding sorrow to the grave, and up to the bar of God with the blood of your children’s destruction upon your skirts, its voice crying unto you from the grave of infamy and from the world of eternal retribution. You will then see the folly and the fruits of your diseased affection and misguided indulgence,—

Chapter XIX—Home-Discipline.

Discipline involves the judicial and executive functions of the home-government. It is the method of regulating and executing the principles and practice of government. It includes the rein and the rod, the treatment of offences against the laws of home, the execution of the parental authority by the imposition of proper restraints upon the child. It involves a reciprocity of duty,—the duty of the parent to correct, and the duty of the child to submit. God has given this discipline; He has invested the parent with power to execute it, and imposed upon the child the obligation to live submissively under it.

All must admit the necessity of home-discipline. "It must needs be that offense come." There is a corresponding needs be in the proper treatment of these offenses when they do come. Law implies penalties; and the proper character and execution of these are as essential to the true object and end of government as is the law itself. The former would he powerless without the latter. Through the agency of home-discipline the proper fear and love of the child are developed in due proportion and brought into proper relations to each other, making the fear filial and the love reverential. There is, therefore, the same call for discipline in the family as there is in the state and the church. It is the condition of true harmony between, the parent and child. "The child that is used to constraint, feareth not more than he loveth; but give thy son his way, he will hate thee and scorn thee together."

It is necessary because God commands it; and He commands it because it is indispensable to the security and well-being of the child, and, we might add, of the state and the church. "Withhold not correction from the child; for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell. He that spareth his rod hateth his son; but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes." Children are by nature depraved, and if left to themselves, will choose evil rather than good; hence, as foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, the rod of correction must be used to drive them from it. He must be restrained, corrected, educated under law. In the language of Cowper—

There are two false systems of home-discipline, viz., the despotism of discipline, or discipline from the standpoint of law without love; and the libertinism of discipline, or discipline from the standpoint of love without law.

Home-discipline from the standpoint of law without love, involves the principle of parental despotism. It is extreme legal severity, and consists in the treatment of children as if they were brutes, using no other mode of correction than that of direct corporeal punishment. This but hardens them, and begets a roughness of nature and spirit like the discipline under which they are brought up. Many parents seek to justify such mechanical severity by the saying of Solomon, "he that spareth the rod spoileth the child." But their interpretation of this does not show the wisdom of the wise man. They suppose the term rod, must mean the iron rod of the unfeeling and unloving despot. Not so; God has a rod for all His children; but it is the rod of a compassionate Father, and does not always inflict corporeal punishment. It is exercised because He loves them, not because He delights in revenge and in their misery. He uses it, not to have them obey Him from fear of punishment, not to force them into a slavish service, and to cause them to shrink with trembling awe from His presence; but to correct their faults by drawing them to Him in fond embrace, in grateful penitence and hopeful reformation, under the deep conviction that every stroke of His rod was the work of love, forcing from them a kiss for His rod, and a blessing for His hand, the utterance of a sanction for His deed, "It was good for me that I was afflicted!"

This rod is very different, however, from that of the despot beneath whom the child crouches with trembling dread, and under the influence of whom he becomes, like the down-trodden subject, servile, brutish and rebellious. You will reap bitter fruits from such a discipline, which is but the exponent of the letter of the law without its spirit, and which has nothing for the child but the scowl and the frown and the cruel lash. You might as well seek to "gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles," as to reap from it a true reformation and religious training. Your child will be trained to hate the law, to despise authority, and to regard his obedience as a compromise of true liberty. He will, therefore, seek liberty only in the usurpation of law and government. He will contemn love, because where it should have been disinterested, and shown in its greatest tenderness and purity,—in the parent’s heart, it was abused and silenced.

That discipline, therefore, which is ever magnifying trifles, finding fault, scolding and storming, and threatening and whipping, and falling upon the child, like the continual dropping of rain in a winter day, casts a withering gloom over home, makes it repulsive to the child, gives to the parent a forbidding aspect, until the children become provoked to wrath, and regard their home as a prison, their life as a slavery, and long for the time when they may leave home and parents forever. Such discipline makes the reign of the parent a reign of terror. It reminds one of the laws of Draco, written in blood. It produces in the child a broken spirit, a reckless desperation, a hardened contumacy, a deep and sullen melancholy, a mental and moral hardihood which prepares him for deeds of outrage upon law and humanity. It is unnatural, revolting to human nature, to beat and crush, as if with an iron rod, the tender child of our hearts and hopes. It extinguishes natural affection; and no subsequent kindness can rekindle the flame. The child becomes forever alienated, and bears the curse of its maltreatment upon its character and destiny. "Ye parents, provoke not your children to anger, lest they should be discouraged."

The following quaint anecdote is a good commentary upon such discipline: A blacksmith brought up his son, to whom he was very severe, to his own trade. The urchin was, nevertheless, an audacious dog. One day the old vulcan was attempting to harden a cold chisel which he had made of foreign steel, but could not succeed; "horsewhip it, father," exclaimed the youth, "if that will not harden it, nothing will!"

Nothing justifies such cruel discipline. It results in depravity of life. The most notorious criminals began their career under the lash of parental cruelty. If rods and stripes and cries and tears and cruel beating are the first lessons of life we are to learn, then we shall be educated in as well as by these. The Europeans surpass all other nations in cruelty to their offspring. The Arab is tender to his children, and rules them by kindness and caresses. He restrains them by the corrections of wisely exerted love. Cruelty does not become the Christian home. It is revolting to see a parent stand with a rod over his child, to make him read the bible or say his prayers. You cannot whip religion into a child. This is opposite to humanity and religion.

Home-discipline from the standpoint of love without law, is the second false system which we have mentioned, and involves the principle of parental libertinism. It does not consist so much in the want as in the neglect and abuse of discipline. The restraints may be sufficient, and the threats abundant, but they are never executed. When the children disobey, the parents may flounder and storm, loud and long, but all ends in words, in a storm of passion or whining complaint, and the child is thus encouraged to repeat the misconduct, feeling that his parents have no respect for their word. Such a home becomes scolding, but not an orderly home.

Parents, through their misguided sympathy, often connive at filial disobedience. Their kindness is most unkind. Their parental love issues forth as a mere burst of feeling, unguided by either reason or law. Hence, their sentimental hearts become an asylum for filial delinquency and criminality. This is no proof of love, but the opposite; for "he that spareth the rod hateth his son; but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes." Love will thus prompt the parent to chasten his son while there is hope. Eli was an example of extreme parental indulgence. "His sons made themselves vile, and he restrained them not." It was the defect also of David’s discipline, and the fruit of this defect caused him to cry out in bitter anguish, "Oh Absalom, my son, my son, would to God I had died for thee!"

That parent who cannot restrain his children, does not bear rule in his house, and as a consequence, cannot bless his household. That parental tenderness which withholds the proper restraints of discipline from an erring child, is most cruel and ruinous. It is winking at his wayward temper, his licentious passions and growing habits of vice. And these, in their terrible maturity, will recoil upon the deluded parent, "biting like a serpent and stinging like an adder." Nothing is more ruinous to a child and disastrous to the hopes and happiness of home, than such relaxation of discipline. "A child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame." How many mothers have bitterly experienced this, and wept bitter tears over the memory of their degraded and wretched offspring! It is ruinous to the parent. He will both curse and despise thee. Your unlawful indulgence, therefore, is infanticide. Your cruel embraces are hugging your child to death. The sentiment of love should never crush the reason and violate the laws of love. Do you permit your sick to die rather than to inflict the pain of giving them the medicine to cure? This would be madness. And yet you do a similar deed when you indulge your child in wickedness. He will grow up lawless, headstrong, rebellious; and these may lead him on to poverty, infamy, crime and perdition, ending thus in total shipwreck of character and soul. You thus make for society bad members, drunkards, blackguards, paupers, criminals; and furnish fuel for the eternal burnings. And will not the curse rest upon you?

It is wonderful to what an extent this extreme indulgence prevails at the present day. Many parents seem insensible even to the necessity of any discipline, and think it is an infringement upon the liberties of the child. Mistaken parents! Such views are opposed to the laws of God and man. By them you sow for yourselves and children the seeds of a future retribution.

Thus we see that there are two dangerous extremes or false systems of home-discipline, viz., the exercise of parental fondness and sympathy without parental authority, on the one hand, and the exercise of parental authority without proper sympathy, on the other. Misguided sympathy and fondness will produce filial libertinism; and despotic authority will beget filial servility.

True Christian home-discipline lies in a medium between these. It involves the union of true parental sympathy and authority, of proper love and proper law; for affection, when not united to authority and law, degenerates into sentimental fondness; and authority and law, when, not tempered with love, degenerate into brutal tyranny, and produce inward servility and outward bondage. The parents who are, in discipline, prompted by the first, may be loved, but will not be respected. Those who are ruled by the second, may be dreaded, but will not be loved. The first does violence to law, and ends in the insubordination of the child and the imbecility of the parent. The second does violence to love, makes duty a task, correction a corporeal punishment, the child a slave, the parent a despot, and ends consequently in the destruction of natural affection. Hence, in home-discipline, true severity and true sympathy should unite and temper each other. Without this the very ends proposed will be frustrated.

True home-discipline repudiates the legal idea of punishment as much as of impunity. It lies in a medium between these, and involves the idea of Christian correction or chastisement. We should correct, but not punish our children. Correction is not the mere execution of legal penalties as such, but the fruit of Christian love and concern for the child. It does not mean simple corporeal chastisement, but moral restraints. The impunity is the fruit of love without law; the corporeal punishment is the execution of law without love; Christian correction is the interposition of love acting according to law in restraining the child. Hence, true discipline is the correction of the child by the love of the parent, according to the laws of home-government.

Abraham instituted in his household a model system of home-discipline. "I know him," says God, "that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the ways of the Lord to do justice and judgment." He was not a tyrant; his comrades did not bear the rough sternness of a despot, neither did his power wear the scowl of vengeance. But these bore the firmness and decision of love tempered and directed by the law of Christian duty and responsibility. They showed his station as a father; they wore the exponent of his authority as a parent, whose love was a safeguard against tyranny on the one hand, and whose accountability to God was a security against anarchy, on the other. Hence, his children respected his station, venerated his name, appreciated his love, confided in his sympathy, and yielded a voluntary obedience to his commands; for they discerned in them the blessing; and when offenses came, they bent in the spirit of loving submission and pupilage, under his rod of correction, and kissed it as the means of their reformation and culture.

Thus does home-discipline involve the firmness of parental authority united with the mildness of parental love. Love should hold the reins and use the rod. Then it will purify and elevate natural affection, and develop in the child a sense of proper fear, without either disrespectful familiarity or mechanical servitude.

The efficiency of home-discipline depends upon its early introduction, upon the decision with which it is administered, upon its adaptation to the real wants of the child, and upon the manner in which it is applied.

It should be commenced in due season, as soon as the child can understand its meaning and object. The child should be made to understand that he lives under authority and restraint. This will prepare him for a profitable correction when necessary. The great fault of many parents is that they begin too late to correct their children, and leave them until then in ignorance of its nature and intent. Hence, the child will not appreciate the parent’s motive, and will lack that pliability of spirit which is essential to reformation. "The sceptre," says James, in his Family Monitor, "should be seen by him before the rod; and an early, judicious and steady exhibition of the former, would render the latter almost unnecessary. He must be made to submit, and that while young, and then submission will become a habit; the reins must be felt by him early, and he will thus learn to obey them."

Home-discipline should be steady, uniform, consistent and reasonable. Both parents and children should be guided by the dictates of reason and religion. It should not be administered by the caprice of passion, nor received in the spirit of insubordination. It should be prompted by a parent’s heart, and inflicted by a parent’s hand. Convince the recreant child that you correct him from motives of love, and for his own good. Let reason and love be at the bottom of every chastisement; let them hold the reins and guide the rod; and when the latter is used, let it be from necessity. Lay no injunction upon your child without the ensurance of a compliance.

Your discipline should never involve impossibilities or uncertainties; neither should you permit your child to sport with your injunctions. Every command should produce either obedience or correction. You should be firm in the infliction of a threatened chastisement, and faithful in the fulfilment of a promise to reward. Many parents are always scolding, threatening and promising, but never execute and fulfil. As a consequence they run from one extreme of discipline to another.

In home-discipline, parents should act harmoniously and coöperate with each other. They should be of one mind and of one heart, and equally bear the burden. The one should not oppose the discipline which the other is administering. This destroys its effect, and leaves the child in a state of indecision, leading to prejudice against one or the other of the parents. It too often happens that parents thus take opposite sides,—the father too severe perhaps, and the mother too indulgent. Thus divided, their house must fall. Nothing is more ruinous to the child than for the mother to counteract by soothing opiates, the admonitions of the father. Children soon see this, and will as soon hate their father. When one parent thus holds the reins without the rod, and the other uses the rod without the reins, the very ends of discipline are frustrated. Sometimes the child is given over to the mother exclusively till a certain age, when the father begins to act without the mother. This is wrong. A child is never too young to be ruled by the father, and never too old to come under the softening influence of the mother.

Discipline should be administered with impartiality. Never make one child a favorite. Favoritism and consequent indulgence, will produce prejudice against the other children. It will introduce dissension among them. This is unworthy the Christian parent and his home. The history of Jacob and Joseph, as regards both the subject and the victim of parental favoritism, is a warning against such partiality. It produces, pride, envy, jealousy, family broils and strife, in which even the parents take a part, and by which the husband is often set against his wife, parents against children, and children against each other.

Correction is an essential element of true discipline. "The rod and the reproof give wisdom." There are two things in correction,—the reins and the whip, or the command and the chastisement. The one should not take the place of the other. The scepter must not be converted into a whip. If the reins are properly held and used, the whip need scarcely ever be required. If the child is timely and properly trained, commanded and chided, he will not require much chastisement,—perhaps no corporeal punishment. It is better to prevent crimes than to punish them; for prevention is more than cure.

Hence the first thing in discipline is timely and wholesome command. Guide and train your child properly, and you need seldom resort to coercion. Training and leading are better than forcing. By the former you establish a habit of systematic obedience which will soon become a pleasure to the child. By the latter you jade and vex and burden him. But when the reins will not do alone, then the whip must be resorted to. And the question at once arises, what kind of a whip? We answer, not such as you use to your horses and oxen in the team,—not the horse-whip. Corporeal punishment should be used only as a last resort, when all other corrections have failed, when the child becomes an outlaw, and his reprobate heart can be reached only through the infliction of bodily pain. As a general thing it is even then unavailing, because too mechanical to produce permanent good, and not adapted to mental and moral reformation.

Sometimes, however, there is necessity in the use of this rod. "Every child," says Dr. South, "has some brute in it, and some man in it, and just in proportion to the brute we must whip it." When thus necessary we should not shrink from this kind of correction. "It is pusillanimity, as well as folly, to shrink from the crushing of the egg, but to wait composedly for the hatching of the viper." Yet, on the other hand, in the language of Dr. Bell, "a maximum of attainment can be made only by a minimum of punishment."

In the discipline of home, whether by guidance or by forcing, whether by the rein or the rod, much depends upon the manner in which it is administered. It should always be adapted to the peculiar character and offense of the child. You can restrain some children better by kind words and promises than by rough admonitions and threats. Study, therefore, the peculiarities of your child, and prudently apportion the correction to the offense. If there are sincere penitence and confession, the correction should be purely moral. Let the object of every correction be to produce penitence and reformation of heart as well as of conduct, and a hatred of the offense. Always execute your threats and fulfill your promises at the time and on the occasion designated. Threaten as little as possible, and be not hasty in your threats. Treat your children as rational and moral beings:

Always examine the offense before you punish. See whether it is of ignorance or not,—whether of the head or the heart,—whether intentional or accidental. Examine his motives in committing the offense. If you find he merits correction, before you inflict it, lay before him the nature and enormity of the offense, wherein he disobeyed, the guilt of that disobedience, its consequences, and your duty to correct him for it.

Never correct in a state of anger. Some correct only when they are in a violent passion. This is ruling from passion, not from principle. It is like administering medicine scalding hot, which rather burns than cures. Be judicious and kind in all your discipline; otherwise you may engender in your child the very propensities and improprieties of action you desire to eradicate. A mild rebuke in the season of calmness, is better than a rod in the heat of passion. Let your children know and see that all your discipline is for their own good,—to arrest them from danger and ruin, and to train them up in the way God would have them go. Let your words and deeds show this in the form of parental kindness and sympathy and solicitude. This will do more than the angry look, the stormy threat, and the cruel lash.