tence had won
Lost favor back again, and closed the breach."

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--

"Plants raised with tenderness are seldom strong;
Man's coltish disposition asks the thong;
And without discipline, the favorite child,