ld, 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.

"Discipline at length,
O'erlooked and unemployed, grow sick and died,
Then study languished, emulation slept,
And virtue fled. What was learned,
If aught was learned in childhood, is forgot;
And such expense as pinches parents blue,
And mortifies the liberal hand of love,
Is squandered in pursuit of idle sports
And vicious pleasures."

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