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 th