e
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 prop