ty, and has a right to exert a restraining
influence over the child. This does not, of course, involve a right to
compel him to yield to the parent's arbitrary will. He can exert but a
moral control over him; and it is the child's duty to yield to this, so
long as it is consistent with scripture and the maxims of sound reason and
conscience. He should consult his parents, receive them into his
confidence, and give priority to their judgment and counsels.

Parents have the right to use coercive measures to prevent an imprudent
marriage by their children before they have arrived at age; for until they
are of age they are both legally and morally under the authority and
government of their parents, who are responsible for them. Hence the child
should recognize and submit to their authority. But this right to the use
of coercive measures extends only to the prevention of unhappy
marriages,--not to the forming of what the parents may regard happy
alliances, against the will of the child. No parent has the right to
compel a child under age to marry, because the marriage alliance implies
the age and free choice of the child.

But when the child reaches legal maturity, the coercive authority of the
parent ceases. His interposition then should not involve coercive, but
persuasive measures. Then a mere mechanical prevention of an unhappy
marriage would have no good moral effect, but would be productive of great
evil, inasmuch as it not only involves parental despotism, but the
restriction of a manifest and conceded right of the child. It would destroy
the sense of personal dignity and responsibility.

Persuasive measures will then accomplish more than all the efforts of the
parent to prevent an unhappy union, by threats of disinheritance and
expulsion from home. In this way parents often extend their interference to
most unreasonable extremes, and to the great detriment of the interests and
happiness of their children; while at the same time they often bring
disgrace and misery upon their own heads and home. They set themselves up
as the choosers of companions for their children, presuming that they
should passively submit to their selection whatever it may be. This is
taking away the free moral agency of the child, making no account of his
taste, judgment, or affections; and forming between him and the object thus
chosen a mere outward union, with no inward affinity.

In such cases it most generally happens that parents are pr