Page:The Mothers of England.djvu/31

26 done toward the development of those higher principles which were afterward to enlighten and regenerate mankind. It was the entire submission of the ignorant to the wise, of the weak to the strong, of the erring to the steadfast, of the guilty to the stainless and pure, that was required, before any more profound and expansive system of discipline could be brought to operate upon the different characters and habits of mankind; and although the child will soon, too soon, discover that its earthly parent is not so perfect as its young affection had taught it to believe, still, until it can bring into competition with that parent an equal amount of ability to discern betwixt the evil and the good, it ought never to be permitted to feel that there is a way of escape from the rule of implicit obedience.

And this obedience, I repeat, may be rendered as easy as it is to submit to the darkness of night at a certain hour, or to the cold of winter at a certain season of the year. We do not often see children go into convulsions of rage because a shower of rain is falling, and thus preventing their expected walk. Convince them that it actually does rain, and, feeling that the calamity though great, is inevitable, they submit accordingly, and often return with a cheerfulness which might instruct their seniors, to the amusements or occupations which they had been busy with before. In this case they submit without murmuring, because they know that no pleading of theirs, no coaxing, no bribery, ever did make the rain cease at their bidding; and here is no doubt but they would evince the same prompt and cheerful submission to parental authority, if it was exercised in a consistent and undeviating manner.

It is true we sometimes hear a short and sudden sigh from the child who is called away at a certain hour to leave a flattering circle in the drawing-room, for the obscurity of the nursery, and I am far from supposing that habitual obedience never costs an effort at the moment it is required; but I speak of the effort as one which by comparison is reduced to almost nothing; and I appeal for the truth of this assertion to the cheerfulness, serenity, and absence of unnecessary disappointment, observable in children who are brought up under that system of unquestioning obedience, which is the only true foundation of all