LOVE VS. FEAR by Fannie L. Fancher

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 10, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 36.

LOVE VS. FEAR.

By Fannie L. Fancher

BY FANNIE L. FANCHER.

“O MAMA, I’m so sorry for Johnny Green; his legs and arms are always covered with long red marks, ’cause his father and mother whip him so much!”

“Why do they do so? Is Johnny a very bad boy?” I asked.

“Why, no, mama, he’s just as good as any seven-year-old boy, but he’s so ’fraid of ’em that he just will tell lies, an’ of course he gets found out. I’m sure I wouldn’t be good if I got whipped all the time.”

This little boy, for whom my son’s sympathies were aroused, was the oldest child of people living on our block. All that I knew of them was that the husband and father was a “pillar” in his church; hence it would never do for his son to be a liar, and therefore the constant whipping process. Ah, unwise parents! When Johnny gets too old to be governed by fear, then what?

There is a tendency for young mothers to resort to the whip for every trivial wrongdoing; but let them remember that such a course soon blunts the delicate sensibilities of a child, rendering him hardened and ugly. He will soon exclaim in anger, “Whipping don’t last long, and to kill me you dassn’t!” Therefore reserve the rod, if used at all, till some great transgression warrants such severity.

An eminent horse trainer says: “The legitimate and proper use of the whip is calculated to operate upon the sense of fear almost entirely. The affectionate nature must be appealed to in training horses as well as in training children; for if only the passions are excited, the effect is injurious. This is a vital principle, and can be disregarded in the management of sensitive and courageous colts only at the risk of spoiling them. I have known many horses of a naturally gentle character to be spoiled by whipping but once, and one horse that was made extremely vicious by being struck with a whip while in his stall.”

I know a little seven-year-old boy who was inclined to loiter when returning from school. The mother gets no cruel whip to lacerate the flesh of her child. Instead, she removes from the tea table his favorite foods, and provides him a dish of easily digested bread and milk, and, tho it is yet broad daylight, he is sent to his bed, there in solitary confinement to ruminate over the hard “way of the transgressor.”

Do not send a child supperless to bed, since an empty stomach is not conducive to refreshing sleep, and growing children need each and every meal to supply nature’s waste and growth. This heroic method of punishment was formerly resorted to by mothers unfamiliar with hygiene. An aged mother once boasted that she had often sent a son supperless to bed because he was loth to commit to memory his Bible lessons. Think you that this course instilled in his heart a love for the book?—No, indeed; it produced quite the contrary effect.

Let love ever have full sway between parent and child; then there will be little, if any, need of the rod; for “if ye love Me, keep My commandments,” and “perfect love casteth out all fear.”—Housekeeper.