Whipping and Prayer

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 16, 1859

"Whipping and Prayer."

"I GAVE her a whipping and a prayer in the closet." This remark was made by a Roman Catholic lady concerning her daughter. I was in a meditative mood when I heard it, and while we completed our journey I thought of the true relation of that prayer to the whipping, and I asked, Do all Protestant parents pray when they punish? I remember when a boy in the "old mountain home," that I received the whippings, but I could not remember the prayers. I did not hear God asked to forgive the wrong I had committed, and to aid me to profit by the punishment. I had "the whippings," but not the prayers in the closet. Do not fathers and mothers neglect to offer the latter as often as they give the former? Do not parents, christian parents, punish, not only without prayer, but without even the spirit of prayer?—Zion's Advocate.