What Family Government Is
WHAT FAMILY GOVERNMENT IS.—It is not to watch children with suspicious eye, to frown at the outbursts of innocent hilarity, to suppress their joyous laughter, and to mould them into melancholy little models of aged gravity. And when they have been in fault it is not simply to punish them on account of the personal injury that you have chanced to suffer in consequence. Nor is it to overwhelm the little culprit with angry words; to stun him with a deafening noise; to call him by hard names, which do not express his misdeeds: to load him with epithets which would be extravagant if applied to a fault of tenfold enormity; or to declare with passionate vehemence that he is the worst child in the world and destined for the gallows. But it is to watch anxiously for the first risings of sin, and to repress them; to correct the earliest workings of selfishness to repress the first beginnings of rebellion against rightful authority; to teach an implicit and unquestioning and cheerful obedience to the will of the parent, as the best preparation for a future allegiance of the requirements of the civil magistrate, and the laws of the great Ruler and Father in Heaven. It is to punish a fault because it is a fault; because it is sinful and contrary to the commands of God, without reference to whether it may or may not be productive of immediate injury to the parent or others. It is to reprove with calmness and composure, and not with angry irritation; in a few words fitly chosen, and not with a torrent of abuse; to punish as often as you threaten, and threaten only when you intend and can remember to perform; to say what you mean, and infallibly do as you say. It is to govern your family as in the sight of Him who gave you authority, and who will reward your strict fidelity with such blessings as he bestowed on Abraham, or punish your criminal neglect with such curses as he visited on Eli.