Where you find children loving and helpful to their mothers, you generally find their father at the bottom of it. If the husband respect his wife the children will respect their mother. If the husband rises to offer her a chair, they will not sit still when she enters the room; if he helps to bear her burdens, they will not let her be the pack-horse of the household. If to her husband the wife is but an upper servant, to her children she will easily become but a waiting-maid. The first care of the true, wise husband will be to sustain the authority of the wife and mother. It must be a very remarkable exigency which allows him to sit as a court of appeal from her decisions, and reverse them. But although husbands ought not to vexatiously interfere with their wives in the management of children, especially of young children, still they must not shirk their share of care and responsibility. It was not without reason that Diogenes struck the father when the son swore, because he had taught him no better. There is no effeminacy in the title "nursing fathers," but the contrary. Fondness for children arises from compassionate feeling for creatures that are helpless and innocent. Napoleon loved the man who held with a steel hand, covered with a silk glove; so should the father be gentle but firm. Happy is he who is happy in his children, and happy are the children who are happy in their father. All fathers are not wise. Some are like Eli, and spoil their children. Not to cross our children is the way to make a cross of them. But, "Ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath." That is, do not irritate them by unwise or capricious rules and ways. Help your wives to make the home lively and pleasant, so as to keep the children from seeking pleasure and excitement elsewhere. The proverb says that "Clergymen's sons always turn out badly." Why? Because the children are surfeited with severe religion, _not_ with the true religion of Christ, who was Himself reproved by the prototypes of such severe men.