He may abstain because his mother offers, in case of his doing so, to give him sugar-plums, and he prefers the sugar-plums to the apples. This is not obedience. Or, his reason and experience may have taught him that the eating of green fruit will cause him sickness and pain, and so he abstains for the same reasons that his father, mother, or anybody else does. This is not obedience. But children often have not the forethought to look at remote consequences, or they have not the strength of purpose to deny a present gratification for the sake of a distant good, and especially for a good of which they have only a vague idea through the representations of their parents or teachers. Suppose such a case. Suppose a child with a strong inclination and desire for the thing forbidden, and with no clear apprehension that there is anything wrong or hurtful in the indulgence, except in the fact that the father has forbidden it, and with no temptation of a higher indulgence as a reward for abstaining. If, in such a case, the child abstains, he performs a true act of obedience. He really subjects his will to the will of his father. This kind of implicit obedience is greatly needed. It is to be secured just as our heavenly Father secures obedience to some of his laws. If a child thrusts his finger into the candle, he violates a law, and he instantly suffers for it. We are surrounded by many such laws, without the observance of which we could not live a day. To teach us obedience to these laws, the penalty of transgression is immediate and sharp. There are other laws of our physical well-being, the penalties of which are remote, and in regard to those we have room for the exercise and cultivation of our reasoning powers. Now in childhood, there are many things which a child should be taught to forbear doing as promptly as he forbears to thrust his hand into the fire. Yet for these things there is no natural penalty. Here the command of the parent should be interposed, and transgression should be promptly followed by penalty. The authority of the parent and the penalties by which he sustains it, guide the child during those years when reason and the power of self-denial are weak. But to make this discipline easy and effective, there should be no hesitation or uncertainty about the exercise of it. Parents often have to strain their authority, and use very largely their right of punishment, because they are so unequal and irregular in their methods of government. A child soon ceases to thrust his finger into the fire. Fire is not a thing which burns one day, and may be safely tampered with the next. So, if disobedience, invariably and promptly, without passion or caprice, and with the uniformity of a law of nature, brings such a penalty as to make the disobedience painful, there will be little transgression and little need of punishment. A child does not fret because he cannot play with fire. He will not fret because he cannot