Mrs. Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters, Volume 3Various
Religion
Mrs. Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters, Volume 3
Various
Christian life -- Periodicals
5. _Coming short of attaining the object when you make the
attempt--leaving discipline half completed._--When a child is corrected,
every reasonable object should be attained. No point should be evaded.
The parent should not stop until perfect and entire submission is
effected on every point of dispute. And first I would invite your
attention to instances by no means rare, where the child shows rebellion
on some particular point. At such a point he stops; you cannot move him.
He will do anything else but just the thing required. He may never have
showed a stubborn will before. You have now found a point where you
differ; there is a struggle between will and will; the stakes are set,
and one or the other must yield. There is no avoiding it; you cannot
turn to the right nor to the left; there is but one course for you. You
must go forward, or the ruin of your child is sealed. You have come to
an important crisis in the history of your child, and if you need motive
to influence you to act, you may delineate as upon a map his temporal
and eternal destiny--these mainly depend upon the issue of the present
struggle. If you succeed, your child is saved; if you fail, he is lost.
You may think perhaps your child will die before he will yield. We had
almost said he might as well die as not to yield. I have known several
parents who found themselves thus situated. Perhaps they possessed a
feeble hand, their strength began to fail, but it was no time to parley.
They summoned all their energy to another mighty struggle. Victory was
theirs--a lost child was saved. Some are contented with anything that
looks like obedience in such instances. The occasion passes. It soon,
however, recurs with no better nor as good prospects. Thus the struggle
is kept up while the child remains under the parental roof.
A father one day gave his little son some books, his knife, and last of
all his watch to amuse him. He was right under his eye. At length he
told him to bring them all to him. He brought the books and knife to him
cheerfully; the watch he wanted to keep--that was his idol. The father
told him to bring that; he refused. The father used the rod. He took up
the watch and brought it part way, and laid it down. The father told him
to put it in his hand, but he would not. He corrected him again. He
brought it a little farther and laid it down. Again he whipped him. At
length he brought it and held it right over his father's hand, but would
not put it in. The father, wearied by the struggle, struck the son's
hand with the stick, and the watch fell into his hand. It was not given
up. There was no submission. That son has been known to be several times
under conviction, but he would never submit to God.
* * * * *
Original.
THE MOTHERS OF THE BIBLE
RIZPAH.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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