=Response of Docility to Authority, a Natural Function.=—So far as the daily routine of small obediences goes, we help them thus to fulfil a natural function—the response of docility to authority. It may be said that a child who has acquired the habit of involuntary obedience has proportionately lost power as a free moral agent; but, as the acts of obedience in question are very commonly connected with some physical effort, as, ‘Make haste back,’ ‘Sit straight,’ ‘Button your boots quickly,’—they belong to the same educational province as gymnastic exercises, the object of which is the masterly use of the body as a machine capable of many operations. Now, to work a machine such as a typewriter or a bicycle, one must, before all things, have practice; one must have got into the way of working it involuntarily, without giving any thought to the matter: and to give a child this power over himself—first in response to the will of another, later, in response to his own, is to make a man of him. =The Habit of Prompt Obedience.=—It is an old story that the failures in life are not the people who lack good intentions; they are those whose physical nature has not acquired the habit of prompt and involuntary obedience. The man who can make himself do what he wills has the world before him, and it rests with parents to give their children this self-compelling power as a mere matter of habit. But is it not better and higher, it may be asked, to train children to act always in response to the divine mandate as it makes itself heard through the voice of conscience? The answer is, that in doing this we must not leave the other undone. There are few earnest parents who do not bring the power of conscience to bear on their children, and there are emergencies enough in the lives of young and old when we have to make a spiritual decision upon spiritual grounds—when it rests with us to choose the good and refuse the evil, consciously and voluntarily, because it is God’s will that we should.