That parent who cannot restrain his children, does not bear rule in his house, and as a consequence, cannot bless his household.  That parental tenderness which withholds the proper restraints of discipline from an erring child, is most cruel and ruinous.  It is winking at his wayward temper, his licentious passions and growing habits of vice.  And these, in their terrible maturity, will recoil upon the deluded parent, “biting like a serpent and stinging like an adder.”  Nothing is more ruinous to a child and disastrous to the hopes and happiness of home, than such relaxation of discipline.  “A child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame.”  How many mothers have bitterly experienced this, and wept bitter tears over the memory of their degraded and wretched offspring!  It is ruinous to the parent.  He will both curse and despise thee.  Your unlawful indulgence, therefore, is infanticide.  Your cruel embraces are hugging your child to death.  The sentiment of love should never crush the reason and violate the laws of love.  Do you permit your sick to die rather than to inflict the pain of giving them the medicine to cure?  This would be madness.  And yet you do a similar deed when you indulge your child in wickedness.  He will grow up lawless, headstrong, rebellious; and these may lead him on to poverty, infamy, crime and perdition, ending thus in total shipwreck of character and soul.  You thus make for society bad members, drunkards, blackguards, paupers, criminals; and furnish fuel for the eternal burnings.  And will not the curse rest upon you?

It is wonderful to what an extent this extreme indulgence prevails at the present day.  Many parents seem insensible even to the necessity of any discipline, and think it is an infringement upon the liberties of the child.  Mistaken parents!  Such views are opposed to the laws of God and man.  By them you sow for yourselves and children the seeds of a future retribution.

Thus we see that there are two dangerous extremes or false systems of home-discipline, viz., the exercise of parental fondness and sympathy without parental authority, on the one hand, and the exercise of parental authority without proper sympathy, on the other.  Misguided sympathy and fondness will produce filial libertinism; and despotic authority will beget filial servility.

True Christian home-discipline lies in a medium between these.  It involves the union of true parental sympathy and authority, of proper love and proper law; for affection, when not united to authority and law, degenerates into sentimental fondness; and authority and law, when, not tempered with love, degenerate into brutal tyranny, and produce inward servility and outward bondage.  The parents who are, in discipline, prompted by the first, may be loved, but will not be respected.  Those who are ruled by the second, may be dreaded, but will not be loved.  The first does violence to law, and ends in the insubordination of the child and the imbecility of the parent.  The second does violence to love, makes duty a task, correction a corporeal punishment, the child a slave, the parent a despot, and ends consequently in the destruction of natural affection.  Hence, in home-discipline, true severity and true sympathy should unite and temper each other.  Without this the very ends proposed will be frustrated.