CHAPTER XII.

PARENTAL WEAKNESS AND FOLLY.

It is a saying a good deal older, probably, than our language, that there is no limit to human delusion, and yet its daily developments seem new and striking. It is confined to no creed, religious or political; it pervades every sect, every people; it fastens itself upon all the relations of life, it influences all the intercourse of society; it sits in our churches; it stalks in our places of business; it is at home in our households; it keeps company with high and low, rich and poor.

It is present at the most solemn religious ceremonies; it "assists" at weddings and funerals; and claims a special property in epitaphs, funeral sermons, and biographical notices. It fills important stations, and invents mighty schemes; it creates and it destroys; it builds up and pulls down; it is now a miserable comforter, now a pernicious flatterer; now a dispeller of clouds, now an extinguisher of light; it exalts and it abases; it is two-faced; it smiles and it frowns; it laughs and it weeps; it cheers with hope, and kills with

despair; it struts and it crawls; it towers in pride; it bites the dust in abasement; it swells a man of ordinary calibre into the assumption of greatness; changes a mere cypher in society into a significant figure; and sometimes, though more rarely, reduces a man lower than his proper standard. It is full of whims, while it claims to be reasonable; it is self-seeking while it imagines itself disinterested; it mistakes self-love for the love of others; the fear of hell; for the love of God.

It is sometimes asked, "What would life be without some degree of delusion?" Certainly childhood and youth would be uncrowned of many wreaths; manhood deprived of many a song that cheers its toil; and even the rest of age, would lose some pleasant dreaming. If life were all a certainty, the heavens over our head would become as brass, and the earth under our feet as iron. Harmless delusions are well typified by the clouds of a beautiful sky, which soothe, comfort, rejoice, or delight us, as our mood requires; but they exist by reason of the very sun itself, and so must the sun of duty remain always clear.

Delusions that dim or darken that sun, are vapors of hell. You may well wonder to what all this is tending. My mind is full, at present, of the subject of parental delusions, which are of a two-fold character; those which mislead parents in the education of their children, and those which

prevent a proper estimate of their characters; the two classes together, being often sufficient to exclude the true light of heaven from the home circle. Many parents are unwilling to subject their children to discipline in any way, or to punish them for wrong-doing; to prohibit what is hurtful in food; to deny them improper amusements; to require of them anything that involves hardship or self-denial; and they fancy it is because they love them so much. Whereas, it is simply because they love themselves, better than they love their children's good. They shrink from what will give themselves pain through them.

Occasionally, but much less often, the opposite fault is committed, of urging a child to the utmost exertion of which it is capable; but from a similar reason, viz.: the gratification the parent will derive from any distinction he may attain. Now, the object the parent should have ever in mind, and should use all his best efforts to promote in every possible way, is, the best good of the child, for its own sake. Mrs. A. and Mrs. B. live side by side. Mrs. A. becomes convinced that her child will be better for a change of scene, and for new influences, and decides to send her away. Mrs. B. feels utterly unwilling and incompetent to part with hers, who is in the same need of a change; declares she cannot do it; wonders at Mrs. A's want of feeling; and congratulates her

self upon her own greater parental love; never suspecting, poor weak woman, that it is not her child, but herself, who is her own paramount object. I know a Christian mother, whose heroism far surpassed, in one instance, that of any Spartan mother. Her eldest son being very useful in the family, whose means were narrow, was kept at home until he was eighteen; and then was allowed to go to New York, and see what he could do for himself; or in the words of an old phrase, "to seek his fortune." He apprenticed himself to an apothecary who agreed to give him board and lodging, besides a very small stipend for his clothes. He entered upon this engagement in the autumn. Three months passed away, and he wrote to his mother, that his lodging was on the floor under the counter, with a blanket thrown over him; his food, whatever he could eat from his hand in the shop, and he did not think he could remain in the situation he had procured for himself. She wrote to him in reply, that it would be a poor beginning of his responsible life, to break the first engagement he had ever made, and he must go through with it.

I have no doubt that she lay awake many a cold night, shivering in heart, at the idea of his comfortless condition; but she preferred any suffering of mind in her own case, to the danger of her child's soul receiving harm. Her example is

not the less impressive, because her judgment was at fault. When a contract is not kept by one of the parties, it certainly is not binding upon the other. However, the discipline was not lost; and not many years elapsed after his term of apprenticeship had expired, before the young man began a yearly remittance of a thousand dollars to his parents, the expression, or equivalent to them, of what money could not buy; of treasure laid up in

heaven.

There are commandments written on the constitution of a human being, on brain, muscle, bone, and nerve, as binding as those which were traced by the finger of God upon the tables of stone. We are prone to disregard the "Thou shalt," and "Thou shalt not," of the Creator, and make enactments of our own in direct opposition to them. The law that all health and growth of mind and body, are dependent upon action, is clearly revealed by palpable facts as well as clearly set forth in works on physiology. Witness the foot of a Chinese lady, and the general aspect of a company of Shaker women. If a hand, or an

arm, or a leg is disused from any cause, it becomes shrunken, and loses, in process of time, all power of action. If a muscle is disused, it becomes obliterated, and an inactive brain becomes sluggish and torpid. The Creator has wisely provided the restlessness and curiosity which charac