Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1848-02-03

pness at those periods of lfe old age or seasons
of sickness and physical weakness, when the mind is
wholly thrown back on ITSELF The man compelled by
old age to renounce active life if he has not cherished
right intellectual habits so that his mind has been de-
veloped and richly stored has no resource He is left
to bear the nfrmities of his condition, with nothing to
relieve or make him forget them. How can it be 9TH
erwse than that he should become peevish and, as it
is sometimes called, childish, to degree to say the
least far greater than might otherwise have been?
How often has the man of active business habits, after
years of TOLL sustained by the hope of day gaining
a competence that should enable HIM to spend his last
days in ease and pleasure, found only misery and I'M
rest? His habits of mental and physical activity will
not allow him to rest they have nothing on which to
spend themselves, and they turned back on heil
possessor.
II. But we must pass to the consideration of the
habit of Obedience, obedience to just authority. In
our country especially, true freedom is liable to be
mistaken for lawessness, and license indeed, those
who boast the most of freedom are otenast those who
know the least about it. Freedom does not allow us
to do everything at will, it allows only the
liberty to do what is right and there the most per-
feet freedom where every man can use all his powers
of body and mind, in obedience to the law of duty in
obedience TO what his own highest well being and that
of his fellows demand. We have no right to do
wrong, A man has the physical power to steal, and
if he has will to do so he can steal, but he has no
right to steal man has no right to take the life Of
another. The united voice of his own moral FEELING
and the moral feeling of all men and of all times says
to him in the form of law if thou steal thou shalt be
punshed if thou takest away the life of thy brother
man. thou shalt give up thine own as a penalty. If
habit of obedience in accordance with this idea Of
the necessity Of written law, but there would be none
the less of law, for all would obey law more exact
and more imperative than could be devised by human
enactment and that too without being conscious of it
without sense of constraint The obedent either
thinks of the law of the land as constaining hi:
ordinary action. The formation of such habit O.
obedience should commence at home under the eye O
the parent, with the first dawn of the moral life, anC
then be cherished in all possible ways, among which
the schooroom must ever form an important place. il
too many cases it is to be feared, the only place.
neglected there all efforts elsewhere will be of little
avail, since nowhere else but at home are so many anC
constant influences brought to bear upon the child
character,
TransgressIon of moral principle usually common
ces with disobedence to parents or teachers. AL
just laws, all just requirements, they spring from
common ground, so they are ever ndissoubly connect
ed. The child that dsobeys with impuuity the require
mens of the teacher is preparing to dsobey the laws
of the land and the laws of his Maker How many
ruined men have traced back their course to some frs
act of dsobedence, left uncomected, unrepented til
like plague spot it has affected the whole character
and evil mas become their chosen way.
The regulations Of the school room should be rioh
regulations, not merely arbitrary, dictated by the ca
price of the moment nor as regarding children as crea-
lures of intellect, but possessing intellect and feeling
such again as shall commend themselves to the GOOD
sense of all, and enforced by the teacher from sense
Of duty to HIMSELF the parents but most of all to the
scholars themselves. | apprehend there is far less
danger of having too much government than of too lit
tle do not say that there may not be danger of hay
ing too many rules these should rather be few and
comprehensive. Many rules do not make up govern
ment. The stern mandates of the Russian Autocrat
do not make up true government. In accordance
with the principles above expressed, it is not easy tc
have too much government too much cheerful obed
ence to right authority. We ought to be wholly obed
lent to the law of Duty and the nearer we become so
the better and happier are, The obedien scholar
never feels the severity of right school regulations
|
He never thinks of them, never takes the trouble o.
rather makes the trouble to know them.
The results of early formed habits of obedienceor thu
contrary, manifested in the after life of the indvi
dual, in two forms, as bearing upon the community o
which he forms part, and his own self culture. Al
the influences which relate to the growth of the ind
vidual mind, and ofsociety, may be divided into tw
classes, according to their prevalent type good or evil
The one is the constructive element the other the des
tructve. They stand together, side by side, the iro
beside the clay, in all human Institutions, in all huma
work, be it the formation of society, or the culture
the individual human soul, The one is the element
strength life and growth; the other of weakness deca
and ruin Wespeak ofthe laws of attraction, of tn
laws of nature, which govern the growth of the plan
the tree, the unfolding of flower, just as fixed an
determnate are the laws which govern the growth c
individual or collective mind. Society can in on
sense be said to have an existence apart from the in
dividuals that compose it. They are but the timber
that compose the edfce and are thus the parts, ne
the whole. They may change, while the whole col
tinues Yet the whole depends for its vitality on til
parts; if they are diseased, the whole will be disease
also. Who has not observed what plague spot on
vicious can be in community? And what ha
made him the source of so much mischief? What bl
his own unreguated DESIRES his own ungoverned pas
ions? He did not govern them when they were wea
and now they govern him. What but ruin must follow
if community be made up ofsuch mem?
q The world has been the theatre for the practic
demonstration of the essential nature of these two col
. fcting elements, the scene of conflict between thet
# two fundamental principles, announced amid the 1am
it of Sina and reiterated again and again with fearf
g emphasis, in the rise and fall of nations.
But we must pass to the consideration of conseque
ces, more Immediately bearing upon our practical lif
IS deeply interesting, almost fearful to every thought
mind mean the results of habits of obedience or ii
a contrary upon self culture By right self cultu
is meant the government of all those powers of mil
onI hodv which make IN orr individual ex;stanc