Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1893-07-31

there were only one Jephthahs daughter.
OBEDIENCE TO BE TAUGHT.
Again, there are many parents who
are sacrificing their children with wrong
systems of discipline-too great rigor or
too great leniency. There are children
in families who rule the household. They
come to the authority. The high chair
in which the infant sits is the throne,
and the rattle is the scepter, and the
other children make up the parliament
where father and mother have no vote!
Such children come up to be miscreants
There is no chance in this world for a
child that has never learned to mind.
Such people become the botheratiOn of
the church of God and the pest of the
world. Children that do not learn to
obey human authority are unwilling to
learn to obey divine authority. Children
will not respect parents whose authority
they do not respect. Who are these
young men that swagger through the
street, with their thumbs in their vest,
talking about their father as 1.-The old
man." 1.-The governor" 1.-THE squire
'sthe old chap or their mother as ''the
old woman?" They are those who in
youth, / childhood, never learned to re-
spect authority. Eli, having heard that
his sons had died in their wickedness,
fell over backward and broke his neck
and died. Well he might. What is life
to father whose sons are debauched?
The dust of the valley is pleasant to his
taste, and the driving rains that drip
through the roof of the sepulcher are
sweeter than the wines of Helbon.
There must be harmony between the
fathers government and the mothers
government. The father will be tempt
ed to too great rigor. The mother will be
tempted to too great leniency. Her ten
derness will overcome her. Her voice is
little softer; her hand seems better fit
to pull out a thorn and soothe a pang.
Children wanting any thing from the
mother cry for it. They hope to dissolve
her will with tears. But the mother
must not interfere, must not coax off,
must not beg for the child when the
hour comes for the assertion Of parental
supremacy and the subjugation of a
child's temper. There comes in the his
tory of every child an hour when it is
tested whether the parents shall rule or
the child shall rule. That Is the crucial
hour. If the child triumphs in that hour,
then he will some day make you crouch.
1t is horrible scene. / have witnessed
it-a mother come to old age, shivering
with terror in the presence of a son who
cursed her gray hairs and Knocked her
wrinkled face and begrudged her the
crust she munched with her toothless
gums!
How sharper than serpent's tooth it is
To have thankless child!
CONTROL YOUR TEMPER.
But, ON the other hand, too great rig
or must be avoided. It is a sad thing
when domestic government becomes cold
military despotism. Trappers on the
prairie fight fire with fire, but you can
not successfully fight your child's bad
temper with your own bad temper. We
must not be too minute in our inspec-
ton. We cannot expect our children to
be perfect. We must not see every
thing. Since we have two or three faults
of our own, we ought not to be too
rough when we discover that our chill
dren have as many. If tradition be
true, when we were children we were
not all little Samuels, and our parents
were not fearful lest they could not raise
us because of our premature goodness.
You cannot scold or pound your chill
dren into nobility of character. The
bloom of child's heart can never be
seen under a cold drizzle Above all,
avoid fretting and scolding in the house
hold. Better than 10 years of fretting
at your children is one good, round, old
fashioned application of the slipper!
That minister of the gospel of whom we
read in the newspapers that he whipped
MS child to death because he would not
say his prayers will never come to cam
onization. The arithmetics cannot cal
culate how many thousands of children
nave been ruined forever either through
too great rigor or too great leniency.
The heavens and the earth are filed
with the groan of the sacrificed. In this
matter seek divine direction,
father, O mother. Some one asked
he mother of Lord Chief Justice Mans
ield if she was not proud to have three
such eminent sons and all of them so
good. NO." she said, sit is nothing to be
proud of, but something for which to be
7ery grateful"
Again, there are many who are Sacri-
icing their children to a spirit of world
mess. Some one asked mother whose
children had turned out very well what
vas the secret by which she prepared
hem for usefulness and for the Chris
ian life, and she said: ''This was the
ecret. When in the morning washed
ny children, I prayed that they might
De washed in the fountain of a Saviour's
mercy When I put on their garments,
prayed that they might be arrayed in
he robe of a Saviour's Righteousness.
When I gave them food, prayed that
hey might be fed with mamma from
heaven. When I started them on the |
Dad to school, prayed that their path
night be as the shining light, brighter