that “the rod and chastisement confer wisdom, but a froward young man affects his mother with shame.” The wisdom of God advises, “Chastise thy son, and he will bring rest unto thee, and procure pleasure for thy soul.” When parents fail to obey this counsel, they get neither pleasure nor rest from their children, but disgrace, shame, affliction, and inquietude. Hence we often hear such complaints of parents: “My children are disobedient and wicked; this one has fallen from the faith, the other is a spendthrift, reckless, and a glutton.” And is it strange, my friend, that you reap what you have sown? You have sown in their minds licentiousness, and do you hope to reap the fruits of discipline? This would indeed be marvelous. For a tree that is not engrafted cannot bear the fruit of the grafting. Labor ought to have been bestowed that the tender tree should be planted, duly inclined, and made straight, so as not to have grown so gnarly. But as most persons neglect discipline, there is no wonder that youths everywhere grow up froward, impetuous, and impious, provoking God and distressing the parents. A certain wise man has said that, “although an infant seems to be an angel, yet it requires the rod.” Did not Eli himself lead a pious life? Did he not give pious instruction to his sons? But because he spared effectual discipline, it happened ill to him; for by his undue lenity, he brought much sorrow upon himself, the wrath of God upon his house, and the extinction of his whole race. Bearing on our subject, this: Dr. Geyler, a celebrated pastor of the church of Strasburg, two centuries ago, represented such parents under the following emblem: “Children tearing their own hair, puncturing themselves with knives, and their fathers sitting by them with veiled eyes.”
Comenius in this paragraph, influence very largerly his notions of corporal punishments, and not only the notions of Comenius, but educators generally down to our own day.
