has been voluntarily resigned. The maintenance of authority is like the preservation of a siring of beads—break but the "silken cord on which they hang," and the pearls are scattered in disorder, if not irretrievably lost. By suffering the rule of obedience to be set aside, an endless catalogue of evil tempers, vexations, disappointments, artifices, mean subterfuges, and even the worst of all, bribery—the bribery of self-interested endearments—are allowed to take the place of that steady, calm, and undeviating submission, which costs no pain, and requires no sacrifice, simply because it is habitual.
There is no spectacle in life more deplorable, and few more calculated to awaken feelings of contempt, than that of an undisciplined and pettish temper fretting against and resisting what is inevitable; and yet all this folly, as well as the suffering with which it is always associated, is necessarily consequent upon that error in the management of childhood, which allows of rightful authority being made the subject of resistance and dispute. On the other hand, we never contemplate human nature in a more noble or dignified position, than when, under the dispensation of Divine, and consequently indisputable power, it yields a willing and prompt obedience.
It may be said that the obedience of a child to those who superintend its infant years, has nothing whatever to do with the submission of beings more rational and mature to laws which they acknowledge to be divine; but I am fully persuaded that the habit of rebellion against human authority, allowed in early life, will render the habit of submission to a higher power of more difficult attainment in after years; while, on the other hand, the same proportion of opposite results will follow from a prompt and undeviating subjection of the weaker to the stronger, during those early stages of existence when it is impossible that the reasons for enforcing a parent's commands should be fully understood.
Among the records preserved to us of the dealings of God with man in the early history of the world, nothing is more striking than the manner in which this principle of unquestioning obedience was enforced. Until the rule of simple obedience was acknowledged, nothing could be
