that the characteristics of good discipline are that it be mild and principled. If it should assume the form of severity; above all, if it should be capricious, or attach itself to little apparent details or points of action, rather than to the spirit of the act, then is it most frequently unjust; it exerts a teazing influence upon the mind; it attaches blame where no fault really exists, and where the design was excellent: this misconstruction produces irritability, irritability treads closely on the heels of anger, and is followed by a loss of confidence and affection towards the parent, and an indisposedness to listen to her advice. Ye "fathers provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged," (Colossians, iii. 21,) are the important words of an inspired writer, and should form a land-mark for the exertion of discipline. It must subdue, not irritate; its demands and its exertions must be neither frivolous nor vexatious; its views must be enlarged; itself must rise above the littlenesses of feeling; and then it will seldom err in carrying its all pervading agency, throughout the entire system of parental conduct: ubiquity must be its unfailing property, and yet it must operate unseen; it must be as the nervous influence to the body, indispensable to the performance of every one of its functions, and to the health of the whole, but impossible to be detected. The remaining clause of the above cited passage, viz.

bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord," will shew what are the real objects

of discipline, and what is the true meaning of the antithesis, by which the wrath of childhood is placed in opposition with the "nurture and admonition of the Lord."

But lastly, it may become a question, whether it is, or is not desirable to keep the faults of children constantly before their eyes; or whether by doing thus, they will not become so habituated to that which is wrong, as almost to cease to account it such, and to confound the distinctions between good and evil. This question does not admit of a simple negative or affirmative reply, because a distinction must be made between errors, faults, and vices.

The just and holy God is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, and the maternal conduct is here defined by that of our heavenly Father. A wilful act of criminality must be never passed unnoticed; nor even that, which though not in itself criminal, leads immediately to the commission and indulgence of crime. But with regard to the more

venial faults and errors, the evils of thoughtlessness and inconsideration, and many of the little daily and hourly proofs of imperfection, of which the frequency of their recurrence would necessitate the almost constant ostensible operation of discipline; and when the parent would be thus pitted against the child many times in every hour of the day; here indeed, without relaxing the system of discipline, it is not to be made a prominent feature of action, since the frequency of rebuke will diminish the intensity of its impres

VOL. II.

I

sion; the child will become reckless of its influence, and ceasing both to love and to fear its parent, it will give up the effort to please; its little heart will be hardened; and he that being often reproved, hardeneth his heart, is in the worst possible situation for future improvement. It is a mistaken idea, that discipline consists only in rebuke and correction: as in the instance we are now considering, its plain and obvious duty is not to familiarize the mind with reproof, as the punishment of error, and which the child will soon come to consider in the light of an atonement for it; but perceiving the weak points of the character, to educate, to foster, to encourage, to develop, and strengthen the counter principles, which by their preponderance will slowly and ultimately subdue the morbid tendency. The consequence of very frequent rebuke is to cause the young lightly to esteem the expression of parental discipline, as well as the fault which may have called it forth; evils which it is selfevident, lead at once, to the subversion of the great barriers to impropriety, as well as of the basis on which correct views and practice are established; while by the indirect, but more certain operation of bringing out into prominence, a counter-principle, the mind is strengthened in the pursuit of good, and its tendency to error, is gradually subverted.

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CHAP. XIV.

ON THE FORMATION OF HABITS.

THE power and influence of habit, as a physical agent, have been already considered; (see vol. I. chap. i. p. 10.) but its operation on morals requires in this place some little development. "Train up a child in the way in which he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it," are the words of infinite wisdom, and demonstrate the power of habit over the human mind; and declare, that good principles wrought out into habitual action, will not lose their influence; but that they will maintain and exert their power of perpetual recurrence, notwithstanding all the follies of youth, the vanities of the world, the temptations of sense, the errors of mature life, the crimes of society, the alienation from God, the substitution of this or that idol, the power of an accumulated series of deviations from the path of rectitude-every effort to silence conscience, to stifle remorse, to weave still closer the web of iniquity, to consummate the departure from true wisdom by the entire forgetfulness of God, to shut the eyes against the repeated warnings of providence, to close the ear

against the renewed invitations of grace, aye, even in spite of the barrier to truth opposed by age, by a long course of iniquity, declining strength, enfeebled mind, advancing decrepitude, approaching dissolution; in spite of all these circumstances, the power of early habit, will still recall the mind to the religious principle, upon which it was first formed; will still form a centre of hope, from which even at the last hour, may originate the cry of mercy to the only Saviour, the heartfelt dying prayer, "Lord, remember me, when thou comest into thy kingdom," and to which may reach the animating assurance, To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise." And if this be true of the extreme case we have supposed; if even one may be saved at the very last hour, surely none need cast away hope; surely it would be sufficient inducement to implant the principle, and educe the habit, with the hope, the chance, the bare possibility, that this might only in one case prove the means of salvation.

But the argument is stronger; for if in this case there be hope; and if (as is really the fact) the power of good habit be enfeebled, and rendered almost nothing by the constant iteration of bad conduct, the eternal vibrations of evil principle; we shall see that the hope of good increases in proportion as we trace back our way from extreme old age to middle life, and even to youth; and that that which is possible in decrepitude with all its accumulated load of departure