To "Children, obey your
parents," was added "in the Lord," and "because it is right," not "because
they are your parents." "Spare the rod" has been quite gratuitously
assumed to mean "spare blows." "Rod" means here, as elsewhere, simply
punishment. We are not told to "train up a child" to have no will but our
own, but "in the way in which he should go," and to the end that "when he
is old" he should not "depart from it,"--i.e., that his will should be so
educated that he will choose to walk in the right way still. Suppose a
child's will to be actually "broken;" suppose him to be so trained that he
has no will but to obey his parents. What is to become of this helpless
machine, which has no central spring of independent action? Can we stand
by, each minute of each hour of each day, and say to the automata, Go
here, or Go there? Can we be sure of living as long as they live? Can we
wind them up like seventy-year clocks, and leave them?
But this is idle. It is not, thank God, in the power of any man or any
woman to "break" a child's "will.
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