" They may kill the child's body, in
trying, like that still unhung clergyman in Western New York, who whipped
his three-year-old son to death for refusing to repeat a prayer to his
step-mother.
Bodies are frail things; there are more child-martyrs than will be known
until the bodies terrestrial are done with.
But, by one escape or another, the will, the soul, goes free. Sooner or
later, every human being comes to know and prove in his own estate that
freedom of will is the only freedom for which there are no chains
possible, and that in Nature's whole reign of law nothing is so largely
provided for as liberty. Sooner or later, all this must come. But, if it
comes later, it comes through clouds of antagonism, and after days of
fight, and is hard-bought.
It should come sooner, like the kingdom of God, which it is,--"without
observation," gracious as sunshine, sweet as dew; it should begin with the
infant's first dawning of comprehension that there are two courses of
action, two qualities of conduct: one wise, the other foolish; one right,
the other wrong.
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