e heard the truth of the gospel, that you must through
many tribulations enter the Kingdom of God. When, therefore, you are
come to the Fair and shall find fulfilled what I have here related, then
remember your friend; quit yourselves like men, and commit the keeping of
your souls to your God in well-doing as unto a faithful Creator.'

OBSTINATE

'Be ye not as the mule.'--David.

Little Obstinate was born and brought up in the City of Destruction. His
father was old Spare-the-Rod, and his mother's name was Spoil-the-Child.
Little Obstinate was the only child of his parents; he was born when they
were no longer young, and they doted on their only child, and gave him
his own way in everything. Everything he asked for he got, and if he did
not immediately get it you would have heard his screams and his kicks
three doors off. His parents were not in themselves bad people, but, if
Solomon speaks true, they hated their child, for they gave him all his
own way in everything, and nothing would ever make them say no to him, or
lift up the rod when he said no to them. When the Scriptures, in their
pedagogical parts, speak so often about the rod, they do not necessarily
mean a rod of iron or even of wood. There are other ways of teaching an
obstinate child than the way that Gideon took with the men of Succoth
when he taught them with the thorns of the wilderness and with the briars
thereof. George Offor, John Bunyan's somewhat quaint editor, gives the
readers of his edition this personal testimony:--'After bringing up a
very large family, who are a blessing to their parents, I have yet to
learn what part of the human body was created to be beaten.' At the same
time the rod must mean something in the word of God; it certainly means
something in God's hand when His obstinate children are under it, and it
ought to mean something in a godly parent's hand also. Little
Obstinate's two parents were far from ungodly people, though they lived
in such a city; but they were daily destroying their only son by letting
him always have his own way, and by never saying no to his greed, and his
lies, and his anger, and his noisy and disorderly ways. Eli in the Old
Testament was not a bad man, but he destroyed both the ark of the Lord
and himself and his sons also, because his sons made themselves vile, and
he restrained them not. God's children are never so soft, and sweet, and
good, and happy as just after He restrains them