, and has again laid the
rod of correction upon them. They then kiss both the rod and Him who
appointed it. And earthly fathers learn their craft from God. The
meekness, the sweetness, the docility, and the love of a chastised child
has gone to all our hearts in a way we can never forget. There is
something sometimes almost past description or belief in the way a
chastised child clings to and kisses the hand that chastised it. But
poor old Spare-the-Rod never had experiences like that. And young
Obstinate, having been born like Job's wild ass's colt, grew up to be a
man like David's unbitted and unbridled mule, till in after life he
became the author of all the evil and mischief that is associated in our
minds with his evil name.

In old Spare-the-Rod's child also this true proverb was fulfilled, that
the child is the father of the man. For all that little Obstinate had
been in the nursery, in the schoolroom, and in the playground--all that,
only in an aggravated way--he was as a youth and as a grown-up man. For
one thing, Obstinate all his days was a densely ignorant man. He had not
got into the way of learning his lessons when he was a child; he had not
been made to learn his lessons when he was a child; and the dislike and
contempt he had for his books as a boy accompanied him through an
ignorant and a narrow-minded life. It was reason enough to this so
unreasonable man not to buy and read a book that you had asked him to buy
and read it. And so many of the books about him were either written, or
printed, or published, or sold, or read, or praised by people he did not
like, that there was little left for this unhappy man to read, even if
otherwise he would have read it. And thus, as his mulish obstinacy kept
him so ignorant, so his ignorance in turn increased his obstinacy. And
then when he came, as life went on, to have anything to do with other
men's affairs, either in public or in private life, either in the church,
or in the nation, or in the city, or in the family, this unhappy man
could only be a drag on all kinds of progress, and in obstacle to every
good work. Use and wont, a very good rule on occasion, was a rigid and a
universal rule with Obstinate. And to be told that the wont in this case
and in that had ceased to be the useful, only made him rail at you as
only an ignorant and an obstinate man can rail. He could only rail; he
had not knowledge enough, or good temper enough, or good manners