resentment and sulkiness of children cannot fail to weaken the affection
felt for them, and may even end in destroying it. Hence the numerous
cases in which parents (and especially fathers, who are commonly deputed
to inflict the punishment) are regarded with indifference, if not with
aversion; and hence the equally numerous cases in which children are
looked upon as inflictions. Seeing then, as all must do, that
estrangement of this kind is fatal to a salutary moral culture, it
follows that parents cannot be too solicitous in avoiding occasions of
direct antagonism with their children. And therefore they cannot too
anxiously avail themselves of this discipline of natural consequences;
which, by relieving them from penal functions, prevents mutual
exasperations and estrangements.

The method of moral culture by experience of the normal reactions, which
is the divinely-ordained method alike for infancy and for adult life, we
thus find to be equally applicable during the intermediate childhood and
youth. Among the advantages of this method we see:--First: that it gives
that rational knowledge of right and wrong conduct which results from
personal experience of their good and bad consequences. Second: that the
child, suffering nothing more than the painful effects of its own wrong
actions, must recognise more or less clearly the justice of the
penalties. Third: that recognising the justice of the penalties, and
receiving them through the working of things rather than at the hands
of an individual, its temper is less disturbed; while the parent
fulfilling the comparatively passive duty of letting the natural
penalties be felt, preserves a comparative equanimity. Fourth: that
mutual exasperations being thus prevented, a much happier, and a more
influential relation, will exist between parent and child.

* * * * *

"But what is to be done in cases of more serious misconduct?" some will
ask. "How is this plan to be carried out when a petty theft has been
committed? or when a lie has been told? or when some younger brother or
sister has been ill-used?"

Before replying to these questions, let us consider the bearings of a
few illustrative facts.

Living in the family of his brother-in-law, a friend of ours had
undertaken the education of his little nephew and niece. This he had
conducted, more perhaps from natural sympathy than from reasoned-out
conclusions, in the spirit of the method above