7. Illustrate how loving service may be secured.

8. How may the real love of the child for the parent be measured?

MORAL TRAINING

_There Is No Escape from Wrong-Doing. Mercy Cannot Rob Justice_

"Somehow I'll escape," is the fatal thought which blinds the poor fool who,
for the first time, treads the path of self-indulgence or wrong-doing. But
he ought to know that escape is impossible. No cave is dark enough, no
ocean deep enough to hide the transgressor from the consequences of his
misdeeds. A kind heaven may forgive him, and the one he injures may
overlook the offence; but his own body and mind cannot forget; they have
registered the deed once for all and it can never be atoned for or
forgotten. The doing of a bad deed changes the individual in some
particular, slight or great as the case may be, and, pathetic though it
seems, he cannot go back and try it over again; the scar remains, as if
seared by a hot iron, and, if the hurt is serious enough, heredity may pass
it down the ages.

How easily a bad habit is formed. "It won't hurt me" is whispered by the
siren voice of temptation, because the consequences of the transgression
are not felt or seen immediately, a second offence seems less serious than
the first. Soon habit steps in and stamps the process on mind and body and
before the author is conscious of it, a serious appetite or a degrading
vice is fastened upon him from which neither time nor effort, prayers nor
tears, may ever shake him free.

"_Vice is a monster of such frightful mien,
That to be hated needs but to be seen,
But seen too oft, familiar with its face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace_."

--Pope.

The child must be trained early to know: "The way of the transgressor is
hard," and "He that sows the wind must reap the whirlwind." It is a great
mistake for the parent to step in and free the child from the consequences
of his first wrong acts. Let the consequences fall on his own head, and
perchance they will teach him wisdom. The true purpose of punishment is to
teach the necessity of obedience to law. Everything that is good and
desirable will come to him who obeys the law upon which the blessing is
predicated; every evil falls on the head of him who constantly violates
law. In the final analysis, the punishments which nature inflicts are kind,
because they are warnings which, if heeded, will prevent serious injury.
The purpose of all discipline is to produce a sel