unishment
is sentimental nonsense. The world is full of men and women, who have
grown up strong and good, in spite of whippings; and as for me, I know I
never had any more whipping than I deserved, or than was good for me."

Are you then so strong and clear and pure in your physical and spiritual
nature and life, that you are sure no different training could have made
either your body or your soul better? Are these men and women, of whom the
world is full, so able-bodied, whole-souled, strong-minded, that you think
it needless to look about for any method of making the next generation
better? Above all, do you believe that it is a part of the legitimate
outworking of God's plan and intent in creating human beings to have more
than one-half of them die in childhood? If we are not to believe that this
fearful mortality is a part of God's plan, is it wise to refuse to
consider all possibilities, even those seemingly most remote, of
diminishing it?

No argument is so hard to meet (simply because it is not an argument) as
the assumption of the good and propriety of "the thing that hath been." It
is one of the devil's best sophistries, by which he keeps good people
undisturbed in doing the things he likes. It has been in all ages the
bulwark behind which evils have made stand, and have slain their
thousands. It is the last enemy which shall be destroyed. It is the only
real support of the cruel evil of corporal punishment.

Suppose that such punishment of children had been unheard of till now.
Suppose that the idea had yesterday been suggested for the first time that
by inflicting physical pain on a child's body you might make him recollect
certain truths; and suppose that instead of whipping, a very moderate and
harmless degree of pricking with pins or cutting with knives or burning
with fire had been suggested. Would not fathers and mothers have cried out
all over the land at the inhumanity of the idea?

Would they not still cry out at the inhumanity of one who, as things are
to-day, should propose the substitution of pricking or cutting or burning
for whipping? But I think it would not be easy to show in what wise small
pricks or cuts are more inhuman than blows; or why lying may not be as
legitimately cured by blisters made with a hot coal as by black and blue
spots made with a ruler. The principle is the same; and if the principle
be right, why not multiply methods?

It seems as if this one suggestion, candidly consi