ldren, while very young are prone to fall into deviations from
the truth, but only to be made to feel more impressed with the necessity of
renewing her own efforts to teach them the duty, and to train them to the
performance of it.

3. She must not be too stern or severe in punishing the deviations from
truth in very young children, or in expressing the displeasure which
they awaken in her mind. It is instruction, not expressions of anger or
vindictive punishment, that is required in most cases. Explain to them the
evils that would result if we could not believe what people say, and tell
them stories of truth-loving children on the one hand, and of false and
deceitful children on the other. And, above all, notice, with indications
of approval and pleasure, when the child speaks the truth under
circumstances which might have tempted him to deviate from it. One instance
of this kind, in which you show that you observe and are pleased by his
truthfulness, will do more to awaken in his heart a genuine love for the
truth than ten reprovals, or even punishments, incurred by the violation of
it. And in the same spirit we must make use of the religious considerations
which are appropriate to this subject--that is, we must encourage the child
with the approval of his heavenly Father, when he resists the temptation
to deviate from the truth, instead of frightening him, when he falls, by
terrible denunciations of the anger of God against liars; denunciations
which, however well-deserved in the cases to which they are intended
to apply, are not designed for children in whose minds the necessary
discriminations, as pointed out in this chapter, are yet scarcely formed.

_Danger of confounding Deceitfulness and Falsehood_.

4. Do not confound the criminality of deceitfulness by acts with falsehood
by words, by telling the child, when he resorts to any artifice or
deception in order to gain his ends, that it is as bad to deceive as to
lie. It is not as bad, by any means. There is a marked line of distinction
to be drawn between falsifying one's word and all other forms of deception,
for there is such a sacredness in the spoken word, that the violation of
it is in general far more reprehensible than the attempt to accomplish the
same end by mere action. If a man has lost a leg, it may be perfectly right
for him to wear a wooden one which is so perfectly made as to deceive
people--and even to wear it, too, with the _intent_ to deceive pe