Never promise a child and then fail to perform, whether you promise him a bun or a beating, for if once you lose your child's confidence you will find it all but impossible to regain it. Happy is the mother who can say, "I never told my child a lie, nor ever deceived him, even for what seemed his good." Robert Hall once reproved a young mother because, in putting a little baby to bed, she put on her own nightcap, and lay down by it till it went to sleep. "Madam," said the eloquent preacher, "you are acting a lie, and teaching the child to lie." It was in vain that the mother pleaded that the child would not go to sleep. "That," said Hall, "is nonsense. Properly brought up it must sleep. Make it know what you want; obedience is necessary on its part, but not a lie on yours."
CHAPTER XIX.
"NURSING FATHERS."
"And kings shall be thy nursing fathers."—Isaiah xlix. 23.
It is an old saying, "Praise the child and you make love to the mother;" and it is a thing that no husband ought to overlook, for if the wife wish her child to be admired by others, what must be the ardour of her wishes with regard to his admiration! Cobbett tells us that there was a drunken man in his regiment, who used to say that his wife would forgive him for spending all the pay, and the washing money into the bargain, "if he would but kiss her ugly brat, and say it was pretty." Though this was a profligate he had philosophy in him; and certain it is that there is nothing worthy of the name of conjugal happiness unless the husband clearly evince that he is fond of his children.
Where you find children loving and helpful to their mothers, you generally find their father at the bottom of it. If the husband respect his wife the children will respect their mother. If the husband rises to offer her a chair, they will not sit still when she enters the room; if he helps to bear her burdens, they will not let her be the pack-horse of the household. If to her husband the wife is but an upper servant, to her children she will easily become but a waiting-maid. The first care of the true, wise husband will be to sustain the authority of the wife and mother. It must be a very remarkable exigency which allows him to sit as a court of appeal from her decisions, and reverse them. But although husbands ought not to vexatiously interfere with their wives in the management of children, especially of young children, still they must not shirk their share of care and responsibility. It was not without reason that Diogenes struck the father when the son swore, because he had taught him no better.
There is no effeminacy in the title "nursing fathers," but the contrary. Fondness for children arises from compassionate feeling for creatures that are helpless and innocent.
Napoleon loved the man who held with a steel hand, covered with a silk glove; so should the father be gentle but firm. Happy is he who is happy in his children, and happy are the children who are happy in their father. All fathers are not wise. Some are like Eli, and spoil their children. Not to cross our children is the way to make a cross of them. But, "Ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath." That is, do not irritate them by unwise or capricious rules and ways. Help your wives to make the home lively and pleasant, so as to keep the children from seeking pleasure and excitement elsewhere. The proverb says that "Clergymen's sons always turn out badly." Why? Because the children are surfeited with severe religion, not with the true religion of Christ, who was Himself reproved by the prototypes of such severe men.