Loving their children, sacrificing often and much for them, yearning over them, parents, fearing loss to themselves, barred the road to freedom.
They wanted the children to belong to them.
"And one can't. The gulf is always there, between the generations. To own its existence might be to bridge it. But they won't own to it—they try and teach us not to own to it. They call it by other names—disloyalty, and ingratitude, and the arrogance of youth. And it's none of those things, until we're taught to consider it so."
"Honour thy father and mother." Yes, but they want one to do more than that—to go on belonging, to take on trust the vital things that matter most, that only personal experience can teach. That old idea that parents can choose the religion of their children—it's wrong, wrong all along the line. They ought to be free.
Will it ever come to that? Is it an impossibility that parents should exist who will one day say to a child: 'We profess such-and-such a faith. We hold it to be true, we hope that you, in time to come, will hold it to be true. But you are free. You are bound by no promises made on your behalf in your babyhood, you are at liberty to exercise the gift of free-will of which we have never robbed you.'
"Would a child, so taught, trust the more fully for the lack of all claim to blind obedience?"
"Obedience." She stopped upon the word. Not obedience—"because I am the dispenser of rewards and punishments. Not 'because I am I, and to be obeyed.' Not the appeal to the emotions: 'To please me—because it will grieve and disappoint me if you disobey——' Least of all, 'because I say it is right to obey, and pleasing to God, and wrong to disobey, and displeasing to Him.' But perhaps, 'because the logical consequences of disobedience will lead to harm. Let reason and experience, so far as you have either, help you to understand.'"
That was not the old way. Was it a better one? The difficulty of it—the incalculable importance of it! She thought of the many who had striven, and of the far greater number who saw no need to strive, and held unthinkingly to the old shibboleths.
A faint echo of Miss Melody's kind, complacent tones came to her from the past.
"Lily, Lily, what are all these fancies? Are children never to learn obedience without question, pray? According to you, dearie, then, must a baby cut himself with a sharp knife so as to learn by experience why he was forbidden to touch it? Come, come—that would never do."