Children and inferior persons often show themselves, upon the slightest temptation, false and cruel,—often the inheritance of parental imperfection. Absolute command, sustained by physical force, has alone been found sufficient to eradicate these old, and to found new habits of truthfulness and humanity.
True, the Scripture asserts that all men are equal in the sight of God, just as a father feels an equal parental regard for all his children. The philosophic mind cannot well conceive otherwise than that God feels an equal regard for all parts of his creation; for “The glory of the Lord shall endure for ever: the Lord shall rejoice in his work.” But this view reaches not the physical fact; for the father hesitates not to place a guardian over his wayward child, or disinherit the utterly worthless. So God “turneth man to destruction; and sayeth, Return, ye children of men.” And how gladly would the parent provide the fatted calf for the worthless son upon his return to honour and virtue! So there is more joy in heaven over the return of one sinner than over ninety-nine who have not gone astray.
The mercy of God shines upon the world in floods of celestial light; for Christianity, in its passports to heaven, judges all men by their own acts. Therefore, the most degraded nature, upon a sight of its deformity, may feel an unchangeable regret, and inherit its portion.
Here Christianity itself points the way to progressive improvement, and commands children to obey their parents, wives their husbands, and servants their masters.
The grace of God is as openly manifested in the welfare of the child or slave, when produced through the interposition of the parent or master, as if the interposition had been more immediate.
LESSON IV.
Intellect is not found to exist only in connection with a corresponding physical organization. In the family of man, if that which may appear a good organization is accompanied by an inferior intellect, we may suspect our nice accuracy of discernment, rather than a discrepancy in the operation of the general law; so also where we may seem to perceive a good intellect, but which produces inferior or unworthy results. We do not always notice the small steps of degeneration. Often the first notice we take is of the fact of a changed condition, as proved by the results: “By their fruits ye shall know them.”
The idea that intellect and mental development can be independent of physical organization is an absurdity. A suppressed or incomplete organization must arrest a further enlargement of the mental faculties. These faculties may be improved, brought into action, or even their action to some extent suppressed, by government and culture. Such indeed are the guides to progressive improvement. Explanation:—Man has no organization by which he could build a honey-comb like a bee. Will any culture applied to him teach him? Man has no organization by which he can closely examine spiritual existences: his ideas about them are therefore variant and confused. Who will arrange their study into a science? Man has no organization by which he can fully comprehend God. Will he ever do so in his present state?
Are, then, the actions of the child, and of those persons whose mental development has been arrested at a very early stage, (as has been supposed the case with the lower orders of animals, and of those animals themselves,) the result of some faculty or mental power different from mind? The result of instinct? And what is instinct but mind in the early dawn of its development? Are not such actions as the chick breaking its shell, the young-born infant receiving its natural food, the necessary consequents of the state of their infantile organization, which the earliest development of mind could prompt and enable them to put forth; and will it be deemed beyond the reach of reason, to prove that with the difference of maturity in organization and development, the same general connection of mind and organization is found, through the entire of life as well as infancy?