When the children are young and weak, the parents who are strong beat the children in order that they may be affectionate. Now, when the children get strong and the parents are old and weak, ought not the children to beat them, so that they too may become kind and loving?
If you want an affectionate son, beat him. If you desire a loving wife, beat her.
This is really the advice of the Dean of St Paul. To me it is one of the most pathetic facts in nature that wives and children love husbands and fathers who are utterly unworthy. It is enough to sadden a life to think of the affection that has been lavished upon the brutal, of the countless pearls that Love has thrown to swine.
The Dean, quoting from Hooker, insists that "the voice of man is as the sentence of God himself,"—in other words, that the general voice, practice and opinion of the human race are true.
And yet, cannibalism, slavery, polygamy, the worship of snakes and stones, the sacrifice of babes, have during vast periods of time been practiced and upheld by an overwhelming majority of mankind. Whether the "general voice" can be depended on depends much on the time, the epoch, during which the "general voice" was uttered. There was a time when the "general voice" was in accord with the appetite of man; when all nations were cannibals and lived on each other, and yet it can hardly be said that this voice and appetite were in exact accord with divine goodness. It is hardly safe to depend on the "general voice" of savages, no matter how numerous they may have been. Like most people who defend the cruel and absurd, the Dean appeals to the Bible as the supreme authority in the moral world,—and yet if the English Parliament should re-enact the Mosaic Code every member voting in the affirmative would be subjected to personal violence, and an effort to enforce that code would produce a revolution that could end only in the destruction of the government.
The morality of the Old Testament is not always of the purest; when Jehovah tried to induce Pharaoh to let the Hebrews go, he never took the ground that slavery was wrong. He did not seek to convince by argument, to soften by pity, or to persuade by kindness. He depended on miracles and plagues. He killed helpless babes and the innocent beasts of the fields. No wonder the Dean appeals to the Bible to justify the beating of children. So, too, we are told that "all sensible persons, Christian and otherwise, will admit that there are in every child born into the world tendencies to evil that need rooting out."
The Dean undoubtedly believes in the creed of the established church, and yet he does not hesitate to say that a God of infinite goodness and intelligence never created a child—never allowed one to be born into the world without planting in its little heart "tendencies to evil that need rooting out."
So, Solomon is quoted to the effect "that he that spareth his rod hateth his son." To me it has always been a matter of amazement why civilized people, living in the century of Darwin and Humboldt, should quote as authority the words of Solomon, a murderer, an ingrate, an idolater, and a polygamist—a man so steeped and sodden in ignorance that he really believed he could be happy with seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines. The Dean seems to regret that flogging is no longer practiced in the British navy, and quotes with great cheerfulness a passage from Deuteronomy to prove that forty lashes on the naked back will meet with the approval of God. He insists that St. Paul endured corporal punishment without the feeling of degradation not only, but that he remembered his sufferings with a sense of satisfaction. Does the Dean think that the satisfaction of St. Paul justified the wretches who beat and stoned him? Leaving the Hebrews, the Dean calls the Greeks as witnesses to establish the beneficence of flogging. They resorted to corporal punishment in their schools, says the Dean and then naively remarks "that Plutarch was opposed to this."
The Dean admits that in Rome it was found necessary to limit by law the punishment that a father might inflict upon his children, and yet he seems to regret that the legislature interfered. The Dean observes that "Quintillian severely censured corporal punishment" and then accounts for the weakness and folly of the censure, by saying that "Quintillian wrote in the days when the glories of Rome were departed." And then adds these curiously savage words: "It is worthy of remark that no children treated their parents with greater tenderness and reverence than did those of Rome in the days when the father possessed the unlimited power of punishment."
Not quite satisfied with the strength of his case although sustained by Moses and Solomon, St. Paul and several schoolmasters, he proceeds to show that God is thoroughly on his side, not only in theory, but in practice; "whom the Lord loveth lie chasteneth, and scourgeth every sou whom he receiveth.".