CHAPTER II.
"Count that day lost whose low descending sun
Views from thy hand no worthy action done."
"It seems strange our children should be so perverse; we have always given them good counsel," said a lady, whose darling son had just been sent to sea as the last scheme parental anxiety could devise for his reformation.
Good counsel is a very good thing, doubtless; but, to make it effectual, we must convince our children that goodness is pleasure. I once saw a lady punishing her little son for playing on the Sabbath. The boy sat sobbing and sulky, and his mother, whose heart melted at his tears, while her sense of duty forbade her to indulge him, turned to me and said—
"The Sabbath is a most trying day; I can keep it myself, though it is dull; but my children have nothing to occupy their minds, and they will be in mischief. I am always glad when the Sabbath is over."
The children looked up, very pleasantly, at this, and probably thought their mother hated the Sabbath as truly as they did; and they might reason it would be a pleasure to her if there were no Sabbaths.
The elder Mr. Lloyd managed things better. He maintained that children were inclined to good or tempted to evil by the influences of their education; that the fear of losing a pleasure operated more forcibly on their hearts than the fear of incurring a punishment; and, consequently, that we must make the way in which we would have them go seem so pleasant by our own gladness while treading it, that they may be inclined to follow us from choice.
"It is a poor compliment to virtue, if her votaries must be always sad," he would say; "and the peace and good-will which the Gospel was given expressly to diffuse over the earth should not make men gloomy and children miserable."
What he commended he practised. In forming the character of Arthur, he was careful to make him distinguish between the happiness which in his own heart he enjoyed, and that which others might flatter him with possessing.