THE CHRISTAIN MOTHER By John Abbot- 1833. Chapter 2: Part Four

THE CHRISTIAN MOTHER

by John Abbott, 1833, Worcester, Mass. Published by the American Tract Society

Start at Chapter One Here: The Mothers Responsibility

Chapter 2: Part Four:

The Mother's AUTHORITY

Is it said that by noticing such little things a mother must be continually finding fault? But it is not a little thing for a child to disobey a mother's commands!

This one act of disregarding authority prepares the way for another. It is the commencement of evil which must be resisted. The very first appearances of insubordination must be checked.

There are doubtless cases of trifling faults occurring, which a wise parent will judge it expedient to overlook. Children will be thoughtless and inadvertent. They will occasionally err from strict propriety, without any real intention of doing wrong. Judgment is here requisite in deciding what things must be overlooked; but we may be assured, I think, that direct and open disobedience is not, in any case, to be classed among the number of trifling faults. The eating of an apple banished our first parents from paradise. The atrocity of the offense consisted in its disobedience of a divine command.

Now, every mother has power to obtain prompt obedience—if she commences with her children when they are young. They are then entirely in her hands. All their enjoyments are at her disposal.

God has thus given her all the power she needs to govern and guide them as she pleases.

We have endeavored to show, by the preceding illustrations, that the fundamental principle of government is—when you do give a command, invariably enforce its obedience. And God has given every mother the power. He has placed in your hands a helpless babe, entirely dependent upon you; so that if it disobeys you, all you have to do is to cut off its sources of enjoyment, or inflict bodily pain, so steadily and so invariably that disobedience and suffering shall be indissolubly connected in the mind of the child.
What more power can a parent ask for than God has already given? And if we fail to use this power for the purposes for which it was bestowed, the sin is ours, and upon us and upon our children must rest the consequences.

The exercise of discipline must often be painful—but if you shrink from duty here, you expose yourself to all that sad train of woes which disobedient children leave behind them. If you cannot summon sufficient resolution to deprive of enjoyment, and inflict pain when it is necessary, then you must feel that a broken heart and an old age of sorrow will not be unmerited. And when you look upon your dissolute sons and ungrateful daughters, you must remember that the time was when you might have checked their evil propensities.

If you love 'momentary ease' better than your children's welfare and your own permanent happiness, you cannot murmur at the lot you have freely chosen. And when you meet your children at the bar of God, and they point to you and say, "It was through your neglect of duty that we are banished from heaven—and consigned to endless woe!" you must feel what no tongue can tell.

Ah! it is dreadful for a mother to trifle with duty. Eternal destinies are committed to your trust. The influence you are now exerting will go on, unchecked by the grave or the judgment, and will extend onward through those ages to which there is no end!

Continue to Chapter 2: Part Five