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¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 10 THE SPOILED CHILD. [298

¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 1 thereby helping on the mischief. When I was dunned with incessant clamors to supply the appetite which my folly helped to create, I have replied fiercely, adding reproach and insult to refusal, instead of making the effort with paternal kindness and love to reclaim him. What was the result? Just what you have witnessed, and what might have been anticipated in one whose conscience is seared, and who is prepared for the most debased and debasing conduct; just that which is practised by unprincipled and ruined sons and apprentices every day. He actually abstracted property, article after article, weekly; he even drove off, in my absence, the sheep and young cattle, to pay his debts of honor; namely, his tavern and gambling debts! And, O! Sir, I am well aware, that within an hour he has been repeating this robbery on his father!”

¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 1 “It is a desperate case!” said the Pastor, after a long pause of sorrowful silence. “But, all that you have been alluding to, my dear friend, are only the branches of the evil you deplore, If you go farther back than to his boyhood at school, perhaps you may discover the root. And, my dear Madam,” continued he, in the most tender and respectful manner, “I allude to a mother’s earliest influence over the young heart, to show how much depends on a mother’s care; not by any means to insinuate that you, like Eve, were first in the transgression. But did you not miss, in his early infancy, or at least in the earliest part of his boyhood, the grand opportunity of establishing your parental authority in the heart of your dear boy?”

¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 1 “I fear I did,” said she, with great emotion; “and often have I bewailed it. Ah! Sir, I am assured that a child is capable of receiving instruction, ay, and of being spoiled, as it regards religious matters, sooner than most mothers have any just conception of. I did, indeed, long for the grace of God to sanctify his soul—and earnestly, if I know my own heart, did I pray for this. But, on review, it is a question involving serious doubt with me, whether I did labor aright, or use the means of God’s grace in a skilful and judicious manner, to convey the truth into his young heart, and establish there a sense of God’s authority, and thence, of my own as a parent. I did not make, I fear, a scriptural effort to melt down his heart, by causing the knowledge, and thence