CORPORAL PUNISHMENT.


To the Matron of a Girls' Orphan Asylum

"Now to the specific questions you ask. My answers must, of course, be
based upon general principles--the special application, often so
very difficult a matter, must be left to you. To begin with corporal
punishment. You say you are 'personally opposed, but that your early
training and the literal interpretation of Solomon's rod keep you
undecided.' Surely your own comment later shows that part, at least,
of the influence of your early training was _against_ corporal
punishment, because you saw and felt its evils in yourself. Such
early training may have made you unapt in thinking of other means
of discipline; but it can hardly have made you think of corporal
punishment as _right_.

"And how can anyone take Solomon's rod any more literally than she
does the Savior's cross? We are bid, on a higher authority than
Solomon's proverbs, to take up our cross and follow Him. This we all
interpret figuratively. Would you dream, for instance, of binding
heavy crosses of wood upon the backs of your children because you felt
yourselves so enjoined in the literal sense of the Scriptures? Why,
then, take the rod literally? It is as clearly used to designate any
form of orderly discipline as the cross is used to designate endurance
of necessary sorrows. 'The letter killeth, but the spirit maketh
alive.'