helplessness. The infant is at the mercy of the parent. Instinct impels the
parent to provide for its wants. Even the brute does this.

That it is a part, therefore, of the home mission to provide for the
physical wants of the dependents there, is very evident. To refuse to
fulfill it is a crime against nature. This part of the home-mission
includes the education of the body, by properly unfolding and directing its
powers, and providing it with appropriate nutriment, raiment and shelter.
In a word, we should make proper provision for the development and maturity
of the physical life of our children. This is the mission of the parent
until the child is able to provide for itself. This, says Blackstone, "is a
principle of natural law;" and, in the language of Puffendorf, is "an
obligation laid on parents, not only by nature herself, but by their own
proper act in bringing them into the world." The laws of the land also
command it. The child has a legal claim upon the parent for physical
sustenance and education.

It is another part of the home-mission to provide for the intellectual
wants and welfare of the child. Children have mind as well as body. The
former needs nourishment and training as well as the latter. Hence it is as
much the mission of the family to minister to the well-being of the mind of
the child, as to that of its body. Civil law enforces this. Children have a
legal as well as a natural claim to mental culture. In a word, it is the
home-mission to provide for the child all things necessary to prepare it
for a citizenship in the state.

Parents abuse this mission in two ways, either when they by their own
indolence and dissipation compel their children to support them; or, on the
other hand, when they become the willing slaves of their children, labor to
amass a fortune for them, and, in the anticipation of that, permit them to