readers of his edition this personal testimony:--'After bringing up a
very large family, who are a blessing to their parents, I have yet to
learn what part of the human body was created to be beaten.' At the same
time the rod must mean something in the word of God; it certainly means
something in God's hand when His obstinate children are under it, and it
ought to mean something in a godly parent's hand also. Little
Obstinate's two parents were far from ungodly people, though they lived
in such a city; but they were daily destroying their only son by letting
him always have his own way, and by never saying no to his greed, and his
lies, and his anger, and his noisy and disorderly ways. Eli in the Old
Testament was not a bad man, but he destroyed both the ark of the Lord
and himself and his sons also, because his sons made themselves vile, and
he restrained them not. God's children are never so soft, and sweet, and
good, and happy as just after He restrains them, and has again laid the
rod of correction upon them. They then kiss both the rod and Him who
appointed it. And earthly fathers learn their craft from God. The
meekness, the sweetness, the docility, and the love of a chastised child
has gone to all our hearts in a way we can never forget. There is
something sometimes almost past description or belief in the way a
chastised child clings to and kisses the hand that chastised it. But
poor old Spare-the-Rod never had experiences like that. And young
Obstinate, having been born like Job's wild ass's colt, grew up to be a
man like David's unbitted and unbridled mule, till in after life he
became the author of all the evil and mischief that is associated in our
minds with his evil name.

In old Spare-the-Rod's child also this true proverb was fulfilled, that
the child is the father of the man. For all that little Obstinate had
been in the nursery, in the schoolroom, and in the playground--all that,
only in an aggravated way--he was as a youth and as a grown-up man. For