endeavour to reproduce in our everyday life. What precedents did not
Abraham, Jephthah and Jonadab the son of Rechab offer? How easy was it
to quote and follow them in an age when few reasonable men or women
doubted that every syllable of the Old Testament was taken down
_verbatim_ from the mouth of God. Moreover, Puritanism restricted
natural pleasures; it substituted the Jeremiad for the Paean, and it
forgot that the poor abuses of all times want countenance.

Mr Pontifex may have been a little sterner with his children than some of
his neighbours, but not much. He thrashed his boys two or three times a
week and some weeks a good deal oftener, but in those days fathers were
always thrashing their boys. It is easy to have juster views when
everyone else has them, but fortunately or unfortunately results have
nothing whatever to do with the moral guilt or blamelessness of him who
brings them about; they depend solely upon the thing done, whatever it
may happen to be. The moral guilt or blamelessness in like manner has
nothing to do with the result; it turns upon the question whether a
sufficient number of reasonable people placed as the actor was placed
would have done as the actor has done. At that time it was universally
admitted that to spare the rod was to spoil the child, and St Paul had
placed disobedience to parents in very ugly company. If his children did
anything which Mr Pontifex disliked they were clearly disobedient to
their father. In this case there was obviously only one course for a
sensible man to take. It consisted in checking the first signs of self-
will while his children were too young to offer serious resistance. If
their wills were "well broken" in childhood, to use an expression then
much in vogue, they would acquire habits of obedience which they would
not venture to break through till they were over twenty-one years old.
Then they might please themselves; he should know how to protect himself;
till then he and his money were more at their mercy than he liked.