A MAMMA said to her boy who had done something wrong, “I am very sorry to have to punish you; but I must do so, for you have been very naughty, and I cannot pass over such a fault as you have been guilty of without punishing you.” And she punished him, for she loved her child too well to spare the rod.
He did the usual amount of crying, and the mother’s heart was pained to hear her child weep so bitterly. But he soon dried up his tears, and became as happy as usual.
To show how shrewdly he could see what was right, after a while he came to his mother and said, “I know, mamma, you did right to whip me, for I deserved it; and if you had not done it, you would have been just like Eli.”
Judging, from the conduct of many children around us, their parents, alas, are just like Eli, What shall the harvest be? As a man sows, so shall he reap.
Parents, see to it that none of you earn by your laxity of family discipline the reproach of being “just like Eli.”
ML-06/09/1935