60
DOMESTIC EDUCATION.
Again, a foolish love will say to the mother^
" The baby desires that glass of wine because it
looks beautiful, and, therefore, it is cruel to with¬
hold what the baby wants." Will a sensible
mother listen to such falsehood? Does she not
know it is far more cruel to give her baby such
a thing than to withhold it? Will she sacrifice
the future of her baby to the present? But a
foolish love will gratify the present though it may
plunge the future of the child into the drunkard's
habits, the drunkard's grave, and the drunkard's
hell.
But a reasonable mother, guided by a wise
love, will say, " now or never." " NowT or never
is the time to begin to train my child for useful¬
ness and for heaven." Now or never is the hour
to begin to teach the all-important lesson of obe¬
dience ; because, in that is the seed of every thing
that is noble, beautiful, and great in human char¬
acter. Now is the moment to teach a new-born
babe—a young immortal, the duty of obedience to
parents, because the Creator has placed them in
his stead to impress the infant moral agent with
the sublime ideas of order, law, and government.
The moral is also an element of the mental. The
moral lesson is a higher lesson to teach than the
intellectual; because the moral nature of a hu¬
man being is above the intellectual; as far above
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