After my friend Andrea and I had tea and salad at the Tea Room in Ashland City, we dug through the colossal mess that is actually a bookstore on Main Street. I found a wonderful old book that I have never seen or read before: The Family by P. M. Palmer and J. W. Alexander. The writers were Presbyterian ministers in the mid-late 1800s. I can’t wait to get to the last half of the book, which is about family worship. The following is an excerpt from a chapter entitled “Authority of the Parent.”
A long season of training is allowed the parent, from infancy to maturity. As the reason expands, and the affections unfold, and the conscience asserts its supremacy, the force of bare authority must slacken. It is a part of the training itself, to throw the eaglets upon their own wing to balance in the air. The youth of sixteen cannot be ruled as the boy of six years; and the parent has missed his chance who is not able, quietly and by degrees, to substitute influence in the place of authority. Of course, wisdom and tact are required in effecting the change. But as the time must come when the exercise of authority shall cease, the manner of its gentle abdication should be the parent’s study. And they who seek to perpetuate it in its original cast-iron form, will succeed only in “provoking their children to wrath.”
