The truth is, that what we are to look at in such injunctions is the end that is to be attained, which is, in this last case, the impressive and reverential exaltation of Almighty God in our minds by the acts of public worship; and if, with the improvements in musical instruments which have been made in modern times, we can do this more satisfactorily by employing in the place of a psaltery or a harp of ten strings an organ of ten or a hundred stops, we are bound to make the substitution.  In a word, we must look at the end and not at the means, remembering that in questions of Scripture interpretation the “letter killeth, the spirit maketh alive.”

Protracted Contests with Obstinacy.

It seems to me, though I am aware that many excellent persons think differently, that it is never wise for the parent to allow himself to be drawn into a contest with a child in attempting to compel him to do something that from ill-temper or obstinacy he refuses to do.  If the attempt is successful, and the child yields under a moderate severity of coercion, it is all very well.  But there is something mysterious and unaccountable in the strength of the obstinacy sometimes manifested in such cases, and the degree of endurance which it will often inspire, even in children of the most tender age.  We observe the same inexplicable fixedness sometimes in the lower animals—­in the horse, for example; which is the more unaccountable from the fact that we can not suppose, in his case, that peculiar combination of intelligence and ill-temper which we generally consider the sustaining power of the protracted obstinacy on the part of the child.  The degree of persistence which is manifested by children in contests of this kind is something wonderful, and can not easily be explained by any of the ordinary theories in respect to the influence of motives on the human mind.  A state of cerebral excitement and exaltation is not unfrequently produced which seems akin to insanity, and instances have been known in which a child has suffered itself to be beaten to death rather than yield obedience to a very simple command.  And in vast numbers of instances, the parent, after a protracted contest, gives up in despair, and is compelled to invent some plausible pretext for bringing it to an end.

Indeed, when we reflect upon the subject, we see what a difficult task we undertake in such contests—­it being nothing less than that of forcing the formation of a volition in a human mind.  We can easily control the bodily movements and actions of another person by means of an external coercion that we can apply, and we have various indirect means of inducing volitions; but in these contests we seem to come up squarely to the work of attempting, by outward force, to compel the forming of a volition in the mind; and it is not surprising that this should, at least sometimes, prove a very difficult undertaking.

No Necessity for these Contests.