CHAPTER XXI.
CORPORAL PUNISHMENT.
It might, perhaps, be thought that, in a book which professes to show how an efficient government can be established and maintained by _gentle measures_, the subject of corporal punishment could have no place.

It seems important, however, that there should be here introduced a brief though distinct presentation of the light in which, in a philosophical point of view, this instrumentality is to be regarded.
_The Teachings of Scripture_.
The resort to corporal punishment in the training of children seems to be spoken of in many passages contained in the Scriptures as of fundamental necessity.

But there can be no doubt that the word _rod_, as used in those passages, is used simply as the emblem of parental authority.

This is in accordance with the ordinary custom of Hebrew writers in those days, and with the idiom of their language, by which a single visible or tangible object was employed as the representative or expression of a general idea--as, for example, the sword is used as the emblem of magisterial authority, and the sun and the rain, which are spoken of as being sent with their genial and fertilizing power upon the evil and the good, denote not specially and exclusively those agencies, but all the beneficent influences of nature which they are employed to represent.

The injunctions, therefore, of Solomon in respect to the use of the rod are undoubtedly to be understood as simply enjoining upon parents the necessity of bringing up their children _in complete subjection_ to their authority.