In vile states, the
children are always wanting to be men and women, and the parents to
keep them children. It may be--and happy the house in which it is so
--that the father's at least equal intellect, and older experience, may
remain to the end of his life a law to his children, not of force, but
of perfect guidance, with perfect love. Rarely it is so; not often
possible. It is as natural for the old to be prejudiced as for the
young to be presumptuous; and, in the change of centuries, each
generation has something to judge of for itself.
But this scene, on which Giotto has dwelt with so great force,
represents, not the child's assertion of his independence, but his
adoption of another Father.
You must not confuse the desire of this boy of Assisi to obey God
rather than man, with the desire of your young cockney Hopeful to have
a latch-key, and a separate allowance.
No point of duty has been more miserably warped and perverted by false
priests, in all churches, than this duty of the young to choose whom
they will serve. But the duty itself does not the less exist; and if
there be any truth in Christianity at all, there will come, for all
true disciples, a time when they have to take that saying to heart, "He
that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me."
'_Loveth_'--observe. There is no talk of disobeying fathers or
mothers whom you do not love, or of running away from a home where you
would rather not stay.
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