[1] The spring of the law is love. With its "Thou shalt not do
this," and "Thou shalt not do that," the law presents
rather an ungracious aspect. We like ill to be bidden, but
worse to be forbidden. But does love never forbid? A
mother, does she never forbid her child; but, on the
contrary, indulge every caprice and grant all his wishes?
How disastrous the fate, and brief the life, of a child
denied nothing, indulged in everything, allowed to play
with fire, or fire-arms; to devour the painted but
poisonous fruit--to bathe where the tide runs like a
racehorse or the river rushes roaring into the black,
swirling pool. And he who frets against the restraints of
God's holy law because it forbids this and the other thing,
is no wiser than the infant who weeps, and screams, and
struggles, and perhaps beats the kind bosom that nurses it,
because its mother has snatched a knife from its foolish
hands.--_Guthrie._