Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood by George MacDonald

The next day, at breakfast, I told my father all the previous day's adventures. Never since he had so kindly rescued me from the misery of wickedness had I concealed anything from him. He, on his part, while he gave us every freedom, expected us to speak frankly concerning our doings. To have been unwilling to let him know any of our proceedings would have simply argued that they were already disapproved of by ourselves, and no second instance of this had yet occurred with me. Hence it came that still as I grew older I seemed to come nearer to my father. He was to us like a wiser and more beautiful self over us, -- a more enlightened conscience, as it were, ever lifting us up towards its own higher level.

This was Sunday; but he was not so strict in his ideas concerning the day as most of his parishioners. So long as we were sedate and orderly, and neither talked nor laughed too loud, he seldom interfered with our behaviour, or sought to alter the current of our conversation. I believe he did not, like some people, require or expect us to care about religious things as much as he did: we could not yet know as he did what they really were. But when any of the doings of the week were referred to on the Sunday, he was more strict, I think, than on other days, in bringing them, if they involved the smallest question, to the standard of right, to be judged, and approved or condemned thereby. I believe he thought that to order our ways was our best preparation for receiving higher instruction afterwards. For one thing, we should then, upon failure, feel the burden of it the more, and be the more ready to repent and seek the forgiveness of God, and that best help of his which at length makes a man good within himself.