society or of merit of any kind, must find somewhere a place where it is welcomed without regard to usefulness or merit. And it is the love of the parents that makes the home, and it is his own home that makes the child at home in the world. It does not follow that parents in general do reverence the spiritual possibilities latent in their children. The natural affection is there, but the empirical substratum and the spiritual relation are not to be confounded. The kind of reverence of which I speak is an ideal thing to be worked towards, not something that as yet actually exists, save in exceptional cases. In the caste family and the feudal family the father incarnated, as it were, the social system so far as that stratum or class was concerned to which he belonged. He inspired awe. He demanded implicit obedience. It was the existing social system that spoke from his lips. But this system itself had an arbitrary character, and the worship of the father was hardly ethical. The modern family goes to the opposite extreme. In it the relations between parents and children are loose, and tend to become more and more so. Reverence is scarcely looked for by the parent, and is not likely to be accorded. On the individualistic theory the child at a very early age is treated as an equal, and whether encouraged to do so or not is apt to assert its independence. The members of the family are not joined in an organic connection, but resemble a collection of atomic units that easily fall apart. The ethical relation, the real reverence must spring from the service the parent renders in bringing to light the specific individuality of the child with an eye to the transmutation which it is to receive in the later terms of the social series. Not only highest gratitude but genuine reverence are due to the parent who performs this office. “You have given me physical birth, you are now giving me spiritual birth,” will be the child’s response to the parent’s efforts. Thus much may be said as to the reason why the marriage relation should be exclusive. The principal reason why it should be lifelong, is that the office of the parent in furthering the spiritual development of the children does not end when they reach the threshold of manhood or womanhood. On the contrary, the finest touches are often added to the work of education when the sons and daughters have become established in a business or profession, and have founded families of their own. The wisdom gathered from the experience of their elders, the disinterested counsel inspired by love, will then be of the greatest use to them. The young mother, especially, confronted with the problems of child-rearing, will naturally turn to her own mother for advice. The son, who comes to close quarters with the difficulties of life, will find in the father, who is detached from life and has the tranquil vision of old age, his best friend.