It is perhaps a little difficult to maintain an attitude of authority in these democratic days, when even educationalists counsel that children be treated on equal terms from the very beginning; but the children themselves come to our aid; the sweet humility and dependence natural to them fosters the gentle dignity, the _soupçon_ of reserve, which is becoming in parents. It is not open to parents either to lay aside or to sink under the burden of the honour laid upon them; and, no doubt, we have all seen the fullest, freest flow of confidence, sympathy, and love between parent and child, where the mother sits as a queen among her children and the father is honoured as a crowned head. The fact that there are two parents, each to lend honour to the other, yet free from restraint in each other’s presence, makes it the easier to maintain the impalpable “state” of parenthood. And the presence of the slight, sweet, undefined feeling of dignity in the household is the very first condition for the bringing up of loyal, honourable men and women, capable of reverence and apt to win respect. The foundation of parental authority lies in the fact that parents hold office as deputies; and that, in a twofold sense. In the first place, they are the immediate and personally appointed deputies of the Almighty King, the sole Ruler of men; they have not only to fulfil His counsels regarding the children, but to represent His Person; his parents are as God to the little child, and, yet more constraining thought, _God is to him what his parents are_; he has no power to conceive a greater and lovelier personality than that of the royal heads of his own home; he makes his first approach to the Infinite through them; they are his measure for the highest; if the measure be easily within his small compass, how shall he grow up with the reverent temper which is the condition of spiritual growth?