כשם שאדם מצווה בכבוד אביו וביראתו כד הוא חייב בכבוד רבו וביראתו יותר מאביו וכו׳ ׃ “As a man is commanded to honour and fear his father, so he is bound to honour and fear his Rabbi more than his father; for his father has been the means of bringing him into the life of this world, but his Rabbi, who teaches him wisdom, brings him to the life of the world to come.” (Hilchoth Talmud Torah, c. 5.) This general rule is bad enough, but the particulars are still worse. “If a man should see something that his father has lost, and something that his Rabbi has lost, he is first to return what his Rabbi has lost, and then to return that which belongs to his father. If his father and his Rabbi be oppressed with a load, he is first to help down that of his Rabbi, and then that of his father. If his father and his Rabbi be in captivity, he is first to ransom his Rabbi and afterwards his father unless his father be the disciple of a wise man (_i.e._, learned), in which case he may ransom his father first.” How fearful is this doctrine! A man is to see his father, the author of his existence, the guardian of his infancy, who has laboured for his support, and watched over him in the hour of sickness, he is to see this friend, to whom, under God, he owes everything, pining away in the bitterness of captivity, and yet, when he has got the means of restoring him to liberty and his family, he is to leave him still in all his misery, and ransom the Rabbi; where is this written in the Old Testament? “Honour thy father and thy mother,” is there the first commandment that follows after our duty to God, and the first movement of natural affection. But this Rabbinical doctrine silences the voice of nature, and makes void the law of God. What is the doctrine of the New Testament here? “If any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.” (1 Tim. v. 8.) The disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ never claimed for themselves any honour like this. In the passage just cited, they plainly declare that the first, in the circle of duties to men, is the duty to our own flesh and blood. And the only case in which the New Testament permits a deviation from this rule, is that where the same exception is made in the law of Moses, when love to parents would interfere with love to God. “If any man come to me and hate not his father and mother, and wife and children, and brethren and sisters, yea, and _his own life also_, he cannot be my disciple.” (Luke xiv. 26.) Here father and mother, and kindred, are put in one category with a man’s own life, in order to show that there is but one case in which the natural ties of blood may be overlooked, and this is when the service of God requires it. As it is also written in the law of Moses, “If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend who is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly,