V. The fifth command consecrates its strength to the family relation. Addressed to children it requires them to honor their father and their mother, and makes obedience the condition of long life and prosperity in the land of their promised inheritance. As read in Ex. 20: 12 the command specifies only long life, but as repeated in Deut. 5: 16, “that it may go well with thee”――is added. General prosperity is however involved and implied in length of days.――――Obviously this honor carries with it obedience as well as due respect. Such honor is vital to the happiness and the value of the family relation. Without it no foundation can ever be laid for a useful and worthy after-life. It should not be overlooked that the earliest training of the infant mind Godward should begin with cultivating the honor and obedience due to father and mother. Through all the earliest developments of the infant and youthful mind, the parent is to the child in the place of God. The same qualities of character, the same obedience, respect, and deference, which God requires toward himself are to be first implanted and developed in the mind toward the human parent. Failing of their due development in this antecedent relation, they are almost certain never to be developed toward God: a fatal defect in character is fastened upon the child; a cast of mind is determined which but too surely ends in hopeless ruin.――――It is noticeable that this very association of ideas, uniting the homage due to parentage and years with the honor due to God appears in the Mosaic law (Lev. 19: 32); “Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head and honor the face of the old man; and _fear thy God_: I am the Lord.”