In human life and society there are three species of power, which possess a symbolical significance and a sacred character as resting on a divine foundation. And these are parental authority, the spiritual or priestly power, and the kingly or whatever may be the supreme authority in the state. The affectionate care and anxiety of an earthly parent possesses but a faint analogy to the goodness and providence of the omniscient and eternal Father of all, and is scarcely more than a type of it. Moreover, the parental authority and a father’s rights over his children, founded on his relation as the loving and affectionate author of their being, admits not of being set forth and comprised in any exact and positive formularies. And even if the social community occasionally steps in to determine by legislation the limits, and in certain points gives its sanction to the domestic rights and authority of a father, as founded on love and feeling, this is only done, nevertheless, with a view to guard against and to remedy the possible abuse of so natural a right and relation. When, however, as was the principle of the old Roman law, power over the life and death of his offspring is conceded to the father, we feel at once that this is an undue extension of the paternal authority, and that the provinces of the three different powers are not kept duly distinct and separate. A parent who should avail himself of such a privilege would but prove himself devoid of the ordinary feelings of nature. On the other hand, by a natural sentiment, common to the savage and barbarian, as well as to the most refined and civilized nations, respect for and reverence of parents is held to be something more than an ordinary and conventional duty and obligation. It is universally regarded in the light of a duty in every sense sacred and holy. And the divine moral law of the Old Testament completely agrees with the universal feeling of man’s nature in this ascription to it of holiness. But, on the other hand, the rights of the Christian limit the parent’s authority on the side of the spiritual domain, wherever it would trench upon the freedom of belief and liberty of conscience. Special circumstances, again, such as the dotage of old age, mental weakness, faults of character, or offenses against society, may, in certain cases, tend greatly to limit and control, or otherwise modify, the parental dignity and authority. But still, in the very worst case, the most respectful behavior and the tenderest delicacy, on all points connected with this relationship, remains forever an immutable law of duty to the child, which, as it is deeply founded in the moral sense of man, makes itself heard throughout the whole habitable world. The mutual tie of parental love and filial duty has, it is plain, its foundations deep in nature itself, and out of it proceeds the sanctity of the very notion of domestic life, and of all its relations, as well as of the