This community of nature between man and God is not only the ground and condition of our knowing God, but it is also the living, everlasting bond which holds man to God, even in his sins. It involves much more than obligation--obligation to an omnipotent Master, and submission to an omnipresent Lord. Such sense of obligation may be developed within the sphere of instinctive and unreasoning life. But the kinship of souls to God brings man within the sphere of _moral_ life, with its eternal and immutable laws. It endows man with the power and imposes upon him the duty to reverence, adore, and love the heavenly Father. Wonderful and awful, this idea of the paternity of God and the childship of human souls! This paternity of God is suggestive at once of the highest form of authority and the most sacred form of duty that can be conceived by the human mind. "The power of a sovereign, however extensive it may be, is, after all, only conventional; it admits of being circumscribed or suspended.... All earthly forms of authority, which belong to the political, civil, or social relation of men, are accidental and official, created by men for their own purposes, and may be modified or abolished by the power that created them. But the authority of a father over his child is founded in nature and established by God. This is not a voluntary arrangement among men themselves, which they are at liberty to continue or to terminate as they please; but, on the contrary, it is a Divine constitution. Such authority as a father possesses over his child--so natural, so real, so Divine--no human being besides can possess over another. This, accordingly, is the selected type of the supreme rights of God, and of the essential sovereignty which belongs to the Father of minds. No other explains, as this does, the _foundation_ and _nature_ of Divine authority. There are, indeed, other terms which indicate the mere fact of sovereignty in God, and do so more pointedly and directly than this. For example: He is compared to a _king_--a name which belongs to the highest secular office and the highest secular authority on earth. 'The Lord is king forever.' His creatures are his subjects; He gives them wise and righteous laws, and they must answer to Him for obedience and disobedience. The comparison is obviously just up to a certain limit; but it is obvious that in many essential respects it entirely fails. The king and his people are connected together only by one bond--that of authority and corresponding subjection." The relation is purely a contingent relation, and may be maintained by arbitrary power. But the relation between God and his rational creatures is a natural and a necessary relation. All that is denoted by the word _king_--authority, power, law--is really contained in the word _father_; but there is much more conveyed in the word _father_ than can be possibly expressed by the word _king_. God is a king, but He is a