r being; "yet it does not admit," says Schlegel, "of being
set forth and comprised in any exact and positive formularies." It does
not, as in the old Roman law, concede to the parent the power over the life
of the child. This would not only violate the law of natural affection, but
would be an amalgamation of the family and state. Neither is the parental
authority merely conventional, given to the parent by the state as a
policy. It is no civil or political investiture, making the parent a
delegated civil ruler; but comes from God as an in alienable right, and
independent, as such, of the state. It does not, therefore, rest upon civil
legislation, but has its foundation in human nature and the revealed law of
God; neither can the state legislate upon it, except in cases where its
exercise becomes an infringement upon the prerogatives of the state itself.

Parents are magistrates under God, and, as His stewards, cannot abdicate
their authority, nor delegate it to another. Neither can they be tyrants in
the exercise of it. God has given to them the principles of
home-legislation, the standard of judicial authority, and the rules of
their executive power. God gives the law. The parent is only deputy
governor,--steward, "bound to be faithful." Hence the obligation of the
child to obey the steward is as great as that to obey the Master. "Where
the principal is silent, take heed that thou despise not the deputy."

Here, then, we have the extent of the parent's authority, and the spirit
and manner in which it should be exercised. His power is grafted on the
strength of another, and should not extend beyond it. Its exercise should
not run into despotism on the one hand, nor into indifferentism on the
other. According to the vagaries of some religious sentimentalists and
fanatics, it is supposed that religion supersedes the necessity of parental
government. They think that such authority runs counter to the spirit and
requisitions of the gospel. But this is asserted in the broad face of God's
Word. The promptings of such sentimentalism are to permit children to do as
they please, and to bring them up under the influence of domestic
libertinism. Honor thy father and thy mother, is a command which explodes
such a gaudy theory; and he who does not obey it, brutalizes human nature,
dishonors God, subverts the principles of constitutional society, throws
off allegiance to the prerogatives of a divinely constituted superior, and
overth