egraded to the level of a purely
natural contract, its bond has lost its character of indissolubility
and its obligations are shirked to meet the demands of fashion and
convenience. When parents, unworthy ones, do not appreciate their own
dignity, how will others, their children, appreciate it? And parenthood
will never be esteemed while its true nature and sanctity are ignored
and contemned; there is no dignity where the idea of God is excluded.

After God had created man, He left him to work out his destiny in a
natural way; and immediately man assumed towards his offspring the
relation that God first held towards himself--he assumed the
prerogatives of paternity and of authority. All paternity belongs to
God, and to Him alone; yet man is delegated to that lofty, quasi-divine
function. God alone can create; yet so near does the parental office
approach to the power of creation that we call it pro-creation.

Tis true, this privilege man holds in common with the rest of animated
nature, but with this difference: that the fruit of his loins is a
child of God, with an immortal soul, an heir to heaven where its
destiny is to glorify the Eternal during all eternity. And thus, man,
in his function of parent, is as far differentiated from the rest of
animal nature as the act by which God created man is superior to all
His other creative acts.

If the tempter, when working out his plan for the fall of our first
parents, had simply and unconditionally said: "Ye shall be as gods,"
his utterance would have in it more truth than he intended, for the
mantle of parenthood that was soon to fall upon them made them like
unto God. The children that romped around them, looked up to them even,
almost, as they were accustomed to look up to the Creator. And little
the wonder, since to their parents they owed their very existence.

As depositaries of authority, there is no human station, however
exalted, comparable to theirs. Children are not merely subjects, they
belong to their parents. Church and State, under God, may see to it
that that authority is not abused; but within the bounds of right, they
are held to respect it; and their acts that go contrary to the exercise
of parental authority are, by the fact of such opposition, null and
void. Before the State or Church, the family was; its natural rights
transcend theirs, and this bowing, as it were, of all constituted human
authority before the dominion of parents is evidence enough o