different to nothing that for
weal or for woe affects that parent. Love consists in this community of
feeling, concern and interest. When the demon of selfishness drives
gratitude out of the heart and the ties of natural sympathy become
strained, and love begins to wane; when they are snapped asunder, love
is dead.

The love of God, of course, primes all other love. "He who loves father
or mother more than me," says the Saviour, "is not worthy of me."
Filial love, therefore, must not conflict with that which we owe to
God; it must yield, for it draws its force from the latter and has no
meaning without it. In normal conditions, this conflict never occurs;
it can occur only in the event of parents overriding the law that
governs their station in life. To make divine love wait on the human is
criminal.

It may, and no doubt does, happen that parents become unlovable beings
through disregard for the moral law. And because love is not a
commodity that is made to order, children may be found who justify on
these grounds their absence of affection or even their positive hatred
for such parents. A drunken parent, one who attacks the life, virtue or
reputation of his offspring, a low brute who has neither honor nor
affection, and whose office it is to make home a living hell, such a
one can hardly be loved.

But pity is a form of love; and just as we may never despise a fallen
parent, just so do we owe him or her, even in the depths of his or her
degradation, a meed of pity and commiseration. There is no erring soul
but may be reclaimed; every soul is worth the price of its redemption,
and there is no unfortunate, be he ever so low, but deserves, for the
sake of his soul, a tribute of sympathy and a prayer for his
betterment. And the child that refuses this, however just the cause of
his aversion, offends against the law of nature, of charity and of God.

CHAPTER LVIII.
AUTHORITY AND OBEDIENCE.

AUTHORITY means the right to command; to command is to exact obedience,
and obedience is submission of one's will to that of another, will is a
faculty that adores its own independence, is ambitious of rule and
dominion, and can hardly bear to serve. It is made free, and may not
bend; it is proud, and hates to bend; some will add, it is the dominant
faculty in man, and therefore should not bend.

Every man for himself; we are born free; all men are equal, and no one
has the right to impose his will upon another; we are direc