rican Negro has been trusted, he has proven himself
trustworthy and manly. And when the colored man is educated, and is
treated with fairness and justice, and is accorded the rights and
privileges which are the birthright of every American citizen, he will
show himself a man among men, and the race problem will vanish as the
mist before the rising sun.

THE SOCIAL BEARINGS OF THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT

BY JAMES FRANCIS GREGORY, B. D.

_Vice Principal Manual Training and Industrial School, Bordentown, New
Jersey_

"Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long in the
land which the Lord thy God giveth thee."

While obedience to parents is the primary significance of this command,
its widening scope is seen in the comprehensive authority of the father
of the old Hebrew family. He was the ruler and the protector of the
family, and as human society enlarged and much of the original authority
of the parent passed from him, the child was prepared to give honor to
such authority and wisdom as he had recognized in the father. Thus
generically the command may cover the wide range suggested by the
Westminster Assembly: "The Fifth Commandment requireth the preserving
the honor and performing the duties belonging to every one in their
several places and relations as superiors, inferiors or equals." And
this honor idea in the home not only spreads out, but it climbs, and we
may say that as the Hebrew family contained the beginning of government,
all other authorities of this world wind up and out of the home,
ascending in spiral form until the little coil of the domestic circle
eventuates.

* * * * *

Last summer, while seated in a crowded train, my attention was
attracted by a little family group. The heat-worn mother held a baby in
one arm, and the other hand was steadying a toddling boy. She had
repeatedly reproved her half-grown daughter and finally spoke sharply to
her, when the child suddenly lifted the heavy umbrella in her hand and
struck her mother!

These are the facts that impressed me: the unmasked powerlessness of the
mother, the cool unconcern of the father, but above all the apathetic
indifference of the passengers.

The modern family is without discipline, all of the elements in the home
having a tendency to wander from the hearth center. There is the father
whose absence, because of occupational absorption, is lengthened by many
extraneous interests. The mother, too, is receding