from the home center
in her misguided enthusiasm for so-called equality in business,
professional, and political life. And the children? As one sad-faced
mother said to me the other day, "They get out of the home so early!"

* * * * *

All the reverence for parents in the world's history, is hallowed by the
lofty example of Jesus in his dutiful subjection to his earthly parents,
and in the marvelous solicitude of his dying words, "Son, behold thy
mother!"

* * * * *

A great light is thrown on this economic relation of the commandment by
the attitude of the Centurion pleading with the Master for his servant's
life. Here was an employer whose stretched-out arm of authority could be
transformed into a gesture of appeal, for his servant lying sick at
home. Indeed only as the spirit of this commandment makes itself felt in
our business life will the clenched hands of capital and labor relax
from the hilts of their dripping blades and grasp each other with the
warm pressure of brotherly sympathy.

* * * * *

Then there are the mutual relations between the young and the aged. Oh,
for a return in our youth to that ancient bowing deference to old age a
beautiful instance of which Cicero preserves for us. Into the crowded
amphitheatre at Athens, with the multitudes' expectant hush, there
staggered an aged man, who made his tottering progress, beneath tier
after tier of indifferent or averted faces, looking in vain for a place,
until finally he came in front of the section occupied by the
Lacaedemonians, who rose as one man and offered him a seat!

* * * * *

Then there are the superiors and inferiors in wisdom. As we look back
through the mists of years to our student years, there stand out sharply
distinguished the kindly figures of our intellectual fathers. I recall
at this moment that man of infinite reserve behind the desk at Yale,
whose eye could flash with authority and yet kindle with concern at the
sight of the necessity of one of his boys--in Browning's thought, "As
sheathes a film the mother eagle's eye when her bruised eaglet
breathes!"

* * * * *

I need scarcely suggest the obvious pertinence of this command to the
relations of the pastor and his congregation. We cling very jealously
to the term, "Father," as it has been applied to the men of God in the
history of the Church. The picture is beautiful of the Roman Catholic
priest, conscious of the reluctance of her neighbors to bear to the poor
widow