During the present century in many places a fatal familiarity seems
to have sapped the very foundation from that profound respect which
was the honor and glory of the Christian family, and the salt that
preserves nations from corruption; that respect which children, who
truly feared God, paid to their parents. To that beautiful order that
reigned in the Christian family, and which preserved inviolable the
father's authority in Christian times, has succeeded a spirit of
equality as hostile to the natural order as to the order of Divine
Providence, since it destroys both rank and duty. It gives birth to
that false independence which may justly be called the seed of
revolution and anarchy; no consequence is more natural, for what can
be expected of a citizen who imbibed in his childhood, under the
paternal roof, the spirit of disobedience and insubordination, who
was taught to regard superiority with a jealous eye, and treat with
contempt those who are beneath him.
After paying due respect to your parents, they should be, after God,
the depositories of your confidence, and since a daughter's wants are
more easily communicated to her mother, it is in her mother's heart
that a Christian daughter will deposit the secrets of her own.
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