[45] The honours which we pay to divinity can be of no advantage to him, but benefit us; but the honours which we pay to our parents are beneficial to them. And in this sense, and in this only, the latter are to be honoured more than the former.
[46] This reminds me of what Pope, no less piously than pathetically says, respecting his mother, in the following most beautiful lines:
“Me let the tender office long engage,
To rock the cradle of reposing age,
With lenient arts extend a mothers breath,
Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death;
Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,
And keep awhile one parent from the sky.”
See his Seventh Epistle, near the end.
[47] The following extract from Sir William Jones, as given by Moor in his Hindu Pantheon, p. 421, demonstrates the great antiquity of this precept: