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INIQUITIES OF THE FATHERS VISITED UPON THE CHILDREN. 247

strong or weak according to the progenitor. The sons of Anak are a race of giants, while a puny father leaves a brood of sickly and short-lived children. This close bond becomes fearfully apparent in the transmission

of

blood

polluted

disease. If the father's has been by some taint, that poison is perpetuated through generations. In countries where the leprosy prevails, that appalling malady can seldom be eradicated from the race-never from the individual constitution. Sometimes it may pass over one generation, but only to light upon the second or the third. Thus it lives, while its victims die.

The same law applies to the mind as to the body. Always it bears a parental stamp. Peculiar tastes and aptitudes pass from father to son. Here is a family of mathematicians. Here another distinguished for musical genius. Moral qualities are too subtle to be capable of as exact Yet a nice, observation will disclose the same identity. Father and son have the same temperament; active or dull; warm or cold; impulsive, or cautious and calculating. You may

classification as external features.

into

Their

see a whole family distinguished by the same sanguine temper, marked by their light hair and sparkling eyes; while in the next house, all sit apart, moody and silent, hardly being roused into an animated conversation, from one generation to another. If this observation were pursued, it would reveal much to startle and surprise an unthinking parent. He would find his child's nature a close copy of his own. Every child has the stamp of its origin. A mixture of two natures-it derives certain qualities from each. Father and mother are here blended in one. characters may change by time. But such as they were at first-such as nature made them-such their child will be. And often in later yearslooking into that child's eye, as a bright mirror, shall they see themselves reflected the good and the bad strangely blended together. If in the mother's heart there was a vein of poetical or religious sensibility, some trace of that fine, spiritual nature will discover itself in those to whom she gives life. On the other hand a coarse and vulgar father will transmit the foulness of his mind. That polluted stream will flow down, and trouble the clear waters of youth. Or if either parent be possessed of an inordinate vanity that conceit may be repressed in them, but it will come out in their children. They may restrain it from fear of ridicule, or from regard to the manners of society, but no such invisible law checks the unconscious boy or girl. Children know not how to conceal pride under an affected modesty. They have not yet learned to disguise nature. And in their unguarded words and actions the parent is betrayed. Hence often the most infallible way to judge of the father and mother is to look at the children. Nay-if parents were wise, they would watch these little beings, and there see themselves revealed. Men and women of the world live each an artificial life, and so constantly affect what they do not feel, that they do not suspect the vanity and selfishness which may lurk in their hearts, until they discover these traits in their children. With the same uniformity do religious tendencies discover themselves. I deny not that all who are born into the world are depraved. But there are degrees of natural depravity as wide apart as the degrees of acquired depravity. Some children are born with a strong religious instinct-not yet indeed confirmed into a pious character, but with a natural veneration for God, and a conscientious regard to duty, that are the basis of all wor

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THE NATIONAL PREACHER.

broad rule of equity, that each shall answer, only for himself, there is no contradiction, if we regard this-not as a sentence to death, delivering up the wretched offspring of the wicked at once to the horrors of endless retribution-but simply as declaring the natural operation of evil descending on a man's posterity. Children are not strictly punished for their father's sins; that is, held as morally guilty, and liable to the full and utter extremity of the law; and yet they do suffer for their sins in every fibre of their frame. This is not a special act of God-a secret decree which the Bible reveals-but a general law of nature-universal as the laws of birth and death. It is a part of the more general law of descent—that a human being shall be born from other human beings, and come into existence with its destiny joined to an antecedent life. It is this law, by which evil is entailed upon children, that I wish to illustrate from common experience.

The influence of the father in determining the character and fate of his child, lies in three things: 1. In stamping his nature upon it at birth; 2. In presenting to its little mind the first example, and the one to which it looks up as the model of manliness, and which it copies from an instinct of imitation; and 3. In the principles instilled by education.

Foremost among the influences which predetermine the destiny of men, is the influence of race. Compare the African and the European. Both are human beings; yet how unlike! Born under different skies-differing in color and in mode of life-they seem like two distinct species. How difficult to change one into the other. Take a Hottentot, and place him under the most favorable circumstances, and it will require many generations before he can be brought up to the level of civilized men. The curse of his race is on him. He bears on his forehead the mark of centuries of debasement. For ages all intellect has been extinguished, and moral sensibility obliterated; while the passions of savage life, its ferocity and brutality, have acquired a prodigious development. Long must it be before this African lion can be tamed. So the Indian, though half civilized, retains the instinct of his former life. He is still a savage. though he may live in a village, and follow agriculture, the cry of the hunter echoing through the forest, will often make him rush to the wilderness again. This original influence of race is perhaps the strongest which determines human character. It lasts for hundreds and thousands of years. In all the descendants of Ishmael to this day is traced the wild, untamed spirit of their ancestor. Bring an Arab into your cities, and make him a slave. He may submit to the yoke. Yet he lives as in a dream. But let him hear the neighing of a war-horse, and his eye is wild. The erect, excited air betrays the child of the desert.

And

But, to come nearer home, we see the same law running through every family, and giving to each member certain domestic features. We remark first, the transmission of external peculiarities-this is the most familiar of all facts-that members of the same family resemble each other. Brothers and sisters are recognized by their family likeness. You observe it in the complexion, the eyes, and the general cast of countenance. Any departure from this rule-a marked dissimilarity-strikes us with surprise as an exception to a general law. Thus the father stamps his image on his child. He gives him, not only existence and a name, but his own form and face. Even the physical constitution is hereditary. It is

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"Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation."-EXODUS XX. 5.

THIS is not a judicial sentence, pronounced against all who are so unhappy as to be born of wicked parents. To have a bad father is a misfortune but not a crime. Whatever guilt may rest upon him, his child is innocent. He has not done the deed, nor can he rightly be punished for it. Such a principle is abhorrent to natural justice. It has long since been banished from the criminal code of every civilized nation; and it is indignantly abjured by the Divine Ruler: "The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him." Much less can we believe that the sins of fathers are visited upon their children in another life; that without any guilt of their own, but simply for the offence of an ancestor, who perhaps was dead before they were born, they are condemned to suffer hereafter; and that this relentless curse pursues them through remote worlds and innumerable ages. No: God does not delight thus to perpetuate misery. He does not imprecate evil on the unborn. He does not blast human existence, ere yet it is begun.

And yet the text, joined to one of the Ten Commandments-that perfect and eternal law-plainly declares a principle of unlimited application, and a principle which corresponds with all experience, and is supported by undeniable facts. It is notorious that there are many effects of sin which transcend the period of man's duration upon the earth; and which are the bitter inheritance of his children. But between this fact and the

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shall receive all thy virtue; we shall feel all the raptures of thy bliss. Wouldst thou be happier than the archangel? Thou mayest be; be good, and thou shalt be. As thou passest on age after age, thy desires shall spread themselves immeasurably forth, and they all shall be met and satisfied; thy heart shall expand so that worlds will be too small for it, and it shall be satisfied, and so shall thy eternity be filled.

Hast thou, Christian, ever known a favored, religious hour-an hour of Scripture reading, an hour of prayer, an hour of hope, inspiring hope; when heaven seemed near and open, and thou didst enter in, and, forgetful of all earthly evils, didst join with the just made perfect in acts of worship before the throne; and thou didst see the smile of Jehovah resting upon thy service, and feel the delicious peace and joy of a heart at rest upon the bosom of divine everlasting love, and committing thyself to God, didst breathe out thy whole spirit in the words of a saint of old, Whom have I in heaven but thee and thine? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee--such one day shall be every hour, only it shall be all reality, instead of being partly in anticipation; only it shall be completely filled with bliss; only every hour shall be happier than the last. And we are all susceptible of a character which will secure to us this full, perfect, ever increasing, immeasurable, eternal happiness.

V. Another fact adds greatly to the interest we should feel in this spirit within. It may be lost.

The prospective possessions and blessedness, provided for our spiritual being now referred to, are not assured to us. They are proffered, but we may never attain them. Your spirit, my friend, may never run this glorious high course; it may never swell and open with intelligence, and holiness, and enjoyment, rising constantly a brighter and more blissful spirit towards the eternal throne. All this may be lost, though pressed upon acceptance, and another career be run, immortal, but not virtuous, of increasing intelligence to some extent, but not of happiness. This spiritual being of ours may sink to perdition, instead of rising to heaven, according as we are religious or irreligious here on earth. If the soul be sent away to run its course thus with ever enlarging capacities for suffering, its doom will be terrible, infinitely dreadful.

Consider this doom, that our solicitude and sympathies and interests may be the more awakened in behalf of this spiritual immortal being within. What is the loss of the soul? This is a subject on which I have little to say. All language fails here. Imagination itself cowers and shrinks from such a theme, inconceivably momentous, dreadfully infinite. Inadequate, utter feebleness, as are all our thoughts and language on this subject of the loss of the soul, we are in danger of being left to learn what it is by sad and eternal experience. We must therefore consider a few moments, and speak of it as well as we can. He that loses his soul, and thus goes down to spend his eternity in the great prison of the universe, loses all the pleasures of mind, all the pleasures, I mean, from the exercise and use of the intellectual faculties. The contemplation of truth, the employment and expansion of the understanding, constitute, no doubt, an important item of the happiness of the righteous in heaven.

The eye of religion directs itself to the great God, to a glory which

admits neither a superior nor an equal. The mind in heaven exercising itself upon those stupendous objects and events presented in the character and acts of Jehovah, will find some of its best enjoyments. But he that has lost his soul in this dark world below, will he find any delightful employment for his mental faculties? He will carry with him all his intellectual powers. But will he find any elevating objects of thought, and hours of bright and cheerful contemplation? Will all that is past afford one pleasant remembrance; will there be a single object present in all the universe on which the mind can fix with comfort? will the whole future eternity present one? Every object of thought will be one of gloom and wretchedness; every action of the mind will plant an unavailing sorrow in the heart. Can you conceive of the wretchedness of that individual to whom every succeeding thought brings a pang of unavoidable sorrow. Such is the long, long eternity of him who loses his soul. What shall it profit!

He that loses his soul in the world of woe, loses all the pleasures derived from the exercise of kind and benevolent feelings. It is more blessed to give than receive. The fullest wish for the good of another being, makes the heart happier that cherishes it. In heaven the kindly affections which flow out upon every inhabitant of that world, and feed and strengthen themselves by communicating this to all within their reach, bring into the soul a calm and pure happiness passing all understanding. But in the world of lost souls, no charities are known. Will the miserable dwellers there stretch out a hand to relieve a fellow-being? There is not one capable of relief in all that world; and if there were, none need it more than himself. The lost, moreover, will have no disposition to relieve, or bless, or console. All the amiable feelings will have died; all the kind and social affections will have been extinguished; all the ties of brotherhood and friendship that bound him to any other creature that exists will have been severed. He stands alone, his soul, scathed and withered, hath nothing left but sins and woes. Who would possess such a soul? Who would become for eternity such a desolate, selfish, most wretched being?

He that loses his soul, loses all self-approbation and peace of conscience. Sweet consciousness of innocence! Self-approval, calm, soothing, peace of conscience! They that have this, experience in part the joys of heaven. The heart which is a stranger to it, never yet has learned what happiness is. Lost sinners have no peace of conscience, none of the sweet happiness of conscious innocence. But in place of it the heart is filled with bitter-most bitter, self-condemning, with the arrowy stings of deep remorse. How writhes the mind which remorse has seized; how throbs the heart with anguish most intense! It is the worm that never dies; the cold gnawing at the heart which never will cease; the fang piercing through the soul, making it quiver with torture, which will not be withdrawn for ever and ever. Who can endure it? Who can hear the ceaseless, eternal condemnation for his own wounded spirit: "Ye knew your duty, but ye did it not. Who can bear a guilty conscience for ever and ever, for ever and ever? Who will do it for the sake of a little earthly good?

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To lose the soul, is to lose all purity, all moral worth. In that dark region, there is nothing amiable, nothing undefiled, nothing pure. Not

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