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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

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.

The

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. 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

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 disease. If the father's blood has been polluted 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 classification as external features. 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 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. Their 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 into 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 cach 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

ship and of holiness of life. Hence there are families which have been distinguished through generations for eminent piety. Such are many of those descended from the Pilgrim Fathers. Others are equally noted for hereditary infidelity. Their children seem incapable of religion. They are born skeptics and heathens. Hence the character of the father involves that of the child; and as the character fixes the destiny, his fate decides theirs. Other causes may come in to modify the original stamp, yet the inherent force of nature derived from the parents, strengthened by their ever present examples, do more than all other influences together to determine the child's future history.

When now it is considered that the greater number of all on the earth, who sustain the holy relation of parents, are ignorant and vicious, the moral state in which their offspring are introduced to life, becomes appalling. They come into being with these evil instincts strong in their little breasts-an inward force to be developed with every hour's growth, and to be fortified by years of mischievous activity.

This fact, with the terrible certainty which it involves of future evil, makes us turn away heart-sick from the sight of children. Childhood, innocent and pure, is the most beautiful sight on earth. There is something in the laugh of a child-so free, so joyous, so unconscious of sorrow and guilt, that it thrills us like the carol of a bird. And for a moment it seems as if we were still in a world of innocence. But we observe more closely, and our thoughts take a sadder turn. If we watch the sports of children unseen, or overhear their conversation, we are shocked by words of vulgarity, perhaps even of profaneness. Low thoughts have crept into their minds. Their souls are already polluted.

Look at a group of children playing in the street. At a distance they all seem beautiful; their countenances are fresh and ruddy, and they are full of life and happiness. But draw nearer. Here is a boy, in whose coarse features is the brand of vulgarity; another face is marked with stupid ignorance, united with a premature development of brutal passions; other countenances betoken a more gentle nature, but at the same time one that is weak, and that will be governed by fiercer spirits around it. Or, to take an extreme case, go into the low quarters of a great city, and see the children that emerge from those miserable tenements-swarming out of garrets and cellars. Children I call them, for they have seen but few years; but they are already haggard like men, and discover every trait that marks debased and degraded human nature. Many are born to be thieves. You see it in their cunning looks, and that sly watch which they keep of every passer in the street. On the forehead of others is written, as plainly as the brand on the brow of Cain-violence and murder. Here, too, are girls-beings that bear the sacred name of womanyet that are born to vice and damnation. All these children are ruined before the age of ten years. As the victims of the Auto-de-Fe had flames painted on their garments to denote the punishment to which they were doomed, so the fires of the pit are already curling around these young wretches, and casting a lurid glare in their faces. What a responsibility rests on those wretched men and women who have called into existence these helpless creatures to be the heirs of their guilt and woe. Why did they not leave them to sleep forever unawaked? Why drag them forth only to hear their cries, and to leave them the bitter inheri

tance of vice and crime and infamy? From such foul births springs nothing good. This evil parentage is like the hideous form of sin described by Milton, which brought forth only the monster Death.

But think not that these dens of shame are the only places where human souls are destroyed, or that the children of the poor are the only ones on whom the iniquity of the father is visited. Many children of the rich are born under a baleful influence, as if some malignant star had cast its shadow on their birth. Nature is an impartial mother. She shows no favor to one class. The passions of our nature are as strong in the rich as in the poor, and the seeds of evil spring up as rankly amid wealth and luxury as amid poverty and vice. For example, violence of temper is as common in the one class as the other, and in both alike it produces the same desolating effects. It has a twofold action: first crushing and terrifying, and then provoking resistance and rebellion. There is no limit to the power of an angry man. When he bursts into his dwelling in a storm, all flee from him, or sit silent and trembling. Oh! if there were any better feeling in his heart, how must he be rebuked by these tokens of his tremendous power! But there he sits, black as a thunder cloud. Every voice of joy is hushed. At length the child. catches the influence of that gloomy presence, and becomes soured and morose. A stern father makes a shy and sullen child. A shadow gathers on that young brow which years may not banish. Even though in later life happiness returns, that scar remains, sad trace of an unhappy childhood. This is the terrible mark which a father's violence leaves upon the disposition of his child. The effect of this overbearing temper will be either to break the child's spirit and crush it forever, or to force it at last into some act of resistance. Often does the violent man drive his son from his door, or compel him to flee in self-defence. Such is the curse of unbounded rage. Arbitrary and self-willed, his imperious temper brooks not remonstrance or advice, until his sons leave their father's house, choosing to rove as vagabonds rather than bear his household tyranny. And the daughters throw themselves away on the first chance of happiness. Thus one after another his children are sent forth into the world, wretched outcasts, until the old man stands solitary by his desolated hearthstone; his dwelling is in ruins; all are gone, dead, or unhappy. A gray haired man alone remains. But the evil ends not here. Those children, thus cast on the world, have to begin life, not with minds well regulated, but with a temper soured and unhappy, and exasperated to evil. A violent father gives them his wilful nature. Fierce and revengeful passions live long. They pass from sire to son, and hereby family feuds are kept up for generations. Thus a vindictive old man leaves a son passionate and revengeful. And so beginning, he bids fair to end his life by crime. That sad inheritance-an ungoverned mindseldom fails, sooner or later, to plunge soul and body into hell. Besides these passions, which are common to all classes of men, there are temptations peculiar to the rich. Their wealth is a great danger, for it generates pride, and a craving for self indulgence, and an unbounded love of this world.

Follow the line of descent:-Take the one trait of Avarice. Men of fortune, especially if they have made their wealth, are very apt to love money. Their sons inherit this trait. It is a passion which runs in the

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