The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1885-11-25
O viii Toll.

We oAiSA AAikAA AoSS
TIE Christian.
Blood Will Toll.
When, at a meeting Of the General
Association OF Illinois, the leader of a
devotional service requested the sons
Of Christian mothers to stand, nearly
every minister present rose to his feet.
"Her children" says the proverb, OF
the virtuous woman, "arise up and
call her blessed" Aristocratic pride
of family is the just scorn Of every
true American. We want no "degen-
crate sons of noble sires among u.s.
We have enough and to spare Of them,
studying out for their seal-rings and
coach-panels old family coats-of-arms,
and taking airs on the score Of some
titled rufian Of four or five centuries
ago. There was truth as well as wit
in Saxe's saying that the line Of ones
ancestry, traced back, is quite apt to
end in a cobbler's waxed end or a
hangman's knot.
But the laws Of heredity transmit
something more than names, heraldic
devices and vain conceit. Mysterious
ly and awfully they bear down legacies
of character from parent to child.
They steer the newcomer into the
world, from before his birth, along the
line of endless destiny. Truo as it is
that responsible moral action begins
only with the actor himself, it is no
less true that proclivities starting
from far back of such action, flow
steadily down from age to age.
Though we are not to be judged for
the sin Of Adam before us" said Prof.
Swing, in a recent sermon, g fearful
Judgment may come on us for the sins
of our children"
As the traveller approaches the
northern entrance of the Mt. Gents
Tunnel, he sees, emerging miles away
and and above from among the SHOWS,
q silvery rill which his eye distinctly
traces widening and deepening down.
ward, till it plunges and roars as a
resistless torrent at his feet. But only
the Omniscient eye follows the stream
of moral refinement or contamination
that arose centuries ago and bears on
ward in it's sweep the men and women
of to-day. And every parent contri-
butes to that stream. Every parent
rises from the dead to live again in the
life of his child. The passionate
mother of Lord Byron stormed and
ragged in the wild career of the poet.
The cody mother of the Wesleys
suffered and toiled for human welfare
in the memorable years Of her son
A child has a right to be not only
well-trained, Tut, before tho training
can begin, we'll born. 1t is of i'm
measurable moment not merely what
the parent does, but what he is. For the
depth and richness Of nature, the
moral force and effectiveness, which
he ought to transfer to his child, arise
from behind his own will, in the very
core of his being. a deep, mature.
well-rounded Christian character
! comes not from conversion alone.
Martin Luther become "the monk that
shook the world" not through repen-
lance and faith alone. He had inner
tied the physical soundness, the brain
and Drawn, with which to stand be
tremendous strain that came upon
him. And centuries of old German
hardihood and valor were in the man,
the stuff that was heroic long before it
came to be Christian. The Teutonic
fire that not all the legions Of Rome
could quench blazed up again in de-
fance of papal Rome as we'll.
Many a Christian father is left to
wonder that his boy resists his inau-
ence, because he has begun to wonder
and grow anxious too late. He may
have become a father far back in the
years of his own ungodliness, when
pride, or impurity, or passion, or stub
born unbelief, had the mastery in him.
How is his repentance long afterward
to remedy his wrong to his child? A
stream runs itself clear, it is said, in
four miles. But a cup of water taken
from it where it is foul will be no less
foul for the purity a league or two
below. But it may be that, even since
the fathers entrance Oh the Christian
life, the change has never yet struck
through him to %renovate his whole ma
ture. And this evil nature, transferred
by the law of heredity to the child,
contends against the precepts that the
father repeats in vain.
The law Of moral transmission has
been mainly, thus far along the ages,
the channel through which corruption
and death have flowed down from gen.
Grafton to generation. 1t was divinely
designed as a channel of blessing,
Grace may flow through it as we'll as
corruption. The noblest impulses and
proclivities of a sanctiied character,
descending from sire to son, may in
cline the infant will to righteousness
! and to Christ. Some slight foregleam
of that may be seen in many a Chris
tian home even now. And more and
more as the tone Of Christian charac-
ter rises, shall the law of heredity turn
! from O ourse RI a Observation-Disclosures.