Connecticut western news., 1886-08-25
DR. TALMAGE'S SERMON.
MEASURED BY YOUR OWN YARD @ STICKS.
Preached at Asheville, N. C.1

VII, 7.
 In the greatest sermon ever preached-s sermon about fifteen minutes long, according to the ordinary rate of speech-a sermon or the Mount of Olives the Preacher, sitting while He spoke, according to the ancient mode of oratory, the people were given t. understand that the same yard stick tha they employed upon others would be em p,oyed upon themselves Measure others by a harsh rule, and you will be measured by a harsh rule. Measure others by charitable rule, and you will be mea surei by a charita. ble rule. Give no mercy to others, and nC mercy will be given to you. ''With what measure ye mete, it shall bs measured to you again."
 There is great deal of unfairness in the criticism of human conduct. Itwai to smite that unTairness that Christ uttered the words ot the text, and my sermon will be a re-echo Of the Divine sentiment In estimating the mlsbehavlor of others we must .ake into con- slderatlon the pressure of circumstances. It IS never right to do wrong, but there are de- grees of culpability. When men misbehave or commit some atrocious wickedness we are disposed indiscriminately to tumble them all over the bank of condemnation. Suffer they ought and suffer they must; but in difference of degree.
 In the first place, in estimating the mis- doing of others we must take into calculation the hereditary tendency. There is such a thing as good blood and there is such a thing as bad blood. There a.e families that have had moral twist in them for a hundred years back. They have not been careful to keep the family record in that regard. There have been escapades and maraudings and scoundrelisms and moral deficits all the way tack, whether you call 1t kleptomania or pyromanla or dlpsomania, or whether it be in a milder form and amount to no mania at all. The strong probability is, that the pres ent criminal sta: ted life with nerve, m lscle ard bone contam .nate1. As some start life with natural tendency to nobility anl gen erosty, and kindness and truthfulness. there are others who start life with just the oppo- site tendency, and they are born liars, or born malcontents, or born outlaws, or born swindlars.
 There is in England school that is callad the Princess Mary School. All the chldre in that school are the children of convic.s The school is supported by high patronage. l had the pleasure of being present at one of their anniversaries in 1879, presided over by the Earl of Kintore. By wise law in Eng land, after parents have committed a certain number of crimes and thereby shown them selves incompetent rightly to bring up their children, the little ones are taken from under pernlclouS influences and put in reformat orv schools, where all gracious and kindly in du- euoeS shall be brought upon them Of course the experiment is young and it has got to bs oemonStrated how large percentage of tho children of convicts may be brought up to responsibility and usefulness. But we all know that it is more difficult for oh ldren of bad parentage to do right than for children Of good parentage.
 In this country we are taught by the De- claratlon of American Independence that all people are born equal. There never was a greater representation put in ono sen tence than in that sentence which implies that we are all born equal. You may as we'll say that flowers are born equal, or trees are born equal, or animals are born equal. Why does one horse cost S1O0 and another horse cost $50, ,0oOs Why does ons sheep cost S1U and another sheep s5o0s Difference in blood We are wise enough to recognize the differ ence of blood in horses, in cattle, in sheep, put we are not wise enough to make allow ance for the difference in the human blood. Now demand, by the law of eternal fair ness, that you be more lenient in your criti- clsm of those who were born wrong, in whose ancestral line there was hangmans knot, or who came from tree the fruit of which for centuries has been gnarled and worm-eaten. Dr. Harris, reformer, gave some marvellous statistics in his story of what he called Margaret, the mother of criminals Ninety years ago she lived in a village In Upper New York State. She was not only poor: but she was vicious. She was not well provided for. There were no aIms- houses there. The public, however, some what looked after her, but chiefly scoffed at and derided her, pushed her further down m m ner crimes; That & was ninety years ago, = cestral line. 200 of them criminals. In ons branch of that family there were twenty, and nine of them have been in State Prison, and nearly all of the others have turned out badly It is esti- mated that that family cost the County and State slOO,O1O, to say nothing of the prop erty they destroyed. Are you not W Hin 2, as sensible people, to acknowledge that it is a fearful disaster to b, born in such an ar ,es- tral line! Does it not make great differ ence whether one descends from Margaret, the mothor of criminals, or from some mother in Israeli Wh ether you are the son of Ahab or the son of Joshua! It is a very different thing to swim with the current from what 1t IS to swim against the current, as some of you have no doubt found in yo IT summer recreation. If a man find him. self in an ancestral current where there is good blood flowing smoothly from generation to generation it is not a very great credit to him if he turns out good and honest aud pure and noble. He could hardly help it. But SUD- pose he is born in an ancestral line--in a hereditary line-where the influences have been bad and there has been a coming down over moral declivity, if the man surrender to the influences he will go down under the overmas5ering gravitation unless soma supernatural aid be afford ,d him. Now, such person deserves n)t your excoriation, but your pity. Do notsit with the lip curle i ln s'orn, an with an ass slme1 air of an s.lic lnnocen e, looking down upol SUI ,h moral precipitation. You hal better get down on your knees and first pray Almighty God for their rescue, aul next thank the Lorl th at you have not been thrown under the wheels of that Juggernaut
 In Great Britain and in the United States in every generation, there are tens of thou sands of persons who are fully develo ped criminals and incarcerated say, in every generation. Then, suppose, there are ten, ot thousands of persons not found out il their criminalty. In addition to these there are tens of thousands of persons who, not positively becoming criminals, nevertheless have criminal tendency. Any one of al those thousands by the grace of God may become Christ an, and resist the ancestral in huence and open new chapter of behavior bus the vast majority of them will not, and 1t becomes all men professional, unpro fessional, ministers of religion, judges ol courts, phila1thropiSts and Christian work CTS to recognize the ia t that there are these Atlantic and Pacific surges of hereditary evi rolling on thi ou9h h the centuries.
 say, of course, a man can resist this ten dency, just as in the ancestral line mentioned in tn, first chap'e' of Matthew. Y.u SEC in the same line in which there was a wicked Rehob am and desperate Manasses, there afterward came pious Joseph and a glori ous Christ. But, my friends, you mu recog nize the fact that these influences go on iron generation to generation. I am glad tt know, however, that river which has pro duced nothing but miasma for hundred miles, may, after awhile, turn the wheels 0 factories and help suppor5 industrious ant virtuous populations: and tn ,re are fan;lI lines which were poisoned that are bene diction now. At the Last Day it vii b found out that there are men who have gon clear over into all forms of iniquity ant plunged into utter aba 1don'n nent, who, be fore they yielded to the first temptation re sisted more evil than many a man who ha been moral and upright all his life. Bu suprosipg now that in this age wh,n the, are So many good people that l come dow, into tn audience and select the very bes man in it. 1 do not mean the man wno wouit style himself the best, for probably he is
 hypocrite; but mean the man who befor God is really the best I will take you ou from all your Christian surroundings. I vii take yo1 back to boyhood I will put you il deprave1 home. I will put you in era