St. Landry democrat. (Opelousas, La.) 1878-1894, 1886-04-03

|
of your property, because when you stel
off the stage you want your children t.
get it all. Are you making no provision
that they shall get grandfather and grand
mothers religion? Oh, what a last will
and testament you are making, my broth
err!
| In the name of God amen. l. being OF
| sound mind, make this my last will and tes
| lament. l bequeath TO my children adl the
| money ever made and all the houses
own: but dieinherit them, rob them Of the
ancestral grace and the Christian influence
that inherited. have squandered that on
! my own worldiness. Share and share alike
| must they in the misfortune and the ever.
lasting outrage. Signed, sealed and deliv-
| cred in the presence of God, and men, and
angels, and devils, and all the generations
of earth, and heaven, and hell. March, 1886
| O, We highly favored ancestry, wake up
this morning to sense of your opportuni-
| ty and and your responsibility. think
| there must be an old cradle or fragment
| of cradle somewhere that could tell q
story of midnight supplcation in your be-
half. Where Is the old rocking chair in
which you were sung to sleep with the
holy nursery rhyme? Where is the old
clock that licked away the moments of
that sickness on that awful night when
there were but three of you awake-you
and God and mother? Is there not an old
staff in some closet? Is there not an old
family Bible on some shelf that seems to
address, you, saying:
"My son, my daughter. how can you re-
ject that God who so kindly dealt with us
all our lives and to whom we commended
you in our prayers, living and dying? By
the memory of the old homestead, by the
family altar. by our dying pillow, by the
graves in which our bodies sleep while our
spirits hover, we beg you to turn over Q
new leaf, and that now"
2. But turn for moment to those who
had evil parentage, and I want to tell
you that the highest thrones in Heaven,
and the mightiest triumphs and the
brightest crowns will be for those who
had evil parentage, but who, by the
grace of God, conquered. AS useful, as
splendid a gentleman as I know of to.
day, had for father a man who died bias.
pheming God until the neighbors had to
put their fingers in their ears to shut out
the horror. One of the most consecrated
and useful Christian ministers of to-day
was born of a drunken horse jockey. Tide
of evil tremendous in some families. It is
like Niagara rapids, and yet men have
chung to rock and been rescued.
There is a family in New York whose
wealth has rolled up into many millions
that was founded by a man who, after
he had vast estate, sent back a paper of
tacks because they were two cents
more than he expected. Grip and grind
and gouge in the fourth generation-I sup
pose 1t will be grip and grind and
gouge in the twentieth genera
tioD. The thirst for intoxicants
has burned down through the
arteries Of hundred and fifty
years. Pugnacity or combativeness char.
acterizes other families. Sometimes one
form of evil, sometimes another form of
evil. But it may be resisted. it has been
resisted. If the family frailty be avarice.
teach your children never to eat an apple
without offering somebody else half of it.
Is the family frailty combativeness, keep
out of the company of quick tempered
people, and never answer an impertinent
question until you have counted hundred
both ways, and after you. have written a
letter keep it a week before you send it,
and then burn it up! Is the family frailty
timidity and cowardice, cultivate back
bone, read the biography of brave men
like Joshua and Paul, and see if you can
not get a little iron in your blood. Find
out what the family frailty is, and set
body, mind and soul in battle array.
think the genealogical table was put
in the first chapter of the New Testament
not only to show our Lords pedigree, but
to show that a man may rise up in an an
cestral line and beat back successfully all
the influences Of bad heredity. See In that
genealogical table that good King Asa
came of vile King Abba. See in that
thatsJoseph and Mary
and the most illustrious Being that ever
touched our world, or ever will touch it,
had in their ancestral line scandalous Re-
hoboam and Themar and Bathsheba. II
this world is ever to be Edenized-and il
will be-all the infected families of the
earth are to be regenerated, and there will
some arise in each family line and open
o new genealogical table. There will
be some Joseph in the line to re-
verse the evil influence of Rehoboam, and
there will be some Mary in the line to re.
verse the evil influence Of Bathsheba. Per.
haps the star Of hope may point down to
your manger. Perhaps you are to be the
hero or the heroine that is to put down the
brakes and stop that long train of genoa.
logical tendencies, and switch it of ON an.
other track from that on which It las been
running for century. You do that, and I
will promise you as fine a palace as the
architects of heaven can build, the arch
way inscribed with the words: "More than
But whatever your heredity, let me say,
you may be sons and daughters of the Lord