Connecticut western news., 1898-03-31

ull buOSO by tAO SidOO OA God may become Christian and resist the ancestral influence and open new chapter of behavior, but the vast ma jority of them will not, and it becomes all men, professional, unprofessional, ministers of religion, judges of courts, philanthropists and Christian workers, to recognize the fact that there are these Atlantic and Pacific surges of hereditary evil rolling on through the centuries.
 I say, of course, man can resist this tendency, just as in the ancestral line mentioned in the first chapter of Matthew. You see in the same line in which there was a wicked Rehoboam and desperate Manasses, there after ward came pious Josiah and glorious Christ. But my friends, you must recog- nize the fact that these influences go on from generation to generation. l am glad to know, however, that a river which has produced nothing but miasma wheels of factories and help support in dustrious and virtuous populations, and there are family lines which were poi soned that are benediction now. At the last day it will be found out that there are men who have gone clear over into all forms of iniquity and plunged into utter abandonment who before they yielded to the first temptation resisted more evil than many man who has been moral and upright all his life.
 But supposing now that in this age, when there are so many good people, that I come down into this audience and select the very best man in it. do not mean the man who would style himself the best, for probably he is hypocrite, but I mean the man who before God is really the best. I will take you out from all your Christian surroundings. will take you back to boyhood. I will put you in depraved home. I will put you in a cradle of iniquity. Who is bending over that cradle? An intoxicat- ed mother. Who is that swearing in the next room? Your father. The nelghbors come in to talk, and their jokes are un- clean. There is not in the house a Bible or moral treatise, but only few scraps of an old pictorial.
 After awhile you are old enough to get out of the cradle, and you are struck across the head for naughtiness, but never in any kindly manner reprimand- ed. After awhile you are old enough to go abroad, and you are sent out with Q basket to steal. If you come home with out any spoil, you are whipped until the blood comes. At 15 years of age you go out to fight your own battles ln this world, which seems to care no more for you than the dog that has died of fit under the fence. You are kicked and cuffed and buffeted. Some day, rallying your courage, you resent some wrong. A man says: "Who are you? l know who you are. Your father had free lodg ings at Sing Sing. Your mother, she was up for drunkenness at the criminal court. Get out of my way, you low lived wretchp' My brother, suppose that had been the history of your advent and the history of your earlier surroundings, would you have been the Christian man you are today, seated in this Christian assem bly,? tell you nay. You would have been a vagabond, an outlaw, a murderer on the scaffold atoning for your crime All these considerations ought to make us merciful in our deal ings with the wandering and the lost.
 Consider the Sinner.
 Again, have to remark that in our the misdoing of people who have fallen from high responsibility and we must take into considera tion the conjunction of circumstances. In nine cases out of ten man who goes astray does not intend any positive wrong. He has trust funds. He risks part of these funds in investment He says, "Now, if should lose that invest ment 1 have of my own property five times as much, and if this investment should go wrong I could easily make it up; I could five times make it up." With that wrong reasoning he goes on and makes the investment, and 1t does not turn out quite as well as he expect ed, and he makes another investment, and, strange to say, at the same time all his other affairs get entangled and all his other resources fail and his hands are tied Now be wants to extrioate himself. He goes little further on in the wrong investment. He takes a plunge further ahead, for he wants to save his wife and children, he wants to save his home, he wants to save his mem bership in the church. He takes one more plunge and all is lost.
 Some morning at 10 o'clock the bank door is not opened, and there is card on the door signed by an officer of the bank, indicating there is trouble, and the name of the defaulter or the de- frauder heads the newspaper column, and hundreds of men say, Good for him." hundreds of other men say, "I'm glad he's found out at last;" hundreds of other men say, "Just as I told you;" hundreds of other men say, "We could not possibly have been tempted to do that; no conjunction of circumstances could ever have overthrown me-" and there is superabundance of indigna- tion, but no pity; the heavens full of but not one drop of dew. If God treated us as society treats that man, we would all have been in he'll long ago.
 Condemn Not Hastily.
 Wait for the alleviating circum- stances. Perhaps he may have been the dupe of others. Before you let all the hounds out from their kennel to maui and tear that man find out if he has not been brought up in commercial estab- lishment where there was wrong sys- tenn of ethics taught; find out whether that man has not an extravagant wife who is not satisfied with his honest earnings, and in the temptation to please her he has gone into that ruin into which enough men have fallen, and by the same temptation, to make procession of many miles. Perhaps some sudden sickness may have touched his brain, and his judgment may be unbal- anced. He is wrong, he is awfully wrong, and he must be condemned, but there may be mitigating circumstances. Perhaps under the same temptation you might have fallen. The reason some men do not steal $2O0, 900 is because