HOW SHALL THE MINISTRY BE USED TO THE BEST ADVANTAGE. 257 SERMON DCXXXVII. BY REV. J. FEW SMITH, PASTOR OF THE SECOND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, NEWARK, N. J.* HOW SHALL THE MINISTRY BE USED TO THE BEST "But what are they among so many?"-JOHN vi. 9. Ir cannot be regarded as a merely fortuitous circumstance, that the miracles of our Lord are so well adapted to convey moral or spiritual instruction. That this is a characteristic of them, every thoughtful reader will readily perceive. And the theory that the physical was designed for the moral; that the material thing which furnishes the figure was purposely made for the thing signified, and not merely taken up and adopted as by a sort of after-thought, certainly has much in its favor. God, who has "made every thing beautiful in his place," seems to have set those things one over against the other; and so to have constructed things sensible, that they shall subserve the higher purposes of his moral government, by being vehicles of moral truth." He has placed around us a thousand monitors, so that wherever we tread we might see the tokens of his presence, and reminders of that spiritual kingdom, which though invisible, is most real; so that we might hear voices speaking of Him, and of the way of holiness, and to the "purged ear," there might come even out of the dead things of the material world, and out of the discords of earthly living, continually the music of a higher life; so that, "sun and moon, and stars of light, fire and hail, snow and vapor, stormy wind fulfilling his word, mountains and all hills, fruitful trees and all cedars, beasts and all cattle, creeping things and flying fowl," while praising Him, should be appealing to us, and bidding "kings of the earth and all people, princes and all judges of the earth, both young men and maidens, old men and children," also to praise the Lord, and to behold his glory and serve Him. And that He has done this, that He has so made the world, enhances our adoring estimate of his excellence, and of the supremacy of holiness. Were I designing to discuss this point at large, the miracle before us would afford fit illustration of it. While leading us to reflect on our dependence on the Divine Being for "life and breath and all things," it would also remind us of the unwasting and unlimited sufficiency of the provision of almighty grace for the redemption of lost men. The bread of life which is to save the soul, can feed only those who receive it from the Saviour's hands; but in his omnipotent hands it may feed all the hungry millions that will crowd to receive it, and still it will be ample for the supply of other millions. The Lord who has it to bestow, is not * Preached at the recent meeting of the Presbytery of Newark, at Madison, N. J. 256 THE NATIONAL PREACHER. class. I have spoken to fathers. I now speak to sons; and not to the sons of the good, but of the bad. Are they given up by the operation of this law to hopeless ruin? Have they no part nor lot in the determination of their destiny? We can imagine one of those children of vice, of whom I have spoken, thus to mourn his unhappy fate: I am one of the lost ones of the earth-accursed in every circumstance of my being-accursed in my parents-accursed in that impetuous nature which they have given me-accursed in my condition-surrounded with a thousand temptations to crime. No ray of gladness shone upon my birth. No father ever taught me the way to God. No mother ever prayed for my salvation. No kiss of affection ever won my child's heart. Alone, unfriended, I have wandered on from youth to manhood. And now what is to become of me? I see no resource of honest industry-nothing, but to keep on as I am- -the companion of desperate men, and to share their wretched doom. With a look of unutterable despair, he cries, I am in the toils of hell, and I shall not escape. of depraved parents? Is there then absolutely no hope for the children Is this law a sentence to destruction? there are no human beings thus foredoomed of God-bound in the chains of inexorable fate, and consigned to misery hopeless and eternal. This is not a bill of attainder, executed upon all the generations of the wicked-executed before they are born, and cutting them off from the common privileges of humanity. There is salvation even for the lowest and vilest of mankind. God's grace can purify pollution, and reform the criminal, and rescue those who seemed irretrievably lost. For such, then, there is hope. Only that hope is very small. They have a hundred fold more difficulties to encounter than others. Their salvation is possible only by the most heroic efforts to break away from the evil associations of their family, and to separate from every form of temptation. What a position for a son, to be obliged for his salvation to fight against a father's example, and against those terrible passions which he feels burning in his blood. Nature is mighty, even in reformed men. He will feel the powerful impulses of evil returning upon him like paroxysms of madness. There will be times when he will cry out, Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? But let him pray, like Jonah, even from "the belly of hell," when he was "cast into the deep, and went down to the bottom of the mountains, and the earth with her bars was about him forever," and God can bring him up from the gates of death. Is there in this house one who is conscious that the circumstances of his early life were all adverse to piety and to happiness? Reproach not your parents as the authors of your misery. Tread lightly over their dust. They were unhappy enough themselves, and they have left you but what they experienced. They at least have given you existence; and if you use it well, it will prove a blessing beyond all price. Receive it, then, from the hand of God. And against all obstacles live a good life. There is an Eye above, by which your struggles will not pass unobserved. And though your earthly father be not worthy of the name, there is a Father in heaven, who will pity you as a friendless orphan, and adopt you into His holy and INIQUITIES OF THE FATHERS VISITED UPON THE CHILDREN. 255 rolls down for ages, like the blessing of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, on all the tribes of Israel. It is said that in the ocean there is a mighty under-current, setting from the equator to the poles, and carrying the heat of the tropics to colder regions. This immense body of water, keeping its submarine channels, flows under the whole broad Atlantic, and under vast continents of floating ice, and at length comes to the surface at the north pole, and there giving out its heat, creates that open Polar Sea, which is the wonder of navigators. In this is there not something like that influence of deep piety and strong character which a good man exerts? an influence which shuns notice ; which retreats from observation; which sinks, as it were, to the bottom of the ocean, but which there, mingling with the great undercurrents of society, flows slowly on into other latitudes, carrying its blessed, vital warmth into the frigid zone, there to impart a milder temperature to the wind blowing over the deep, and sending a softer air to the neighboring shores, thus soothing the most rugged and inhospitable climates of the earth. Of such an ancestry any man There is a vulgar pride of birth which looks only to the may be proud. rank or fortune of a forefather. This is to be despised. The only thing which may cause a glow of just pride is to know that we are descended from honest and heroic men; patriots and christians; men who feared God and served their generation. Such were the fathers from whom is derived our best American blood. Happy is he who can look back to such sires; who can say with Cowper : streets. "My boast is not that I derive my birth From loins enthroned, or rulers of the earth: ; Some of these patriarchs linger still. I see them walking our village How serene is their old age; how steady their step as they go down into the dark valley. Their eye is bright, and on their foreheads is reflected the light of that resplendent city of God which they are approaching. If therefore any here tremble at the power which God has put into their hands, let them consider how that immense authority may be used for good as well as for evil. You, who are a father, stand to your child in the place of God. You are in one sense the author of his being, and the source of an infallible authority. To you he looks up at first as to a being who cannot lie, and who cannot err. Soon, alas! this childish error will be dissipated. But strive for a few years to prolong your influence by the wisdom and mildness of your control. For his sake repress your violent impulses, and endeavor to "live soberly, righteously, and godly in the world." By whatever care you govern yourself, by so much do you insure his virtue and safety. When you are dead, your example will be still powerful; and then shall he receive the reward of your goodness to others. Men shall look on him with affection, because he is your child; your name will awaken sweet memories in the hearts of the living, and they will be kind to the poor orphan for his father's sake, then sleeping in the grave. But I have not done with this subject until I add one word to another 254 THE NATIONAL PREACHER. happiness. He prevents their salvation. Thus from one bad man a long succession of misery flows down the ages. If spirits from another world ever come back to this, with what remorse must a wicked man trace the effect of his life in successive generations of his descendants-an will see to what degradation a once effect which he has now no power name may be reduced. His own dear like their father At the distance now-may yet drag his image of a hundred years children-so through dens of infamy and shame. one of his line may bear his proud name to the scaffold. these spirits pass from life, and enter the world of retribution, he may hear afar off in the distance many a well-remembered voice-the echo of his own! Are there any here whose course of life threatens this disastrous termina I bid them stop and look before them. the work of ruin-for I speak to living men. The grave has not yet closed and shut out all hope of remedy. You may avert this terrible calamity which is about to overwhelm your house. Awake, then, to the dark current of evil that flows from one wicked man. See what you are doing. Stop these baleful influences. Smother the tremendous passions which rage and boil within your breast. Hold back that stream of fire, which, if once it break forth, will desolate your home, and blast and blacken the hopes of generations to come. I plead for the unborn. They are yet in the future, and can offer no prayer. They cannot deprecate the curseif curse it be of being among your descendants. Yet they are all living in the eye of God, and their existence and their woes will soon become a fearful reality. I plead, then, for your own children-for those that half a century hence shall stand up on the earth-in your likeness, having your blood in their veins, and who may suffer all their wretched lives from the vicious nature which you have transmitted to them. If it seem hard that future generations should suffer for the sins of the present, remember that with this law of hereditary evil is connected a law of hereditary good. "Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments." Thus by its operation all the righteous families of the earth are blessed. If it be a mournful position to stand at the head of a family noted only for wickedness, how honorable and glorious is it to be the progenitor of a pious race-a race of upright, Christian men. It was the chief ambition of Walter Scott to be the founder of a family-the first of a long and noble line. Alas! he has been dead but twenty years, and already his name is extinct. But what was denied to the man of genius, is often granted to a poor man, eminent only for his piety. In our country churches lives many a patriarch, whose crown of glory is his children. How simple is that character, and yet how august! In his family he is a king and a priest; poor, it may be, and struggling hard for subsistence, he can give his children little. But he gives them religion; and that is enough. He who imparts to his sons good religious principle; who gives them a firm faith in that divine government which is established over the world, and which sooner or later will reward virtue and punish guilt; and who leaves a pious example to those that shall come after, has made the best provision for their happiness. Who can measure the influence of such an ancestor? How it INIQUITIES OF THE FATHERS VISITED UPON THE CHILDREN. daughter going to ruin: I meant no harm! Alas! 253 it is not what you mean, but what you do. Your children must suffer for your mistakes as well as your crimes. Your errors of judgment-your false educationmust leave its ruinous effect upon them. And no confession of guilt could be more melancholy than the words which so often break from a dying old man, who has seen his children destroyed-I have made a great mistake! Think not that I charge any who hear me with a want of affection to their children. I know how fondly you bend over those little beings. You wish to educate them well. You do not mean to instil false princi ples into their minds. And yet by some fatal mistake-even by over fondness-you may as effectually injure all their prospects for happiness in this world and another, as if you were their bitterest enemy. Mere inefficiency is often as potent for evil as harsh brutality. You do not mean to be cruel. You do not premeditate crime. But alas! in this world, indifference, where the tendency of things, left to themselves, is to go wrong, more sin is committed, and more misery to body and soul is caused by indolence than by malice. You are not hard-hearted. But it is your or neglect, or your astonishing blindness, which may do all this evil. If you now perceive your error, and would remedy it-away with that stupid folly that it is enough to educate the mind and polish the manners. Begin to educate the heart and the soul. Give your children fixed religious principles. Bring them up in the love and fear of Almighty God. The design of this long argument is plain. It is to open the eyes of parents to the dangers which surround their families; to lead them to the brink of the precipice, from which they may look down the abyss into which their children may be plunged. This law of hereditary evil places every father in a position of responsibility truly awful. He is the master of an absolute authority, a dread arbiter of woe. Among the ancient Romans a father had the right of life and death over his child. Our laws have taken away that fearful power. But still the ability remains-for it exists in nature-to poison a child's blood, and fire his brain, and destroy his happiness. How wretched then is the office of a wicked man on the earth-born only to curse everybody with whom he comes in connection. Wherever his kindred extend, his influence carries a poison with it. Even when his family is allied with others, and thus the descent is divided, still in those most remote there is the trace of that tainted blood. It may be mingled with other currents, with gentler races, still in the far descendants will break out the irrepressible passion of their ancestor. He therefore who entails a malignant nature on all to whom he gives life, perpetuates the evil of his own depraved mind to hundreds that are unborn. He accumulates guilt upon himself even after he is dead. He who thus hath wronged his race, is doubly damned-for his own wickedness, and for his ruin of others. Better that he had never been born! or better that he had died young, even though he perished! Bad men think it hard to be punished in eternity. But, ah! that is the least misfortune. If he alone, who has done this evil, could be dead and forgotten-aye, if the blackness of darkness could close over him for ever, and no other effect issue from his guilty life-then, dreadful as it would be, we could consent to the sacrifice. But, no; he drags others down with him. spring, innocent of his crimes, must yet suffer for them. 33 His offHe blasts their |