252

THE NATIONAL PREACHER.

this kindness?

Is I have spoken of the

this affection? that a son will meet in going through the

Is this a preparation

for all the snares

world?

temptations

of

sons.

But

by

the

household

that of

a

young,

hearth there stands a gentler being, whose destiny, too, is involved in the parental character and training, and who may reap the bitterest woes, not only from parental wickedness, but from parental ignorance and folly. Take a common case girl-the object of tenderest solicitude. Every thing which wealth can do for her is done; she has the best teachers; every grace is added to her person, and every accomplishment to her mind. But what is all this prepare her? For a more useful life? No; but to make a dazzling figure in society. All her dreams of life terminate in one thought-pleasure-her own personal enjoyment. She studies music, not as a means of fine spiritual culture; not to refresh her after severer duties; but only to make her an object of admiration. This is the whole aim of existence-to gratify her vanity. And no faithful friend ever cautions her against placing in this all her happiness. Father and mother never speak to her of duty; of her obligations to her Creator and to society; but by the fond looks

with which they gaze upon her, and the flattery they they stimulate her vanity to the highest pitch. What a foundation for happiness! What a preparation to live, and-for even such flowers must

fade-to die! Behold this young being, as, thus she the threshold of life. See her, when first introduced into the world of fashion in which she is to move. She enters a drawing room, brilliant with lamps and mirrors, which reflect on every side her fairy form, and, for an instant, is the centre of all eyes. This is the happy moment of which she has dreamed for years. Now her life is begun. At length she is embarked on that full stream of pleasure, which is to float her on forever! Unhappy young woman! She has commenced a life which will inevitably end in disappointment and sorrow. What bitter tears will she shed! And though that radiant form now appears the youthful green of beauty and felicity, to the eye of hoary experience, which has seen many such bright but brief careers, she seems far more like one of those fair youths, whom the ancient Mexicans decked with garlands for the sacrifice. She cannot be happy. Wretched father! what are you doing with that beautiful child? Is she to tread on air that you educate her thus-only to lead a life of pleasure, with no right idea of the world she is to enter, with no sense of religious duty, and no principles to resist temptation? Oh! could you look forward ten years! What a spectacle might you behold. That idolized daughter-withered, to bloom no more; her affections wasted; her heart broken; and slowly sinking into the arms of death-death of which you have kept her ignorant, or which you have led her to believe, could not come to her. Beholding such a wreck, I ask, Who is responsible for all that disappointment and anguish? Is it not the pride and folly of the father, which are thus terribly visited upon his child? Yet such are the influences which hundreds of fathers and mothers throw around their children. Unconsciously they act the part of tempters and deceivers. They entice their children to destruction by a gay and glittering path. May God forgive them, for they know not what they do!

It is nothing to reply, as many a father does, when he sees a son or

INIQUITIES OF THE FATHERS VISITED UPON THE CHILDREN.

251

resist them is gone. To be born in such affluence is a great misfortune. A young man may be saved by sudden poverty; by a loss of fortune which shall at once cast him out of the lap of luxury, and compel him to struggle. But leave him to languish in indolence, with unlimited wealth at command, and no object but to gratify his passions, and his ruin is certain. Who but can foresee the melancholy wreck which he will soon become? There is not one chance in a thousand for such a man to be saved. Think of this, ye who boast to have provided well for

fortunes.

That

may

be a

good

your sons, because you leave them ample or an evil according to their characters. But perhaps you leave them another heritage-bad blood; passions gross or violent; feeble intellect and feebler conscience. Thus is the high-born youth endowed; with such

Will

permit

faculties he begins his perilous way. May God in mercy you to go down to the grave before you see the end! This danger is aggravated by a weak example and a false education. Pardon me, my brethren, if I seem bold. The minister of Christ must not flatter. I will not suppress my conviction, that the course of education pursued in many rich houses is totally wrong, and can produce only unhappiness. What are the principles given to resist these passions? Rules of Society! Laws of Honor! A son is taught to be a gentleman before he is taught to be a man and a christian! Miserable folly! Without religious principle, what is all this worth? education keep a young man from vice? Did a flimsy sentiment of honor ever restrain one from being a profligate? Answer, ye hundreds of debauched and drunken sons from our highest families. This is the radical vice of our fashionable education. It is an attempt to prepare the young for life without religion. Parents think it the great thing to give their children "a fine education;" to cultivate the mind and polish the manners, and prepare them to make a brilliant display. Religion, as the great end of human existence, enters not into their calculations. God is not in all their thoughts. Wretched mistake! What is all this polish of the outward man good for, when there is no exaltation of the soul? intellect without principle? What are manners without heart? only encourage selfishness by veiling it with grace. Sons, thus educated, will be the curse of your old age. If you leave them to grow up without reverence for God, they will show little respect for your white hairs. Your ingratitude shall breed ingratitude in them, and make you feel, when too late, how

"Sharper than a serpent's tooth it is,

To have a thankless child."

What is They

If their moral principles are not anchored first to the throne of God, you have no security that they will not be carried away by the first strong temptation. Therefore do I solemnly accuse many fathers of utterly failing in duty to their children. They leave them to grow up with no religious faith or principle whatever. The first word of man's relations to his Creator, or of life beyond the tomb, is never heard under their roof. Sons are left to catch the vague notions of ignorance and prejudice; and fathers will hear their flippant and conceited opinions without rebuke. Perhaps by ridicule of sacred things they sap the principles of all religion in their minds. And is such a father doing his duty? Is

250

blood. If in

THE NATIONAL PREACHER.

due time it be tempered by wisdom, and ennobled by generosity, it will do no harm. But if he who has gained riches be a man of narrow mind and selfish heart, whose tight hand no sunshine of prosperity can relax, then will he become a greedy miser, and so will his sons be after him. They will inherit his innate avarice; and this will be

before

their

eyes,

of

grinding

confirmed by the example ever extortion, and by many a shrewd maxim of worldly interest. Thus they will grow up for that greed for gain, which is one of the most inveterate passions of our nature, and which will exterminate from the breast pity and humanity,

and

ingratitude,

and to Does he not hoard

up

cruelty. riches

But

year

But

which will drive a man to fraud, to for all that the man gains his object. ? Many will applaud him as a shrewd and wise man.

after

year

follow

him through life to desolate and dreary age. Then, when his mind ought to be at rest and at peace, when he needs affection and gratitude from those who remember his kindness, then behold this selfish being, shrivelled up into a grey and grizzled miser, who sits grinning and chattering over his heaps of gold!

And is this an end worth a sacrifice of the best years of life. Follow him into eternity, and see him, "lifting eyes in hell, being in torments," and then say if the hard heart

up

his and cruelty of that man's father have not been terribly murder of his son !

There is another consequence which the child of a hard man has to

upon

man.

bear the odium of his father's name. When he first becomes a man, and goes forth among men, he beholds something in the regards turned him which he cannot explain-a look of anger and aversion, coupled with muttered words. Why this fierce look from a stranger? It is the memory of his father, which is recalled at the mention of his name, and which awakens bitter and revengeful thoughts. Oh, avaricious and cruel You may force your way through the world, regardless of universal hatred; you may be strong enough to bear it, but it will not fall on you alone. When you are dead and gone, your innocent child, just coming on the stage of action, will be met by it. Men will turn from him, and curse him, as in their hearts they now curse you. So often does a father's pride prejudice the fortune, and impair the happiness of his child. A great man may be proud of his superiority; but to his son he may transmit his pride without his intellect, and thus that very extravagant self-estimation becomes a constant source of mortification through life.

But the great danger of wealth, to children, is that it nurtures the love of pleasure and self-indulgence. Wealth brings luxury, and, with it, a habit of indulging every caprice, which enervates the mind and unfits it for high thought and heroic action. If this tendency be not discerned by a watchful parent, and resisted by a vigorous discipline, the youth grows effeminate, and intensely selfish, until at last he considers his pleasure more than the bodies and souls of men. Thereby the moral tone of the mind is lowered. That strong, robust life, which we expect in a young man, gives place to an unhealthy craving for pleasure and excitement. Even on the best disposition we see the effect of such a condition. No man can stand long the effect of luxury and idleness. It is a hot-house atmosphere, in which all noble sentiments are extinguished, and the passions fearfully inflamed. Thus temptations multiply, while the power to

INIQUITIES OF THE FATHERS VISITED UPON THE CHILDREN. 249

infamy?

tance of vice and crime and From such foul births springs nothing good. This evil parentage is like the hideous form of sin described by Milton, which brought forth only the monster Death.

But think not that these dens of shame are the only places where human souls are destroyed, or that the children of the poor are the only ones on whom the iniquity of the father is visited. Many children of the rich are born under a baleful influence, as if some malignant star had cast its shadow on their birth. Nature is an impartial mother. She

shows

one

class.

The

passions

our

nature

are

as

strong

favor

man.

A

no to of in the rich as in the poor, and the seeds of evil spring up as rankly amid wealth and luxury as amid poverty and vice. For example, violence of temper is as common in the one class as the other, and in both alike it produces the same desolating effects. It has a twofold action: first crushing and terrifying, and then provoking resistance and rebellion. There is no limit to the power of an angry When he bursts into his dwelling in a storm, all flee from him, or sit silent and trembling. Oh! if there were any better feeling in his heart, how must he be rebuked by these tokens of his tremendous power! But there he sits, black as a thunder cloud. Every voice of joy is hushed. At length the child catches the influence of that gloomy presence, and becomes soured and morose. A stern father makes a shy and sullen child. shadow gathers on that young brow which years may not banish. Even though in later life happiness returns, that scar remains, sad trace of an unhappy childhood. This is the terrible mark which a father's violence leaves upon the disposition of his child. The effect of this overbearing temper will be either to break the child's spirit and crush it forever, or to force it at last into some act of resistance. Often does the violent man drive his son from his door, or compel him to flee in self-defence. Such is the curse of unbounded rage. Arbitrary and self-willed, his imperious temper brooks not remonstrance or advice, until his sons leave their father's house, choosing to rove as vagabonds rather than bear his household tyranny. And the daughters throw themselves away on the first chance of happiness. Thus one after another his children are sent forth into the world, wretched outcasts, until the old man stands solitary by his desolated hearthstone ; his dwelling is in ruins; all are gone, dead, or unhappy. A gray haired man alone remains. But the evil ends not here. Those children, thus cast on the world, have to begin life, not with minds well regulated, but with a temper soured and unhappy, and exasperated to evil. A violent father gives them his wilful nature. Fierce and revengeful passions live long. They pass from sire to son, and hereby family feuds are kept up for generations. Thus a vindictive old man leaves a son passionate and revengeful. And so beginning, he bids fair to end his life by crime. That sad inheritance-an ungoverned mindseldom fails, sooner or later, to plunge soul and body into hell. Besides these passions, which are common to all classes of men, there are temptations peculiar to the rich. Their wealth is a great danger, for it generates pride, and a craving for self indulgence, and an unbounded love of

this world.

Follow the line of descent:-Take the one trait of Avarice. Men of fortune, especially if they have made their wealth, are very apt to love money. Their sons inherit this trait. It is a passion which runs in the

248

THE NATIONAL PREACHER.

ship and of holiness of life. Hence there are families which have been distinguished through generations for eminent piety. Such are many of those descended from the Pilgrim Fathers. Others are equally noted for hereditary infidelity. Their children seem incapable of religion. They are born skeptics and heathens. Hence the character of the father involves that of the child; and as the character fixes the destiny, his fate decides theirs. Other causes may come in to modify the original stamp, yet the inherent force of nature derived from the parents, strengthened by their ever present examples, do more than all other influences together to determine the child's future history. When now it is considered that the greater number of all on the earth, who sustain the holy relation of parents, are ignorant and vicious, the moral state in which their offspring are introduced to life, becomes appalling. They come into being with these evil instincts strong in their little breasts-an inward force to be developed with every hour's growth, and to be fortified by years of mischievous activity.

There

This fact, with the terrible certainty which it involves of future evil, makes us turn away heart-sick from the sight of children. Childhood, innocent and pure, is the most beautiful sight on earth. is something in the laugh of a child-so free, so joyous, so unconscious of sorrow and guilt, that it thrills us like the carol of a bird. And for a moment it seems as if we were still in a world of innocence. But we observe more closely, and our thoughts take a sadder turn. If we watch the sports of children unseen, or overhear their conversation, we are shocked by words of vulgarity, perhaps even of profaneness. Low thoughts have crept into their minds. Their souls are already polluted. Look at a group of children playing in the street. At a distance they all seem beautiful; their countenances are fresh and ruddy, and they are full of life and happiness. But draw nearer. Here is a boy, in whose coarse features is the brand of vulgarity; another face is marked with stupid ignorance, united with a premature development of brutal passions; other countenances betoken a more gentle nature, but at the same time one that is weak, and that will be governed by fiercer spirits around it. Or, to take an extreme case, go into the low quarters of a great city, and see the children that emerge from those miserable tenements-swarming out of garrets and cellars. Children I call them, for they have seen but few years; but they are already haggard like men, and discover every trait that marks debased and degraded human nature. Many are born to be thieves. You see it in their cunning looks, and that sly watch which they keep of every passer in the street. On the forehead of others is written, as plainly as the brand on the brow of Cain-violence and murder. Here, too, are girls-beings that bear the sacred name of woman— yet that are born to vice and damnation. All these children are ruined As the victims of the Auto-de-Fe had before the age of ten years. flames painted on their garments to denote the punishment to which they were doomed, so the fires of the pit are already curling around these young wretches, and casting a lurid glare in their faces. What a responsibility rests on those wretched men and women who have called into existence these helpless creatures to be the heirs of their guilt and woe. Why did they not leave them to sleep forever unawaked? Why drag them forth only to hear their cries, and to leave them the bitter inheri