Blood Will Tell | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 25, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 25.

Blood Will Tell.

WHEN, at the meeting of the General Association of Illinois at Rockford, the leader of a devotional service requested such brethren as were the sons of Christian mothers to stand, nearly every minister present rose to his feet. "Her children," says the proverb, of the virtuous woman, "arise up and call her blessed." Aristocratic pride of family is the just scorn of every true American. We want no "degenerate sons of noble sires" among us, "of whom, as of a potato vine, the best part is under ground." We have enough and to spare of them, studying out for their seal-rings and coach-panels old family coats-of-arms, and taking airs on the score of some titled ruffian of four or five centuries ago. There was truth as well as wit in Saxe's saying that the line of one's ancestry, traced back, is quite apt to end in a cobbler's waxed end or a hangman's knot.

But the laws of heredity transmit something more than names heraldic devices and vain conceit. Mysteriously and awfully they bear down legacies of character from parent to child. They steer the new-comer into the world, from before his birth, along the line of endless destiny. True as it is that responsible moral action begins only with the actor himself, it is no less true that proclivities starting from far back of such action, flow steadily down from age to age. "Though we are not to be judged for the sin of Adam before us," said Prof. Swing, in a recent sermon, "a fearful judgment may come on us for the sins of our children."

As the traveler approaches the northern entrance of the Mt. Cenis Tunnel, he sees, emerging miles away and above from among the snows, a silvery rill which his eye distinctly traces widening and deepening downward, till it plunges and roars as a resistless torrent at his feet. But only the Omniscient eye follows the stream of moral refinement or contamination that arose centuries ago and bears onward in its sweep the men and women of to-day. And every parent contributes to that stream. Every parent rises from the dead to live again in the life of his child. The passionate mother of Lord Byron stormed and raged in the wild career of the poet. The godly mother of the Wesleys suffered and toiled for human welfare in the memorable years of her sons.

A child has a right to be not only well-trained, but, before the training can begin, well-born. It is of immeasurable moment not merely what the parent does, but what he is. For the depth and richness of nature, the moral force and effectiveness, which he ought to transfer to his child, arise from behind his own will, in the very core of his being. A deep, mature, well-rounded Christian character comes not from conversion alone. Martin Luther became "the monk that shook the world," not through repentance and faith alone. He had inherited the physical soundness, the brain and brawn, with which to stand the tremendous strain that came upon him. And centuries of old German hardihood and valor were in the man, the stuff that was heroic long before it came to be Christian. The Teutonic fire that not all the legions of Rome could quench blazed up again in defiance of papal Rome as well.

Many a Christian father is left to wonder that his boy resists his influence, because he has begun to wonder and grow anxious too late. He may have become a father far back in the years of his own ungodliness, when pride, or impurity, or passion, or stubborn unbelief, had the mastery in him. How is his repentance long afterward to remedy that wrong to his child? A stream runs itself clear, it is said, in four miles. But a cup of water taken from it where it is foul will be no less foul for the purity a league or two below. But it may be that, even since the father's entrance on the Christian life, the change has never yet struck through him to renovate his whole nature.

And this evil nature, transferred by the law of heredity to the child, contends against the precepts that the father repeats in vain.

The law of moral transmission has been mainly, thus far along the ages, the channel through which corruption and death have flowed down from generation to generation. It was divinely designed as a channel of blessing. Grace may flow through it as well as corruption. The noblest impulses and proclivities of a sanctified character, descending from sire to son, may incline the infant will to righteousness and to Christ. Some slight foregleam of that may be seen in many a Christian household even now. And more and more as the tone of Christian character rises, shall the law of heredity turn from a curse to a blessing.—Advance.