n
intellect. The celebrated family of Gustavus Adolphus, all warriors.

This law of heredity asserts itself without reference to social or
political condition, for you sometimes find the ignoble in high place
and the honorable in obscure place. A descendant of Edward I. a toll
gatherer. A descendant of Edward III. a door-keeper. A descendant of
the Duke of Northumberland a trunk-maker. Some of the mightiest
families of England are extinct, while some of those most honored in
the peerage go back to an ancestry of hard knuckles and rough
exterior. This law of heredity entirely independent of social or
political condition.

Then you find avarice and jealousy and sensuality and fraud having
full swing in some families. The violent temper of Frederick William
is the inheritance of Frederick the Great. It is not a theory to be
set forth by worldly philosophy only, but by divine authority. Do you
not remember how the Bible speaks of "a chosen generation," of "the
generation of the righteous," of "the generation of vipers," of an
"untoward generation," of "a stubborn generation," of "the iniquity of
the past visited upon the children unto the third and fourth
generation?" So that the text comes to-day with the force of a
projectile hurled from mightiest catapult: "Whose son art thou, thou
young man?"

"Well," says some one, "that theory discharges me from all
responsibility. Born of sanctified parents we are bound to be good and
we cannot help ourselves. Born of unrighteous parentage we are bound
to be evil and we cannot help ourselves."

TWO INACCURACIES.

As much as if you should say, "The centripetal force in nature has a
tendency to bring everything to the centre, and therefore all things
come to the centre. The centrifugal force in nature has a tendency to
throw out everything to the periphery, and therefore everything will
go out to the periphery." You know as well as I know that you can make
the centripetal overcome the centrifugal, and you can make the
centrifugal overcome the centripetal. As when there is a mighty tide
of good in a family that may be overcome by determination to evil, as
in the case of Aaron Burr, the libertine, who had for father President
Burr, the consecrated; as in the case of Pierrepont Edwards, the
scourge of New York society seventy years ago, who had a Christian
ancestry; while on the other hand some of the best men and women of
this day are those who have come of an ancestry of which