relling? Then do you lead the way, that they
may follow. Lead the way by keeping a check on your tongues, by being
gentle and forbearing--you, husband and wife, one with another, not
given to railing, but, contrariwise, to blessing.

II. You may have observed how often in Holy Scripture the expression
recurs, "The God of your Father," or "The God of your Fathers," "The
God of my Father," or "of my Fathers." This is a remarkable
expression. Is God short of Names that He should be thus designated?
Might He not be better termed Almighty, Everlasting, Jehovah? The
expression is of such frequent recurrence that it must have a
meaning--and this is what it means. There is such a thing as an
hereditary religion. As a man regards God, so will his children regard
Him. If a man is reverent and devout, and shows that he honours God,
and regards Him as a just and righteous God, hating iniquity, and
rewarding all those who keep His commandments, then his children will
grow up regarding God as just and righteous; but if a man thinks of God
as indifferent to righteousness, as so ready in His kindness to forgive
everything, and let men do what they like, that He will pardon them for
any and everything they do, then his sons will grow up looking on God
as the great Author of moral disorder among men. If a man regards God
as expecting worship and honour, then the sons will grow up with the
same idea of God, and will worship and honour Him, and if a man has no
God at all, then his sons will also have no God at all.

III. In Exodus God threatens that He will "visit the iniquity of the
fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the
third and to the fourth generations." In like manner He blesses a
whole posterity for the righteousness of their parents. You see now
how and why this is. It is because when a father and mother are
wicked, their children grow up wicked also, and their children's
children, till the whole family dies out through its vicious habits, or
there rises out of it some redeeming element of good.

In the same way good parents have good children, and these good
children marry, and have also good offspring, and so the goodness of
one pious and righteous pair goes on descending and spreading like a
fertilizing river, bearing blessings to all who are near it. What an
encouragement this is to you parents to lead God-fearing lives! What a
warning to those of you who are careless! The belie