Earlier text: The SermonChildren Are Not Punished for Parents’ Sins
Tell me the meaning of scriptures. One gem from that ocean is worth all the pebbles of earthly streams.—M'Cheyne. Infidel Objections to the Bible Answered. No. 6.
6. Children are Punished for the Sins of their Parents.—I am a jealous God, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children.—Ex. xx, 5. Children are Not Punished for the Sins of their Parents.—The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father.—Ezek. xviii, 20. We know of no better answer to this than is given by Dr. Nelson in his “Cause and Cure of Infidelity,” pp. 271–277, it being the substance of an actual conversation that occurred between a deist and a preacher of the gospel on this point. Deist. Another, and the strongest reason why I can never receive the religion you profess, is, that it speaks of visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. I have too much respect for my Creator to believe he will ever do this in any case. Preacher. Perhaps you did not notice that the verse does not speak of visiting the punishment due to the father upon the children. It is the iniquity of the fathers which God speaks of visiting upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. Deist. I do not believe that he would visit any thing of the father's upon the child, in any way or in any shape. I have a higher esteem for my Maker than this would amount to. I do not believe it, and I will not believe it. Preacher. You do believe it, for you see it all around you every day and every hour, and you consent to it, and you approve of it. Deist. I do not understand you, sir. Preacher. You may understand, if you will, for nothing is plainer in matter of fact. I knew a man, Mr. S——, who had one son, his only child. This man would not work. He would not humble himself to honest labor. He seemed to have an invincible aversion to bodily toil. Here his iniquity began, for the God of the Bible had ordered him to work. He must have food and raiment, and he frequented horse-races, and frequently made a considerable sum by betting. He would attend card-parties, and frequently filled his pockets from the losses of those less skillful than himself. In this way I knew him to spend nearly twenty years. His little son was very lively and healthful, and promisingly intellectual. As this active little boy grew up, he did not work any more than his father did, and no one expected he would. He loved best to go with his father from place to place, and from village to village. He mingled in different kinds of company, saw new faces continually, and all childish embarrassments wore away. He became skillful in riding fleet horses and in different games. His father's character became his. No one expected it to be otherwise. It was easier to teach him a love for loose amusements than for toil. The tavern-house revel was more attractive for the youth of sixteen, than was the corn-field employment. But mark you, the father was not happy. Indolence opens the door to other vices. He lost the respect of his fellow citizens. He loved intoxicating drinks; he became otherwise abandoned, and was miserable. His iniquity was punished much here in this life. But his son was unhappy, too. His father's character descended to him. God had declared in the hearing of all parents, that it is not his plan to prevent it. He became a practiser of the same sins which his father had loved. He became unhappy in proportion to his guilt. The iniquity of the father descended to the son. He followed the same course of idleness and profligacy as closely as his features followed those of his father in expression. If this, sir, had been the only case where the character and the iniquity of the father had become the son's over again, it would overturn your attempt to be wiser or more amiable than Omnipotence. But you know of cases all around you, and they are all over the earth, where children take after their fathers in their vices, and of course suffer as their fathers suffered, in proportion to their guilt. We will consider this case, when I have placed before you one of an opposite character. Mr. T——, whom you knew, was not poor; he possessed a valuable tract of land, and did not refuse to plough it. He earned his bread from day to day, although the sweat dropped from his brow while obtaining it. He had no time to go to the horse-race, for he would not neglect his harvest. You know how comfortable and quiet was all around him. He had the confidence of his relatives and friends. He seemed to be very happy. His sons all took after him. When not in the schoolhouse, he had them in the field. They now work as hard as he did, and begin to be as much respected. The father's character and his peace have descended to them. You know very well that the father could have taught them idleness as easily as he taught them industry, and God would not have prevented it. There are singular cases of exception to be seen in the process of every common plan, but they prove nothing. God has promised seed-time and harvest, and we have it. A few unseasonable weeks, or a failure of harvest, does not disprove the assertion that we have harvest. Winter is a cold season, and a warm day in January does not disprove that truth. Summer is a warm season, and a cold day in June does not falsify the declaration. That father could have taught his sons habits of mirth and revelry, as easily as he taught them months of toil, and God would not have interfered. By refusing to interpose coercively, he visits the evils of the fathers upon their offspring. If that man who was punished at W——n Circuit court for stealing—his father was notoriously dishonest, and all his neighbors knew it—if that man had spoken as follows to the jury and to the judge, what would have been their reply? “Fellow-citizens, I cannot see how I am to blame for stealing, for my father did so before me. I always loved it, and I always practised it. My father always preferred taking his neighbor's property to work, and I have only copied him. I cannot be to blame, for I was reared to dishonesty.” You know that the judge would not tell the jury to acquit, because he had shown his father to be also guilty, and to be the cause of his son's unloveliness. The murderer never is excused, even if his father practised it in his sight, so as to make him a murderer in heart from his earliest day. The iniquitous character of the father going down to the son and acting itself out there again, does not become more lovely because it was a garment worn before. Neither God nor man excuses it. God has warned parents in the hearing of heaven, earth, and hell, that this descent will take place, and the features of the soul be “visited” as certainly as the features of the body. I knew a father, who in habits of filthy debauch, had acquired disease which descended to his children, and they were born with feeble, unsound frames, incapable of meeting the hardships of life, and suffering with every morning's sun. Why do you not pretend to have too high an opinion of your Creator to believe that diseases are “visited” to the third and fourth generation? Go and tell physicians that you do not believe them, when they assert that many diseases are hereditary, because you have a more exalted view of your Maker than to suppose he would make things thus. Poor, innocent child, groaning there on account of the father's licentious and detestable indulgences. You might speak very pathetically and very zealously, and at last not be either as wise or as benevolent as the Creator, who has made things thus. But to go back again to moral disease, to that iniquity which does descend: when you know there are ten thousand cases all around you, where the son is more inclined to copy his father's vicious habits, than to follow virtue; when you know that all who fall into evil practices suffer for their character more or less; and this visiting of the iniquity upon the children God has never altered since he said he would not; why be trying to be wise, and to look lofty, and to disbelieve that which you have seen every day of your life when you mingled with society? The deist confessed that he had known idle fathers rear idle children, and that men disliked them for their worthlessness. He confessed that he had known evil-tempered, jealous, or envious parents have families that felt as they did, and were considered unlovely and hateful, in proportion to the amount of malignity which they had copied of their parents. He confessed that it did not excuse the criminal, in any court of justice on earth, to say that the murder, or the adultery, or whatever the crime might be, was copied of father or mother, who had acted it out before them. Finally, he confessed that if a father had succeeded in training a son in vice and hateful crime, so that this blackness of soul and monstrous deformity caused the suffering of its possessor for fifty years in this life, and then brought him to perish on a gibbet, perhaps it might forbid his joy in the next existence. On the same principle that if I may not take many thousand pounds unfairly, I may not take a single penny; on this principle, if a certain amount of unloveliness acquired in a given way, may detract from the happiness or cause the suffering of any one for half a century, it may do so much longer, for aught we know. THE LAW OF GOD AND THE SABBATH WHICH IT ORDAINS.
By W. H. Littlejohn
Still averse to the labor and hazard incident to a thorough investigation of this matter, I think I hear from you the same response which has been repeatedly made under like circumstances—“Well, my conscience is satisfied by the observance of the first day of the week; and you will certainly admit, that this being the case, I am in no danger!” To this I reply that there is such a thing as a conscience that remains quiet even when wrong is done, because the judgment is not enlightened. In fact, we believe that there will be thousands redeemed who have erred respecting duty. We are equally confident that there will not be found among them any who would have deliberately closed their eyes to the light, or refused to investigate for fear that they should discover their mistake. It is a characteristic of the honest soul that it panteth for the truth as the “hart panteth after the water brooks.” It always avoids the very appearance of evil. It is never satisfied with a merely negative position. It proves all things, holding fast that which is good; always ready to give a reason for the faith which is in it. Realizing that “light is sown for the righteous,” it opens to receive it as readily as does the flower when touched by the rays of the rising sun. Knowing that error is at least disease, if not death, it turns from it as one would from the breath of the pestilence. Searching for truth as for hid treasures, it rejoices when it has found it even though it lie beneath a cross so heavy that human strength, unaided, cannot lift it. Finding but little or no satisfaction in extorting from an opponent the confession that its ignorance may prove its salvation—aware of the rectitude of its own purpose, bold in the conscious strength of right, dreading nothing so much as victory when it would perpetuate wrong, desiring nothing so much as victory when it shall contribute to the establishment of that which is true—it unhesitatingly declares its own sentiment, and fearlessly attacks those of others which it believes to be contrary to the faith once committed to the saints. Many are the men who, while loudly protesting that they are acting from conviction in keeping the first day of the week, have by the very uneasiness and irritability which they have exhibited the moment the seventh-day Sabbath was adverted to, discovered to others, if not to themselves, that their consciences were in reality tender upon this point; and that the only reason why they did not clamor loudly for a perfect obedience, was because their first premonitions were stifled, and the unpleasant subject banished from the mind. As well might the infanticide plead in extenuation of his crime that the little innocent was weak and died easily in his cruel clutch, as for such a man to urge in defense of the charge of having disregarded the promptings of conscience, that they had been so feeble that he failed to discover their true character. It is unfortunately true, that strategy can be used in argument as well as in war. It is not a difficult matter101 when pressed by the logic of a friend, to shelter one's self under his tender regard for their feelings, by so shaping replies that he will either be compelled to desist from pressing the subject under consideration, or else dispute you concerning your own private sense of duty—an affair respecting which you are presumed to know more than any one else; so that your statement could not be disputed without, at least impliedly, questioning your honesty. The time will come, however, when all these refuges will be swept away. When the Judge of all the earth, less mindful of their sensibilities, shall say unto such, “This is your condemnation, that light is come into the world, and you loved darkness rather than light.” How short-sighted then is the policy which would seek to evade this question. It were far wiser, nobler, better every way, to look it fully in the face, determined to have a positive faith, to live it out, and defend it. Nor need you harbor any fears as to your ability to attain this most desirable end. James says, “God giveth wisdom to those who ask it and upbraideth not.” To suppose that he has, in a matter of this importance, left the path of duty so blind that the prayerful seeker for truth cannot discover it, would be to attribute to him either a want of capacity to legislate, or a deliberate purpose to bewilder and mislead. One of the three commonly-accepted opinions respecting the day of the Sabbath, is right, and can be demonstrated to be so. When we say that it can be demonstrated, we do not mean that this can be done to the satisfaction of the unwilling mind, or so perfectly that the ingenious caviller cannot find room for a doubt or a misgiving on this point. But we mean to say that the evidence in favor of one of these views will preponderate so decidedly that we shall be compelled by every just principle of construction to pronounce this the correct one. Ridding ourselves, therefore, as far as possible of the prejudices which have resulted from education, refusing to be influenced by the opinions and practices of men until we have first found for them an express scripture warrant, forgetting for the time being that our worldly prospects and financial interests can be affected by any conclusion to which we may come, let us move forward in the confident hope that he who can fully appreciate the importance of a right understanding of his word, will lead us into the clear light of truth upon this subject. The first labor which we shall attempt will be that of dispelling the mist with which designing men have surrounded this question, by teaching that the law is possessed of two natures: the one known as the letter, and the other as the spirit; and that these are sometimes harmonious and sometimes contradictory. The convenience of such a system of interpretation under some circumstances will be readily perceived. The advocate of an unscriptural dogma, finding the life of his favorite error endangered by the heavy blows which an adversary, using the letter of the law as a weapon, is dealing at it, covers it with his theory of spiritualization, as the seal, unable to escape by flight, shields its brain from the attack of the huntsman by drawing over it the heavy hood with which Providence has provided it. The difference between the quality of these two acts consists in the fact that the brute, true to the instincts of its being, exhausts every resource which nature has given it to perpetuate its life, while the man prostitutes the noblest faculties which he possesses to a wicked attempt to destroy his. For God has said, “the soul that sinneth, it shall die.” Poison is poison, and will do its terrible work whether quaffed from a golden chalice or drank from a pewter cup. Sin, though disguised in the spotless white of a pure religion, and called by the high-sounding name of spiritualization, is still the child of lust, and as such will be condemned to the flames. But to return to our subject. What is the spirit of a law? We answer: it is its intention; its meaning; the purpose or end which its enactment was designed to secure. What is the first and most natural method of learning the spirit of a law? A careful examination of the terms in which it is expressed. When will the letter and the spirit coincide? When the legislator possesses the qualities requisite to a proper discharge of the duties of his responsible position. In other words, when he has a well-defined purpose and a command of language sufficient to enable him to express it clearly. When will the letter and the spirit conflict? When a law is so bunglingly worded in its parts as to defeat its main object. It follows, therefore, that before any person can get out from under their obligation to observe a day as the Sabbath, on the ground of a want of agreement between the letter and the spirit of the fourth commandment, they must first rob the Deity of his attribute of omniscience, and ascribe to him the errors and weaknesses of a man, by representing him as either devoid of a clear conception of the duty which he sought to impose, or as not having been sufficiently intimate with the idioms of Hebrew tongue to enable him to express himself satisfactorily. Discarding a theory whose defense involves such absurdities, and so far distrusting the ability or integrity of those who hold it, that we cannot attach any importance to the admission of many of them, that the commandment when strictly construed, designates the seventh day as the Sabbath, let us look into this matter for ourselves and see if they be right respecting this point. If we shall find that they are, we will then make an effort to show by other testimony, as well as by inference, that the Lord did not fail of making himself understood. That we may do this in such a way that when done it shall enable us to dispose of in as brief a manner as possible the two remaining views which are generally held, it may be well to place them side by side and take each up in its order. They would be expressed as follows: First. The seventh day is the Sabbath, which we are in duty bound to observe. Second. We are required to observe one-seventh part of the time as holy; but we are at liberty to determine for ourselves which day of the seven we shall devote to this purpose. Third. The first day of the week has now, by divine appointment, supplanted the seventh, and should be observed as the Sabbath. A glance will show that those who adhere to the first two differ only in regard to a point of construction; so that the same arguments which establish the one view, overturn the other as a consequence. It will also appear that the advocates of the third position are agreed with those of the first so far as to admit that the commandments, as originally given, designated the seventh day as the one to be regarded. As they have, and we believe they do still comprise the larger portion of the body of professing Christians, both Protestant and Catholic, and as they are supported in this by the opinions of the Jews as expressed by their uniform practice, from the giving of the law to the present time, and as the Jews are, in a question which relates to the constructions which should be put on expressions made use of in an instrument originally given in their tongue, very competent judges, we are furnished at the outset with at least strong presumptive evidence that position number one is right and number two wrong. It seems to have been left to the ingenuity of modern times to invent a theory of interpretation so accommodating in its character that it adapts itself readily to the whims, caprices, and fancied interests of all classes and conditions, under whatever circumstances they may be placed. If it shall prove to be sound, it will furnish another illustration of the truthfulness of the oft-quoted maxim, “Men grow weaker and wiser.” For the ancient violators of the Lord's Sabbath, unlike those of the present time, either had no friends or apologists (a thing which is highly improbable), or, if they had, they seem to have been so stupid that they never perceived the excellent opportunity which the extreme latitude of the law afforded them, to distinguish themselves as the defenders of this class of criminals. Strange oversight! The first instance in history where all the bad men of a nation fail to discover that the law was susceptible of a version other than that commonly put upon it, which would increase their freedom from restraint, and allow them to do more nearly as they pleased. But this was not certainly true of the Israelites, if the one day in seven and no day in particular, theory be correct. Nor were bad men only in the dark upon this point. Every public act which bore upon this question, from the stoning of the man in the wilderness for picking up sticks on the Sabbath, down to the Christian era, seems to have proceeded upon the hypothesis that the seventh day of the week was the only one, the keeping of which, as holy time, would answer the demands of the law. As a single example selected from many which might be introduced to illustrate this fact, take the regulation established by Nehemiah respecting the closing of the gates of Jerusalem on this day. The righteous soul of this man, who had been so highly favored of Heaven as to be the chosen instrument in the hands of God for pushing forward the rebuilding of the great city, being vexed by the habitual intrusion into the place on the Sabbath day of a multitude of merchants, from without, who, regardless of the fact that it was holy time, continued to lead the people astray by a tempting display of their wares for sale, determined to put an end to this practice. The manner in which this was done, and the results which follow, his own pen shall narrate, lest we, in endeavoring to abbreviate, should find ourselves unable to imitate the beautiful simplicity of his story as given in Neh. xiii, commencing with verse 19. “And it came to pass that when the gates of Jerusalem began to be dark before the Sabbath, I commanded that the gates should be shut, and charged that they should not be opened till after the Sabbath; and some of my servants set I at the gates, that there should be no burden brought in on the Sabbath day. So the merchants and sellers of all kind of ware, lodged without Jerusalem once or twice. Then I testified against them, and said unto them, Why lodge ye about the wall? If ye do so again I will lay hands on you. From that time forth came they no more on the Sabbath. And I commanded the Levites that they should cleanse themselves, and that they should come and keep the gates, to sanctify the Sabbath day. Remember me, O my God concerning this also, and spare me according to the greatness of thy mercy.” Comment would seem to be uncalled for. The prophet has here, in a few words, by the recital of a single incident which transpired during his rule, thrown a flood of light upon the matter now before us. For by the account given he has shown, First. That, at that time, there was a definite day observed as the Sabbath. Second. That, on that day, the gates of the city were not only closed, but business was suspended altogether. For, if this were not so, the transactions recorded above would have furnished an unparalleled case of wanton oppression of the people in the country, in the interest of the city merchants; since it would be so far discriminating in favor of the latter as to allow them the monopoly of trade on every Sabbath-day. An act so palpably unjust, that any ruler, even though devoid of all sense of right, would be prevented from venturing upon by prudential motives. As Nehemiah cannot be suspected of having had a mercenary object in view, we may look for the reasons which influenced him, in another direction. By a careful reading of the chapter you will learn that he was endeavoring to prevent a profanation of the Sabbath the same in its character as that for which the Lord had brought upon them all the calamities which they had undergone. As this good man recalled the sad events of the seventy years' captivity, and as his eye ran over the blackened ruins of what had once been a gorgeous temple and a splendid metropolis, he could form some conception of the importance which the Lord attached to a proper regard of his rest day. Since he must have known that it was the neglect to do this which made it possible for Jerusalem to be destroyed; as the Lord had declared that if the people would keep his Sabbath it should stand forever. [See Jeremiah xvii, 24, 25.] Third. That this day must have been the seventh day of the week. For Nehemiah evidently looked upon the work which he had performed as one which would recommend him to the favor of the Lord. In order that this should be the case, it would be necessary that what he had done should accord with the spirit of the commandment. But this could not be true if he had so far abridged the rights of the people as to compel them to keep a particular day, when the commandment allowed each individual to decide for himself, which day he would keep. For if the Lord had seen fit to grant them this privilege, it must have been because infinite wisdom had determined that this was the better course to be pursued, for all concerned; so that any effort on the part of Nehemiah to defeat the design of the Lord in this matter, would have been equivalent to an act of high-handed rebellion against his authority, and a public declaration of a doubt of his sagacity; thus rendering himself a proper subject for wrath and condemnation rather than for mercy.