ever be--and that is--masters of
yourselves.

SERMON XXVI. SINS OF PARENTS VISITED

Eversley. 19th Sunday after Trinity, 1868.

Ezekiel xviii. 1-4. "The word of the Lord came unto me again, saying,
What mean ye, that ye use this proverb concerning the land of Israel,
saying, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are
set on edge? As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have occasion
any more to use this proverb in Israel. Behold, all souls are mine; as
the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul
that sinneth, it shall die."

This is a precious chapter, and a comfortable chapter likewise, for it
helps us to clear up a puzzle which has tormented the minds of men in all
ages whenever they have thought of God, and of whether God meant them
well, or meant them ill.

For all men have been tempted. We are tempted at times to say,--The
fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge.
That is, we are punished not for what we have done wrong, but for what
our fathers did wrong. One man says,--My forefathers squandered their
money, and I am punished by being poor. Or, my forefathers ruined their
constitutions, and, therefore, I am weakly and sickly. My forefathers
were ignorant and reckless, and, therefore, I was brought up ignorant,
and in all sorts of temptation. And so men complain of their ill-luck
and bad chance, as they call it, till they complain of God, and say, as
the Jews said in Ezekiel's time, God's ways are unequal--partial--unfair.
He is a respecter of persons. He has not the same rule for all men. He
starts men unequally in the race of life--some heavily weighted with
their father's sins and misfortunes, some helped in every way by their
father's virtue and good fortune--and then He expects them all to run
alike. God is not just and equal. And then some go on,--men who think
themselves philosophers, but are none--to say things concerning God of
which I shall say nothing here, lest I put into your minds foolish
thoughts, which had best be kept out of them.

But, some of you may say, Is it not so after all? Is it not true? Is
not God harder on some than on others? Does not God punish men every day
for their father's sins? Does He not say in the Second Commandment that
He will do so, and visit the sins of the fathers upon the children to the
third and fourth generation; and how c