narrowed down to a single channel.  The causes of such alternations might be profitably investigated, and recorded.  The inquiry into one’s ancestry would thus answer a nobler purpose than the gratification of human vanity, or the recovery of an alienated inheritance; it would exhibit the influence of the past upon the present, afford important lessons of encouragement or admonition, and discover our claim perhaps, to something better than gold or silver “for the good man” even though he is poor, “leaveth an inheritance to his children’s children.”  How far the moral character as well as the physical constitution of a parent may affect the happiness and control the destiny of his children, is a question, which may be incapable of an exact and satisfactory solution; but the general fact, notwithstanding some strange exceptions, (which however may not be altogether incapable of explanation,) is sufficiently established, that examples of singular excellence, or notorious profligacy may usually he traced to seeds sown in a former generation.  They are not therefore to be altogether regarded in the light of isolated phenomena, but as the result of causes, which may be more or less accurately determined.  At all events, God reveals himself as “a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate him, and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love him and keep his commandments.”

II.

Early dawn.

  “Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent
  and hast revealed them unto babes.”  Matt. xi. 25.

What solemn interest surrounds the dawn of immortal existence,—­that precious portion of human life, the first four or five years, which may be termed the perceptive period, too often treated as a mere blank, in which nothing is to be attempted; when the soul is all eye, all ear, continually storing up in an almost faultless memory, impressions, which go far to mould the future character, and which reason, so soon as it is able, will certainly use as part of the material out of which it must form its conclusions!  How much of the future depends upon the kind of influence to which the infant mind is subjected!  Happily for Mary Burdsall these early years were carefully watched and guarded.  The bold and uncompromising character of her father, and the gentle piety of her mother, secured to her a combination of influences particularly favourable to the development of moral and religious feeling.  Lessons of truth and love, as yet beyond the comprehension of the child, were effectively taught by means of bright and living examples; and hence grace began to operate with the first unfoldings of reason.