HEREDITY
I see that scientists are now claiming that a tendency to use alcohol is not hereditary. We who work among alcoholics know that it is. God says that the sins of the fathers shall be visited on the children unto the third and fourth generation, and they are. God gives a high premium for virtue to all who would take the responsibility of bringing another life into the world.
I remember a man converted at the Breakfast Association, Philadelphia. I had spoken on the power of God to take away even inherited tendencies of sin from our souls. A young chap in the audience sent an usher to ask me to see him in the after meeting. I went down the aisle till I stood by his side. He said, “Can God save me from drink? My father was a saloon-keeper and died drunk. My mother died a drunkard; she fed me beer as an infant. I am now twenty-two years old; I do not remember a day in my life that I have not used beer.” Looking over that blear-eyed crowd, he said, “I do not want an old age like these wretches. Do you know that I recognize among these bloats at least twenty men who are the sons of saloon-keepers? You Christians have not yet discovered that no man puts liquor to his neighbor's lips without destroying his own family. Now, can God save me from the sin and shame of the old age of an alcoholic paralytic?”
“Well, let us go to the altar and ask Him.” We knelt long at the altar. At last he claimed that he had been accepted of God. As he started to leave the hall he came back and said, “Do pray for me; I am afraid of the smells of the street; I am afraid of my old companions. Pray for me.”
“Well,” I said, “you come home with me, you are young enough to be my son. If you were, I would want some good woman to mother you.” The next day I took him to Lancaster, Pa., where at that time I had a number of acquaintances among business men. I took him to quite a number before I came to a man who would take him at all, and to a number who would take him but not agree to help save a soul. At last I came to a Christian man in the leather business, who agreed to take him into his family, instruct him in the very rudiments of religion, take him to church and Sunday school with him; in fact, to nourish this new-born soul in Christ. We prayed together, then I left him. For a very short time I received a postal-card each week, which I failed to answer; then, amid the cares of a very busy life, I forgot him. About three years after that I was walking along a street in Lancaster when a fine-looking chap came rushing from behind me, and, placing his arm over my shoulder, said, “Oh, God bless you! God bless you!”
I turned and found a fine-looking man with tear-dimmed eyes blessing me. “Son,” I said, “what is your name?”
“Oh! do you not know me? I have prayed for you every day for three years, and you have forgotten me.”
“Well,” I said, “I fancy you are so much better looking to-day than you were then so that your own mother might not know you now.”
I walked back to the leather store with him and found my friend behind the counter. “Mr. S.” I said, “is John Schmidt a good man?”
He did not wait to go around the counter, but, coming right over it, he placed a hand on each of John's shoulders as he said, “I am glad to bear witness that John is a true, good man. At first he was sorely tried to associate only with our kind of people, but he has worked all day, gone to school at night, gone to church and Sunday school every Sunday, and he is about to marry one of the best young women of our church.” God had done a perfect work of grace, and the hereditary drunkard became a good man and a useful citizen. It must be so, for the word says the blood of Christ Jesus cleanses from all sin.