Page:Historical and biographical sketches.djvu/117

Rh fall in Adam's first-born son Cain, when he was asked by God concerning the great sin he had committed toward his pious brother Abel, “Where is thy brother Abel?” He answered, against his knowledge and conscience, “I know not. Am I my brother's keeper?” 1 Moses, 4, 9. So it can be seen that the seed of the snake appeared soon after the fall, and still daily brings fruit to death and destruction. It will go hard with parents and schoolmasters to answer, if they do not earnestly strive to keep the young entrusted to them from it. How hard this often lies upon my heart no one knows better than myself. The scholar's hymn added hereto will to some extent show it. The Lord Jesus Himself says, John viii, 44, that the Devil is the father of lies. The Scribes and the Pharisees outwardly had the appearance of piety, but what they did was not done in truth, to the honor of God, but they sought their own honor, and so they adorned their cause with lies against the truth. Wherefore Christ, as is to be seen in the said verse, addressed them with the following words: “Ye are of your father, the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie he speaketh of his own; for he is a liar and the father of it.” So run the Lord Jesus's own words. John the Baptist calls them, for such evil work, a generation of vipers, as is to be seen in Matthew 3, 7. Read further and consider earnestly and with thought the 23d chapter of Matthew, and you will find what woe, lying and credit-seeking works bring upon themselves. The last judgment of woe is given in the 33d verse in the