In a few, jealousy coils itself with lengthening fold, which, like the serpent that wrapped itself round Laocoon and his sons, makes parents and children its unhappy victims.
And so it is with the virtues, which, thanks be to God, who setteth the solitary in families, are also hereditary.

How often do we hear it said,--"She is lovely, charitable, and pious,--so was her mother before her;" "He is an upright and honorable man,--he came from a noble stock." "That youth has a sacred love of truth,--it is his best inheritance,--his father's word was equivalent to his bond." If this be true, it shows the duty of parents in an awfully commanding manner.

Let them rend out the eye that gives dark and distorted views of God and man.

Let them cut off the hand that offends and the foot that errs, rather than entail on others evils, which all eternity cannot remedy.

Better transmit to posterity the blinded eye, the maimed and halting foot, that knows the narrow path to eternal life, than the dark passions that desolate earth, and unfit the soul for the joys of heaven..