Three gateways span the path of earthly existence: one at the entrance which we call the gate of birth; one at the close which we call the gate of death, and one at the entrance to the wondrous Land of the Teens, which we call the gate of manhood or of womanhood. At each of these gates a wonderful gift is presented to each individual. At the gate of birth it is the gift of earthly life, at death it is the gift of continued life, and at the gate which opens into the Land of the Teens it is the gift of creative life. You see that each gift is of life.

The path of earthly life, beginning at the gateway of birth, passes through the sunny meadow-land of Childhood, and also through a strange, mysterious land to which we have referred as the Land of the Teens, before reaching the Heights of Maturity. This Land of the Teens is peculiar in that the inhabitants are neither children nor adults, and yet, with the inexperience of children, they have many of the desires and emotions of grown-up people. This constitutes an element of great danger, while another source of danger is the fact that adequate guidance is not always given in this transition period, or, if proffered, is proudly rejected by those who think that being in their “teens” makes them wise above that which is written.

When we visit foreign lands we are grateful for guidance and direction, especially if we are not acquainted with the language; so, if we do not hire a guide we, at least, buy a guide-book. It seems to me, then, that we ought not to rebel against guides through the Land of the Teens, realizing that one who has traveled through a country can point out beauties and warn against dangers which would not be recognized by the inexperienced traveler.

We can visit England, Italy, or Germany many times, and at each journey can profit by former experiences, but we pass through the Land of the Teens but once, and the lessons we learn on that journey we can only utilize for the benefit of others. This is why many people on the Heights of Maturity are anxious to light a beacon for those who are still in their “teens.” They would gladly help others to shun the by-paths where they have met disaster, for they have learned the very solemn truth that in youth one is determining what maturity shall be. The seeds sown in the sunny meadow of Childhood and in the broader fields of the Land of the Teens are harvested in the uplands of Maturity, and the harvest is always greater than the seed sown. The petulance and pouting of the child hardens into the gruffness, bad-temper, and moroseness of the man; the idleness and shirking of the youth becomes the shiftlessness and unreliability of the adult; the boy’s neglect of duty and unwearied search for pleasure may be harvested in dissipation and ruin in mature life. It is, then, a very serious thing to be passing through one’s “teens,” and the wise youth will welcome any guide who will show him a safe path. May I claim the privilege of acting for a little time in that capacity?

The King of this land has made laws for its government and wisdom, has builded paths wherein one may walk in safety. The laws made by the King are not harsh and cruel, but are beneficent, and he denies no real good. He says to the traveler, “You belong to me, and I am desirous of your highest welfare; therefore, obey me and you shall be rewarded; disobey me and you shall be punished.” It needs some moral courage to bravely stay in the path of Wisdom, for there are many allurements to leave it; more particularly as the inexperience of the traveler does not warn him of the dangers of following pleasures that lead away from wisdom’s ways. The guide worthy of trust must not fail to point out these dangers; and the prudent youth will listen to the warning voice and walk in Wisdom’s ways, for “all her ways are pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.”

We talk much about our personal liberty, and assert that we have a right to live in Maine or California, but we have not that much liberty in regard to dwelling in the Land of the Teens. If we are ever to reach the Heights of Maturity we must spend ten years in the Teens. We cannot sell our domain, nor give it away, and we cannot even hire some one to cultivate it for us. This being the case, it becomes important for us to study the soil and how best to develop its advantages.

We find that the land has three divisions: the Domain of the Body, the Field of Intellect, and the Garden of the Heart, the same divisions that exist in the Sunny Land of Childhood, and that we have been cultivating ever since we were born. These are the kingdoms which came to us with the gift of life. We recognize that the gifts which come to us at birth and death are of life for ourselves alone, and we have had no thought during our childish years except to develop our powers for our own advantage. It may be we have not felt perfectly satisfied with our lot in life, but we have felt that we were not responsible for this. We did not choose to be born in America instead of Asia, though we do not rebel at this fact. We did not select to be white instead of black. It is not our fault if we are born of a family in which consumption is an inheritance; and, on the other hand, we can claim no credit to ourselves if we have inherited strong bodies with healthful tendencies. It is our misfortune, and not our fault, if we are not quite perfectly poised by nature; it is our good fortune, not our foresight, if we have genius instead of mediocrity. The gifts that come to us through inheritance are ours without blame or credit to us but they bring with them the responsibility of their use. We are responsible for maintaining or increasing our dower of health by obedience to physical laws; responsible for the cultivation of our intellects, for the development of inherited virtues, and the annihilation of inherited vices.

If you study your characteristics and talents you find that they repeat those of your ancestry. Your eyes, hair, mouth, chin, your stature, figure, complexion, your talents, capabilities, tendencies, your likes and dislikes, your faults as well as your virtues are repetitions of those who preceded you in this living network of existence of which you form a part. If you are not like father or mother you may be like grandfather or great-grandmother. If you do not find yourself repeating the characteristics or personality of any one ancestor, you may find yourself a composite photograph of several. And even if you cannot trace in yourself a likeness to any family representative, you may still be assured that from some of them your traits have come to you. You have only to recall the complexity of your sources of inheritance and then remember how many words can be spelled from the twenty-six letters of the alphabet to see that you can hardly measure the peculiar forces of mind and body that may come to you though that power of transmission which we call heredity.

It may occur to you to ask why, if we are not responsible for our inheritances, is it needful to give them any particular thought? There are two reasons why we should consider the good and bad characteristics which may be ours through inheritance. In the first place, heredity is not fatality, and we are not absolutely obliged to follow the paths which our ancestors marked out for us, and in the second place, we can, by understanding our own characters, mark out better paths for our posterity. We are not only receivers of life, but we may be also givers of life, and this is the gift that comes to you at the entrance to the Land of the Teens. Can you imagine a more important period in the life of an individual than that point where is intrusted to him the physical powers which make him the arbiter of the destiny of those who come after him?

The gift of possible life for others is even more marvelous than that of actual life for one’s self and brings with it greater responsibility. It is accompanied with marked physical changes. You have observed them in yourself, though you perhaps have not understood them. Up to this time you have been but a child, and all your physical forces have been occupied in keeping you alive and growing. But you are now to become a man, with powers that will unite you to the race; powers that will give you the ability to form a new link in the living chain that now ends with you. You have noticed the rapid unfolding of your bodily powers; you have become conscious of new and strange emotions; you have, it may be, found yourself becoming irritable and have felt bewildered with the new aspects of life and have wondered what it all means. It may be you have felt as did one boy who said to his mother, to whom he confided all his problems of life: “Mamma, I want to kick and cry, and I don’t know why.” The mother knew. She understood the strange unfolding that was going on in his physical organism, and she kindly explained it to him, telling him that he must have patience with himself, and govern himself by his judgment and not allow himself to be carried away by impulse, assuring him that God would hold him as responsible for purity of character as He would the dear sister of whom they all felt so careful. He should reverence his manhood, even as he expected her to reverence her womanhood. This is necessary, not only for the good of each individual, but also for the eternal interest of future generations.

This entrance into the Land of the Teens is a serious, even a dangerous period, for if you have not had right instruction you may be led, or fall into habits of wrong doing or thinking. If you are rightly taught you will begin to have an added reverence for yourselves in that God is dignifying you with new powers that will bring you more nearly into co-partnership with himself. These powers, the most sacred of all that have come to you, need years for development, and should be guarded by pure thoughts and kept for their holy office of promoting the earthly usefulness and eternal blessedness of those who hereafter will owe both earthly and immortal life to you.

I have said that we are not responsible for the dower of virtues or of vices which are ours by inheritance, but we are responsible for the inheritances of our children, and this is a most solemn thought. Do you not begin to see that we cannot value ourselves too highly if we have the right idea of what our real worth is? We can scarcely overestimate the results of our own deeds. We may think it does not matter if we do not always tell the exact truth; if at some times we equivocate and at others exaggerate, but when we remember that truth is the foundation of character, and realize that by our little equivocations or exaggerations we may be weakening the foundations of many who are from us to receive their talents and tendencies, we begin to see that the matter is a very serious one. I am sometimes told that young people will not be influenced by a consideration for the welfare of unborn generations whose existence is very problematical in their thought; but my observation is that young folks are much more sensible than we give them credit for being. More than one young man has said to me: “I was never taught that my conduct and thought would impress themselves upon my children, but now that I see that such is the case, I am sure that I will hereafter be more careful of my life than I ever have been.”

This field of investigation is a broad one, and even if you never have an opportunity to study the subject scientifically you can still be of incalculable benefit to humanity by ever remembering that you are living for an earthly, as well as for a heavenly immortality. The young people who to-day are in the Land of the Teens are they who are determining the characteristics of the men and women of the Twentieth Century, creating the standards of thought and action, the methods of business, the level of morals, in fact the whole status of society in the world of a hundred years to come.

It is a very wonderful fact that God has so created us that the result of our deeds is not limited to our own lives, but makes its impress upon those who are to come after us. We are not separate units, but are links in a living chain of endless transmission. This fact makes our lives of far greater consequence than if, in their results, they were limited to ourselves. If we are anxious concerning the future of our country, we may take to heart the thought that it will be what we ourselves have made it. The Bible expresses the same idea in many ways. “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap,” does not mean merely that his own future will be influenced by his conduct, but that his future in his children will be a record which he himself has made.

Men often make their wills and bequeath to their children their gold or houses and lands, but sometimes against their wills they bequeath to their children a bodily dwelling of inferior material, and so poor in construction that it very soon falls into decay through disease, or in very early life becomes a tottering ruin. It would seem rather amusing to us if one should sit down and write his will and say: “I bequeath to my daughter Mary my yellow, blotched and pimpled complexion, resulting from my own bad habits of life. I bequeath to my son John, the effects of my habits of dissipation in my youth, with a like love for alcoholic liquors and tobacco. I bequeath to my son Harry my petulant, irritable disposition, and the rheumatic gout which I have brought upon myself by disobedience to physical law; and to my daughter Elizabeth, my trembling nerves and weak moral nature.” But this is, in truth, what many parents do, and the children find it a sad, instead of an amusing fact.

On the other hand, if one has led a life of uprightness and morality, and has obeyed physical law, his children will inherit his physical vigor, and his moral stamina. It becomes of exceeding great importance that these facts should be known to the young, in order that they may endeavor to overcome their own weaknesses, and strengthen their own good qualities for the sake of future generations.

This heredity, the transmission of the qualities of the parent to the child, is found among plants and animals as well as in the human race. The seed of a plant produces another plant of the same kind, and the farmer knows when he sows wheat, that his harvest will be wheat, and he should know just as certainly that if he “sows wild oats” in his youth he may expect “wild oats” in his children. The character of the food we eat, the air we breathe, the occupations we follow, the habits we create, are the forces which shape not only our own destiny, but create the tendencies of our children.

With these thoughts in mind, the question of the use of narcotics becomes one of great importance. There are few, if any, tobacco users who are anxious that their boys should early begin the use of the weed. But they do not realize the fact that in their own use of it they may have diminished the vital force of these boys, transmitting a tendency to disease, or perhaps an appetite for the tobacco itself, and not only will the boys feel the effects, but the girls as well. As the thought of men is turned in this direction, proofs are accumulating of the evil results to the children of tobacco-using parents. A prominent physician says: “I have never known an habitual tobacco user whose children did not have deranged nerves, and sometimes weak minds. Shattered nervous systems, for generations to come, may be the result of this indulgence. The children of tobacco-using parents frequently die with infantile paralysis. I have known two cases in which the crying of the baby could not be stopped until the tobacco-pipe was placed between its lips.” Dr. Pidduck asserts that in no instance is the sin of the father more strikingly visited upon his children than the sin of tobacco using. “The enervation, the hypochondriasis, the hysteria, the insanity, the dwarfish deformities, the consumption, the suffering lives, and early deaths of the children of inveterate smokers bear ample testimony to the feebleness and unsoundness of the constitution transmitted by this pernicious habit.”

The effect of alcohol upon the child is equally marked, and from all sides comes the testimony that the degenerations do not stop with the individual, but pass on to succeeding generations. Sometimes the influence is seen in the stunting of the growth, both mentally and physically. Dr. Langden Downe reports several cases of this sort where the children had lived to be twenty-two years old and still remained infants, symmetrical in form, just able to stand beside a chair, utter a few monosyllabic sounds, and to be amused with toys. Dr. F. R. Lees, referring to the injury inflicted upon the liver by alcohol, says: “And recollect, whatever injury you inflict upon this organ, to your posterity the curse descends, and as is the father, so are the children.” Dr. Kerr asserts that the effects of injury to the mind and body may not always show themselves in the drinker himself, yet it is doubtful if his children ever entirely escape the effects in one form or another. These effects may be manifest in insanity, or in a tendency to diseases of the stomach, liver, bowels, lungs, or other organs; or with a like love for alcoholic stimulants. Not only may the child be weak in body but also in intellect. It is the statement of a score of observant physicians that the children of intemperate parents are apt to be feeble in body and weak in mind.

Another very striking thought in this connection is that while the physical effects may not show in the individual himself, nor in his children, they may be manifest in the deterioration of his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. A prominent temperance advocate who was laid up with rheumatic gout, which is apt to be the result of alcoholic indulgence, replied to a friend who wondered that he, a drinker of cold water, should suffer with this disease, “Yes, my ancestors drank the liquor and I foot the bills.” In 1834 the Parliament of the British House of Commons made a report of intemperance in which they stated that the evils of alcoholism “are cumulative in the amount of injury they inflict, as intemperate parents, according to high medical testimony, give a taint to their offspring before birth, and the poisonous stream of spirits is conveyed through the milk of the mother to the infant at the breast; so that the fountain of life, through which nature supplies that pure and healthy nutriment of infancy, is poisoned at its very source, and a diseased and vitiated appetite is thus created, which grows with its growth, and strengthens with its increasing weakness and decay.”

A tendency to commit suicide seems to be a marked bequest of an inebriate parent to his children, and it is well to state that in the opinion of medical men who are dealing with all forms of inebriety, the evils resulting to the children may be transmitted by parents who have never been noted for drunkenness. Continual moderate drinking keeps the body so constantly under the influence of alcohol that a crowd of nervous difficulties and disorders may be transmitted even more surely than from the parent who has occasional sprees with long intervals of sobriety between. It is not only through the drinking father that injury is done to the children, but the mother may have a vitiated inheritance from her father and transmit it to her children.

When we recall the fact that one hundred thousand men fall into drunkard’s graves every year, we are appalled at the thought of that vast army marching on to death and destruction. As we listen, we can, in fancy, almost hear the tramp, tramp of that “mighty host advancing, Satan leading on.” In the front rank comes the one hundred thousand men who shall fall into drunkard’s graves this year, and behind them the one hundred thousand men who are to fall next year. They come with sound of revelry and song, and close beside them press a crowd of weeping wives and mothers and little children, starved, crippled, and murdered, who are to be fellow victims with the drunkard. Not very far back from the front row come one hundred thousand young men in the very prime of young, vigorous life, just beginning to drink their first glass of wine or beer, with no intention of ever standing in that front row, yet having started on the way. Back of them, one hundred little school boys who think it manly to ape the follies of their predecessors. Back of them, one hundred thousand little toddlers whose feet stagger in their innocent helplessness. Back of them, one hundred thousand mothers with babies in their arms. Oh, how sweetly those baby eyes look up into the loving eyes that are brooding over them. Is it possible those baby brows will ever lie low in the gutter, those sweet lips be stained by oath or glass; those crumpled rose-leaf fingers ever strike the murderous blow incited by alcohol? It must be, if that front rank of one hundred thousand drunkards is to be recruited, for the drunkards of the future are to-day babies in their mother’s arms. Do you who read these words intend to join this vast army of prospective drunkards, or will you belong to the cold-water army that is marching on accompanied by health, vigor, industry, prosperity, success and long life?

We must not be so interested in the inheritance of evil qualities as to forget the transmission of good. We read in Exodus, twentieth chapter, that the sins of the fathers are to be visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generations of them that hate the Lord, but mercy will be shown to thousands of generations of them that love Him and keep his commandments. As we have seen the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children in transmission of diseased bodies, perverted moral natures and weakened wills, and realize that the promise is being fulfilled in the visitation of the sins of the fathers upon the children, let us see if the other promise is being fulfilled also, in the mercy shown to thousands of them that love the Lord and keep His commandments.

An English specialist in children’s diseases has carefully noted the difference between twelve families of drinkers and twelve families of sober parents during a period of twelve years.

If it were not a fact that health, purity, integrity, intellect and virtue were being transmitted to a far greater extent than sin and vice, there would be little good in the world, but the transmission of these good qualities is so extended, so like the air and the sunshine and the water, a common thing, that we almost forget to recognize it. When we turn our thoughts to the investigation of this phase of the subject, we find that vigorous parents have healthful children, that powers of intellect are transmitted, and that honesty and uprightness in the father warrants us in expecting the same in the son. We recognize the transmission of powers of intellect in the fact that where the parents have a peculiar talent, we very generally find the same talent in their children. We are acquainted with musical families, mathematical families, artistic families, and in the study of renowned people of the world we find evidences of this transmission of intellect. We also learn that the effects of education are transmissible, and if the parents are educated along a certain line the children receive education along that line much more readily. This fact becomes a wonderful incentive to us to build up all that is best in our own natures in order that through us the world may receive an impetus towards higher and better things.

Sometimes when your faults and defects press upon you with tremendous force and you find it so very hard to overcome them, you may be tempted to lay the blame on your ancestry who gave you such a dower, who by their lives handicapped you in your life-struggle. You may feel inclined to say with some writer, to me unknown, who says:

HEREDITY.

“Your strictures are unmerited,
Our follies are inherited,
Directly from our gran-pas they all came;
Our defects have been transmitted,
And we should be acquitted
Of all responsibility and blame.

We are not depraved beginners,
But hereditary sinners,
For our fathers never acted as they should;
’Tis the folly of our gran-pas
That continually hampers
What a pity that our gran-pas weren’t good!

Yes, we’d all be reverend senators,
If our depraved progenitors
Had all been prudent, studious and wise;
But they were quite terrestial,
Or we would be celestial,
Yes, we’d all be proper tenants for the skies.

If we’re not all blameless sages,
And beacons to the ages,
And fit for principalities and powers;
If we do not guide and man it,
And engineer the planet,
’Tis the folly of our forefathers not ours.”

But the lesson of these lines is not that you should lie back in inaction, making no effort to overcome your defects because they are inheritances. There is for you a wiser lesson in the theme than that. When Marshall Ney was taunted with the fact that the Imperial nobility had no pedigree he proudly replied, “We are ancestors.”

There is a grand thought for you. If your ancestors did not do the best for you, will you not profit by your knowledge of this fact and do the best for those who shall look back to you as their ancestor? Supposing that your parents in their youth had said: “I will take care of my health so that my children may be born with vigorous bodies; I will make good use of my intellect so that my children will inherit an added capacity for acquiring knowledge; I will obey all laws of morality so that my children will by inheritance tend toward virtue;” and supposing that you to-day, with healthful bodies, keen intellects and upward tending moral natures, were reaping the reward of their forethought, would you not bless them for it?

You have no right to remain listless and discouraged because of your inheritances, whatever they may be. Hear the inspiriting words of Ella Wheeler Wilcox:

There is no thing you cannot overcome.
Say not thy evil instinct is inherited;
Or that some trait inborn, makes thy whole life forlorn,
And calls for punishment that is not merited.

Back of thy parents and grandparents lies,
The great Eternal Will; that, too, is thine
Inheritance strong, beautiful, divine;
Sure lever of success for one who tries.

Pry up thy fault with this great lever will;
However deeply bedded in propensity;
However firmly set, I tell thee firmer yet
Is that great power that comes from truth’s immensity.

There is no noble height thou canst not climb;
All triumphs may be thine in time’s futurity,
If whatsoe’er thy fault, thou dost not faint or halt,
But lean upon the staff of God’s security.

Earth has no claim the soul can not contest.
Know thyself part of the supernal source,
And naught can stand before thy spirit’s force
The soul’s divine inheritance is best.

The youth of to-day have in their own hands the molding of the future, not only of themselves, but of the nation, by the every day habits of their lives. By their thoughts and aspirations, by the moral tendencies which they are cultivating in themselves, they are determining what shall be the characteristics of the nation in a hundred years to come. Shall this be, in a hundred years, a nation of drunkards? The young people of to-day are deciding that question. Shall it be a nation of invalids? This, also, the young people are deciding. Shall it be a nation filled with greed of gain, with a low standard of morals, with dishonest methods in business, or shall it be a nation wherein vigorous health is the rule, unflinching courage, absolute integrity and pure morality shall everywhere reign? What the young people of to-day are making of themselves physically, mentally and morally, is deciding what shall be the future of the country.