The good begun by thee shall onward flow Do something, do it soon, with all thy might; An angel's wing would droop if long at rest, Our Professional Ancestry BY PROF. RICHARD EDWARDS OF ST. LOUIS, MO. When the young English nobleman first goes into battle, under the banner that has waved over his patrician ancestors for hundreds of years, we may well believe that he experiences emotions to which the mere commoner must be a stranger. There flows through his veins, perhaps, the blood of men who fought at Hastings, where the love of glory and desire for booty on one side, and the love of national independence and liberty on the other, spurred on the combatants to the highest pitch of valor, --the blood which the intervening centuries have only intensified and enriched, and stirred to deeds of nobler daring. The cruelties, the tyrannies, of almost a thousand years, that lie like a dark and fearful cloud over his house's history, disappear in the gleam of glory which spreads over the whole picture, and shines into his own soul. Every one of the long line of ancestral shades that looks down upon him, seems ready to execrate the unworthy son who would profane their memories by a dastardly deed, or forget to exhibit the heroism that belongs to such a line. The New Englander of to-day, who traces his descent to the men of the Mayflower, of or Lexington and Bunker Hill, as he stands fast in the defence of some great principle, in contending for what he considers the true and the right, feels himself strengthened by an accession of resolute endeavor, at the thought that he is the lineal representative of those great and noble men who could afford to cling to their manhood, when such adhesion cost them nearly all else that they valued. And so the poet would have us believe it was in ancient Rome. The wily Cassius, by skillfully playing upon the patriotic descent of the noble. Brutus, wrought him up to the doing of a deed at the mere story of which men have stood aghast through the centuries. So that we must believe there is something in ancestry. Other things being equal, a man with a reputation made for him, as it were, before he was born, which he is considered to be under an obligation to sustain, who identifies himself with the generations that have preceded him, as the Englishman says, "I came over with the conqueror;" such a man, other things being equal, will be more likely to entertain a manly self respect, and to refrain from mean and unmanly conduct, than one without these advantages. Such a man, notwithstanding the evanescent character of sublunary things, in spite of the fact that flesh is as grass, and the glory of man as the flower of grass, feels something like a permanent interest in the affairs of this planet. He belonged to it before he appeared among men, and will continue to belong to it after he has passed from before their eyes. But ancestry is not alone of family blood, and the feeling. to which we have referred does not run exclusively in the line of natural descent. The fame of Lucius Junius, and the stern virtue that forgot the father in the judge, was the heritage of every Roman reeman, and helped in a great measure to form the character of each. Every Englishman feels as if somehow he had been personally concerned in Crecy and Agincourt, and in the drawing up of the Habeas Corpus act. And what American is there, even though his tongue is touched with the richest of brogues, who does not feel responsible for the conduct of Washington and his compeers? Thus far, indeed, we have lived, as a nation, upon the reputation of these men; it has kept us from committing atrocities, worse than aught we have been guilty of, and falling into anarchy more wild and worse confounded than even the present year has witnessed. Without this heritage from the past, we might have run into excesses of which these recollections would now make us ashamed, and from which they have saved us. But there is something beyond either the family or the nation in this matter of ancestry. The mantle of the prophet fell not upon his own child according to the flesh. Worthy sires beget unworthy sons. Families seem to rise, to ascend to the zenith of glory and influence, then to sink forever beneath the horizon of human observation into obscurity, or perhaps their physical as well as mental energies becoming exhausted, the race utterly disappears from among men. So also with nations. The glory of early achievements, the sturdy patriotism, the heroic. integrity, the self abnegation which mark their origin and rise, although imparting a vigor which may postpone the day of decline, have not, in the case of past nations, prevented its coming. Sooner or later, according to past human experience, the bands that hold together the members of the community, are severed, its institutions crumble, and the nation passes away from the sisterhood to which it belonged. -"Egyptian Thebes, Tyre, by the margin of the sounding waves, And the arts died by which they had been raised.”” Here the But not thus with the lineage of thought and character.. It extends in all its vigor through the centuries. race never becomes extinct; the family never dies out.. God never left himself without witnesses. And so long as truth shall have power over human minds and hearts, to open the one to its own glorious beauty, and to warm the other to generous emotions, there will never be wanting an heir apparent to the honor and dignities of the house, as well as to its persecutions and martyrdoms. Such a succession has been the line of prophets and seers, of men. who, by the inspiration of the Most High, have stood upon. the highest summit of human thought and knowledge, and have looked forth into the mysteries of the Universe, far beyond the circle that bounded the ordinary gaze, for whose clearer vision the vulgar horizon was too circumscribed,-men who have expounded to us the deep things of God, as exhibited in his works and in his providence. What a noble lineage, what a royal dynasty! They have not always been honored by the multitude, whose eyes, bleared by prejudice or ignorance, are incapable of their keen vision Sometimes they drink hemlock, sometimes they starve in in dungeons, sometimes their superior knowledge has been attributed to Satan. Their noblest virtues have been stigmatized as crimes, and they have expatiated by cruel tortures and an ignominious death, the crime of being wiser, nobler, and more self-sacrificing than the age in which they lived. As I understand it, the members of the association before which I have the honor to stand to-day, have assembled here for the purpose of having their spirits raised and their hearts warmed, by the greeting of past friends and present fellow-laborers, in the hope that all may return to their various fields of labor with higher hopes and nobler aspirations than have hitherto stirred them. It is a worthy object, and the occasion should be made as efficient in the awakening of such enthusiasm as it is in our power to make it. With the desire of rendering this special exercise as useful as possible in this way, I have thought it the best thing that could be done, to appeal, for a brief hour, to this just and proper regard for antiquity, and to make some brief allusion to a few of the most famous names among our professional ancestry. Education, so far as history makes us acquainted with its origin and progress, appears to have begun in the family. The patriarchs of old, who were kings, priests and instructors in their own households, were the first teachers of whom we have a record. The covenant with Noah was made to be in force with perpetual generations, which could only be by its being taught and explained by every father to his immediate descendants. In all the promises made to Abraham, there was constant reference to his seed, who were to be the heirs of what to him was only promise. In the Mosaic Law, we find it continually enjoined upon every householder, that he should instruct his children in the law, and in the history of the nation, in the Statutes of the Lord, and in the story of the deliverance of his people. "And thou shalt teach these words diligently to thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down and when thou risest up." "And when thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying, what means the testimonies and the statutes and the judgments which the Lord our God has commanded you? then shalt thou say unto thy son, we were Pharoh's bondmen in Egypt, and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand." So that by divine |