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 26 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 27 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 28 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 29 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, 30 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