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7. The just man walketh in his integrity: his children are blessed after him.
The faithful man is here fully drawn, rich in the blessing of his God. Take the history of the father of the faithful. Abraham was the just man, accepted with God, and “walking before him” in his integrity. And did not the covenant of his God engage an everlasting blessing for his children after him? (Genesis 17:1, 2, 7.) And thus does every child of Abraham, walking in the same integrity, secure “an inheritance for his children's children.”† It is ‘not however for the merits of the parent, that they deserve it: but such is the mercy of God to the root and the branches; that, because the fathers are loved, their children also are embraced.’† But we must shew our integrity, as did our father Abraham, in the practical habit of faith; not only “taking hold of the covenant” on our children's behalf, but bringing them under the yoke of the covenant.†
Christian parents! — let integrity, as before God, be the broad stamp of our family religion. Walk not according to the maxims of the world yourselves, nor allow them in your children. Let us make God's word — his whole word — our universal rule; his ways, however despised, our daily portion. “Let us seek first,” for our children as for ourselves, “the kingdom of God and his righteousness.”† Thus walking in our integrity, we may look for the honored blessing of being the parents of a godly race. Our children are blessed after us; perhaps “after we, having served our own generation by the will of God, shall have fallen asleep.” (Acts 13:36.) But well may we be content to wait the coming of that great disclosing day, when “the thoughts of many hearts shall be revealed.” For then surely will the children's blessing be found in the secret records of Heaven, linked with the prayerful, practical exercises of the parents’ faith and love.
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