In more senses than one “the evil which men do lives after them.”  A drunkard’s son, for example, is often conscious of an inbred craving which is a veritable disease, so that he is heavily weighted as he starts out on the race of life.  This solemn and suggestive fact that the future well-being of children depends largely on the character of parents, should give emphasis to the adjuration in the wedding service—­marriage, therefore, is to be honourable in all, and ought not to be engaged in rashly, “thoughtlessly, or lightly, but advisedly, reverently, and in the fear of God.”  The law of moral heritage makes parental responsibility a solemn trust, while, in so far as it affects those who inherit bad or good tendencies, we are sure that the Judge of all the earth will do right.  But it must never be forgotten that even a bad disposition need never become a dominant habit.  It is something to be resisted and conquered, and, it may be, by the grace of Him who is faithful, and will not suffer any of us to be tempted above what we are able to bear.  Our tendencies are Divine calls to us to recognise and guard certain weak places in the citadel of character, for it is against these that our enemy directs his most persistent and vigorous attacks.

Unhappily, Adonijah’s natural bias was made the more dangerous by the atmosphere of the court, where flatterers naturally abounded—­for “he was a very goodly man,” physically a repetition of Absalom, the Adonis of his time.  We may also fairly surmise that his parents were guilty of partiality and indulgence in their treatment of him, for David would love him the more as one who revived the memory of his favourite Absalom, the idol of the people, distinguished for his noble mien and princely bearing.  Courtiers, soldiers, and people all flattered Adonijah, and Joab, the greatest captain of his age, next only to the king, was his partisan, the more so because he neither forgot nor forgave David’s reproaches after the death of Absalom.  Even Abiathar, who represented the younger and more ambitious branch of the priesthood, joined in the general adulation, until Adonijah, intoxicated by vanity, set up his own court in rivalry to that of his father, and when he moved abroad was accompanied by a stately retinue of chariots and horsemen, and fifty foot attendants gorgeously apparelled.

No doubt every position in life has its own peculiar temptations.  The ill-favoured lad, who is the butt at school and the scapegoat at home, is in serious danger of becoming bitter and revengeful, and of growing crooked in character, like a plant in a dark vault, which will have no beauty because it enjoys no sunshine.  But, on the other hand, physical beauty, which attracts attention and wins admiration, especially if it is associated with brilliant conversational gifts, and great charm of manner, has befooled both men and women into sin and misery.  Many a girl has been entrapped into an unhappy marriage; and many a lad, moved by a vaunting ambition which overleaped itself, has fallen never to rise:  like Icarus, when his waxen wings melted in the sun.