THE INHERITANCE OF THE SPIRIT
By George Matheson

"The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty
hath given me life" - JOB 33:4

EVERY man ought to be proud of a good ancestry - of an ancestry whose characteristic was goodness. The value lies not in the origin, but in the heredity. The qualities of my ancestors would be nothing if they did not tend to be transmitted; it is the present and not the past that gives them weight. Our life is always the breath of the spirit which has made us; the traits of the fathers re-appear in the children. On one side we have all a splendid ancestry. On the side of our Mother Nature we have much to bear; we are children of the flesh, and the flesh is weak. But we have also an origin from our Father, and our Father is a Spirit. We have an ancestry which goes back beyond Nature, beyond maternity, beyond the flesh. We have a pedigree which is older than the mountains, older than the stars, older than the universe. We are come from a good stock; we are branches of a high family tree; we are scions of a noble house, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Nature is the parent of our flesh, but the Divine is the Father of our spirits; the Spirit of God has made us, and the breath of the Almighty has given us life.
My soul, hast thou within thyself the traces of thy heavenly origin? It is not enough that thou canst prove it from a register book; there is nothing to be proud of in any ancestry which is not in thee. It is not enough to quote a text of the Bible in proof of thy Divine descent; if thy lineage be of any value, that which descends to thee must be not a text but a quality. Hast thou within thyself the qualities of thy Father? Canst thou point to aught in thy being which never could have come to thee from thy Mother Nature? Hast thou moments higher than the physical - moments of faith, of aspiration, of love, of prayer? Hast thou times in which the kingdoms of this world have no glory by reason of an all-excelling glory? Hast thou glimpses from the summit of Nebo in which thy youth is renewed like the eagle's, in which thine eye ceases to be dim, and thy natural strenght is still unabated? Then thou hast a prophecy of immortality, and thy prophecy is a memory. The premonition of thy future is the voice of thy past. The promise of thy destiny is the echo of thy origin. Thou canst not rise too high for thy source; thou shalt go to God because thou hast come from God. Thy hope of everlastingness is the knowledge that thy life is the breath of the Almighty, and thy life is the breath of the Almighty because the Spirit of God has made thee.

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