To All Our Ancestors…

Someone peering at a portrait of a great personality of the past was heard to say, altogether unimpressed: “Who’s he? What did he do?”

We are often so absorbed in the present living of life, that we may be guilty of forgetting what we owe to people of the past. Each generation seems to acquire some sense of self-sufficiency, and to forget in part that others formerly occupied the places, and even perhaps the positions, that now are ours, and that through them we have the physical and mental and spiritual heritage we have.

True, the present generation, in a sense, owns and occupies the earth. Those who once held claim to it are no more with us. As for all that is tangible, they left it behind. A man lives his mortal life and moves on. “All the world’s a stage,” said Shakespeare. The actors come and go. But in that brief time when they play their earthly part we are influenced by them more than now we know. What they were, what they did, has great effect on us.

No man stands alone in any generation, as to what he is or what he has. Nor is any generation sufficient unto itself, nor any person, ever. The past, plus what we are and what we do, helps to fashion the future. We are part of the procession of the whole human family. And a family album or an ancient archive of the portraits of people, and what they were and what they did and what they learned and what they left, are all a very important part of the heritage we have.

To cite some scripture on the subject, “The heart of the fathers [shall turn] to the children, and the heart of the children to their father,”⎯not only the fathers, but all forebears⎯for what they did and what they inseparably are to us is a matter of incalculable consequence. We are tied to them, and they to us through the succeeding years of time, into the endlessness of eternity. And the names and pictures of people of the past are sobering reminders of the fact that someone may soon be looking back and wondering who we were⎯and of the fact that there is an inseparable oneness of the whole human family.