2 Chronicles 33:25

Josiah his son king in his stead.

Far-reaching heredity

Josiah was the son of Amon--which is equal to saying that the greatest sinner of his day was the progenitor of one of the finest saints that ever prayed. If that is not a miracle, what is meant by the term miracle? Read the account and say if it be not the reading of music:--“And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, and walked in the ways of David his father” (2 Chronicles 34:2) “and declined neither to the right hand, nor to the left.” Then he had more fathers than one. That is the explanation. You are not the son of the man that went immediately before you; you are only his son in a very incidental manner. Josiah was the son of “David his father”--the larger father, the deeper root, the elect of God; a sun fouled by many a black spot, but a shining orb notwithstanding. We must enlarge our view if we would come to right conclusions regarding many mysteries. Amen was but a link in the chain. The bad man here, or the good man there, taken in his solitariness, is but a comparatively trivial incident in life’s tragedy. Heredity is not from one to two; it is from one to the last; from the beginning to the ending. In every man there lives all the humanity that ever lived. We are fearfully and wonderfully made--not physically only, but morally, religiously, temperamentally. All the kings live in the last king or the reigning monarch. We are one humanity. Solidarity has its lessons as well as individuality. We know not which of our ancestors comes up in us at this moment or that--now the tiger, now the eagle; now the praying mother, now the daring sire; now some mean soul that got into the current by a mystery never to be explained; now the cunning, watchful, patient deceiver, who can wait for nights at a time and never complain of the dark or the cold, and now the hero that never had a fear, the philanthropist that loved the world, the mother that never looked otherwise than God Himself would have her look. We can never tell which of our ancestors is really thinking in us, speaking through us; we cannot tell the accent of the immediate consciousness;--these are mysteries, and when the judgment comes it will be based upon all the ground, and not upon incidental points here and there (J. Parker, D. D.).