Jephthah, I say, has been greatly wronged. He never had a fair chance. He was wronged in his very birth. He was the son of a father who was unfaithful to his marriage vows. Jephthah was a child of shame. His father had chosen to sacrifice upon the wayside altar. His father had had his fling. He had sown his wild oats, and of necessity there was a harvest. His father suffered, but sad to say, he was not the only sufferer. How we need to be reminded again and again that no man ever sins alone. No man ever walks from the path of virtue without he walks upon bruised and bleeding feet. He himself suffers, but what is sadder still, he causes somebody else to suffer. I cannot go to hell alone. I cannot plunge out into the dark without involving another soul, at least in some measure, in my tragedy. This father sinned. It meant suffering for him. It also meant suffering for one who was altogether blameless. It meant suffering for his boy. Not only did Jephthah have as part of his life tragedy an unclean father, but he had an unclean mother as well. Jephthah's mother was not one of those unfortunate souls, more sinned against than sinning, who had made one false step for the sake of the man she loved. She was a professional outcast. She was a woman who made it her business day by day to sell herself over the counters of iniquity. She was one of those whose feet in all ages take hold on hell. So Jephthah had a bad chance. He was the fragment of a home that never was. He had no father that dared to own him. And the first eyes into which he looked were the eyes of an unclean woman. And the first lips that kissed him were lips soiled and stained by years of sinful living. Poor little baby. Poor little foundling. Poor little outcast. How much he missed. What are the most precious memories in your life to-night? What are the scenes to which you look back with deepest love and tenderness? I know. They are the scenes of your childhood's home. "How dear to my heart are the scenes of my childhood, When fond recollection, presents them to view; The orchard, the meadow, the deep tangled wildwood, And every loved spot that my infancy knew." But the secret of the fascination of those dear scenes is this, that we saw them by the glow of the light of love. We think tenderly of our early homes because they were presided over by a father and mother who knew God. And the one cord that has failed to snap between us and a good life is the cord that ties us still to the faith of our fathers and our mothers.