Our Father’s Errors Poem by James Ephraim McGirt

Why scorn the wrong our fathers did?
Of their mistakes so much is said;
To scorn these men is no way to do,
Their faults have been much aid to you,

We see the man that took sin's path,
We find he met the cruel wrath;
And then we know the path to take,
See how we gain by his mistake.

Then when we read the Holy Book,
And see the path Sapphira took,
We learn the path to take or shun,
From those who lost, and those who won.

Why should we read the past to day
If not that we may learn the way;
And when I read of the early gloom,
I'm glad I was not born so soon.

Then when one falls before your eye,
Lend him your hand, help him to rise;
His falling may a warning be,
Suppose it had been made of thee!