Not long ago, a wealthy gentleman on Long Island died, who provided that none of his heirs should inherit, unless they could show that they had led a life of angelic virtue. Among the conditions mentioned, were these: That they should not smoke or drink; that they should rise every morning and breakfast at a certain hour; that they should be in the house every evening at a certain hour; that they should be industrious and strictly moral; that they should never enter a barroom, and should not get married before the age of twenty-five. It is stated that the heirs were practically disinherited, all but one having failed to live up to the conditions.
A rector of a Yorkshire parish, who died in 1804, left a considerable property to his only daughter under the following conditions:
1st. That she should not marry unless with the consent of his two executors, and
2d. That she should dress with greater propriety than theretofore.
This clause was worded thus: “Seeing that my daughter Anna has not availed herself of my advice touching the objectionable practice of going about with her arms bare up to the elbows, my will is that, should she continue after my death in this violation of the modesty of her sex, all the goods, chattels, moneys, land, and other property that I have devised to her for the maintenance of her future life shall pass to the oldest of the sons of my sister Caroline. Should anyone take exception to this my wish as being too severe, I answer that license in dress in a woman is a mark of a depraved mind.”
The will (dated March 26th, 1874) of the Rev. William Hill, late of Lansdowne Villas, Springfield Road, Cotham, Bristol, Baptist minister, who died on November 11, 1879, was proved at the district registry, Bristol, by Emerson Geerish and Thomas Bowbeer, the executors, under three thousand pounds. After the death of his wife he gives to the Society for the Relief of Aged and Infirm Baptist Ministers, instituted in Bath, 1816, and to the Baptist Foreign Missionary Society, each one hundred pounds. The testator directs “the payment of all my just debts, funeral and testamentary expenses, as soon as conveniently may be after my departure to heaven; but, as this is to be my final public document, I shall here record my detestation of all State establishments of religion, believing them to be anti-scriptural and soul-ruining. I have for years prayed the King of Zion to overthrow the politico-ecclesiastical establishment of the British Empire, and I leave the world with a full conviction that such prayer must ere long be answered. I thirst to see the Church brought down, the Church by man set up, for millions are by it led on to drink a bitter cup. I desire all posterity to know that William Hill was a conscientious Trinitarian Baptist Minister, and that he believed infant sprinkling to be from his Satanic Majesty, the keystone of Popery, therefore the parent of unnumbered terrible evils; this delusion must also pass away at the Divinely-appointed time, and the immersion of believers, as plainly taught by the Great Teacher, the Holy Ghost, and the Apostles, shall one day universally triumph. Man says, some water in the face, and that before the child has grace, is what is meant in Jesus’ word, by being buried in the Lord. The deadly drinking customs of professors and non-professors are likewise doomed. Heaven dash all error, sin, and the devil from the earth, and cause truth, holiness, and Christ everywhere to prevail. Amen.”