2^ AT URAL HEIRSHIP : OR, ALL THE WORLD AKIX. 383 



little exaggeration, brothers and sisters. If we could be told, as we 

 meet the passers in the streets, how near their relationship to us is, we 

 should get a succession of surprises. We should cease to think of them 

 as strangers and aliens, and come to feel that they were our own kith 

 and kin. Every person would have an interest for us as a relative not far 

 removed, and the charm of social life would be wonderfully increased. 



The fact of our close kinship, as a nation, and also as a race, is cal- 

 culated to stimulate philanthropy very powerfully. It is acknowledged 

 that the nearer the relationship the greater is the claim for help, if help 

 be needed. Even self-love comes to the aid of generosity ; it is felt 

 that what a man does for his own relations is in a measure done for 

 himself ; the disgrace of neglecting them acts as a useful spur to liber- 

 ality. Advocates of slavery have vindicated their obnoxious system 

 by maintaining the absolute inferiority of the enslaved. Caste in India 

 has been fortified by notions of a vast and essential difference between 

 the various orders. Oneness in nature appeals for respect and associ- 

 ation. The oneness which is proved and emphasized by near relation- 

 ship makes the strongest appeal to the interest of the mind and the 

 sympathy of the heart. Creatures of the same kind draw together. 

 The further a people are from us, geographically or relatively, the less 

 ordinarily is our regard for their welfare, our concern over their calam- 

 ities. The improved facilities for intercourse are destroying the effect 

 of geographical distance ; the realization of the fact that all the world 

 are near akin will help immensely to lessen the social distance. 



The close kinship of mankind especially in the same nation has an 

 important bearing on one or two points of theology. Since mental and 

 physical tendencies are transmissible by hereditary descent, this kin- 

 ship gives to the doctrine of natural depravity an awful significance, 

 and shows the causes of taint to our blood to be near us in time instead of 

 being removed altogether away to the beginning of the world. If all 

 the moral weaklings of the land who lived seven hundred years ago, all 

 the vile and vicious, all the wild beasts in human shape, and an unknown 

 number of such in the ages intervening, were our direct ancestors, it 

 is not to be wondered at that unhappy propensities stir, and strive, and 

 struggle for mastery in every man's breast. It is singular that orthodox 

 theologians should overlook this recent pressing source of depravity to 

 dwell on the influence upon us of an original pair living before histori- 

 cal times. It is equally strange that unorthodox ones should deny the 

 existence of depravity communicated from that remote period on the 

 ground of its supposed injustice, when it is undeniable that we are 

 reached by ten thousand impure channels so near at hand. The ques- 

 tion arises. How is it that the depravity fed from so many sources has 

 not resulted before now in the complete corruption and disintegration 

 of the race ? We are able to encourage ourselves by remembering the 

 vast amount of excellency in recent times with which we are in direct 

 communication ; the heroes, saints, and martyrs, to say nothing of the 



