CO HEREDITY AND CHRISTIAN PROBLEMS 



before the influences of religion have had time 

 to complete their work. A man may have been 

 a drunkard from his twentieth to his twenty-fifth 

 year. Then, reforming, he lives an exemplary 

 life. At thirty he marries, and becomes a father 



— a father with a pure will, but with a physical 

 nature from which the poison of alcohol is not yet 

 purged. His child may be born with a thirst for 

 stimulants. Still the thirst is weaker than it 

 would have been had he been born five years 

 before. The tendency downward is not so strong, 

 and the tendency upward is stronger. The child, 

 however, partakes of the double nature of the 

 parent — a struggling moral nature and a tainted 

 physical nature. It may be that new circumstances 

 have given an opportunity for latent germs of evil 

 tendency, which started first in his grandfather, to 

 manifest themselves in him. Beyond a doubt such 

 experiences are common in the physical organism 



— why should they not be manifest also in a 

 tainted moral nature pointing toward some long- 

 forgotten vice .'' 



I conclude, then, that the sweep of this law 

 is the same in the spiritual as in the physical 

 sphere. None the less, however, must the re- 

 demption of the world, as distinguished from that 

 of individuals, be sought by the bringing into 



