3o HEREDITY AND CHRISTIAN PROBLEMS 



charitable. If all real sin is in the will, sinners 

 are less guilty than many imagine. 



Thus far we have been dealing with the plain 

 and simple facts of life concerning which there 

 is scarcely a possibility of disagreement; with 

 |i a class of facts that led Professor Huxley to 

 say that even murderers do what they cannot 

 avoid doing, and are no more worthy of punish- 

 ment than those who do what, in accordance 

 with traditional theories, are called virtuous acts. 

 It is evident that our thought is moving steadily 

 toward a problem which philosophers hesitate to 

 approach, and which theologians often gladly 

 ignore, nam.ely, the problem of the origin and 

 the contents of the personality. Is each soul 

 an emanation, fresh and unpolluted, from a divine 

 fountain of being } If so, the grave fact confronts 

 us that the divine in humanity is limited and 

 easily tainted ; and we naturally ask how environ- 

 ment could so swiftly and surely debase that which 

 is from God .-* Or, is the spiritual nature derived, 

 like the body, from parents and ancestors .-' What 

 then .-* Why, then, the laws of inheritance hold 

 sway in the realm of the spirit ; men are what 

 they were born. They are bundles of tendencies 

 handed down from the past, and all by nature 

 love what they were born to love, and do what 



