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HEREDITY AND CHRISTIAN PROBLEMS 



must be considered in the training, or parental 

 discipline will be a failure. In other words, par- 

 ents cannot do their duty by their children unless 

 they carefully study individual peculiarities. These 

 peculiarities, moreover, should be traced to their 

 source in parents or ancestry. A girl is morose 

 and given to melancholy. Let the parents ex- 

 amine themselves, and see if they have not be- 

 queathed the unhappy disposition to her. Probably 

 if free from it now, one or the other of them pos- 

 sessed it earlier in life. Let such a parent, instead 

 of being impatient with his daughter, go back to 

 his own feelings at the same age, and ask what, 

 in the light of subsequent experience, would have 

 been the best discipline for him then ? One boy 

 has a temper like a flame of fire ; where did he 

 get it .'' It is rarely hard to tell. Another has a 

 tendency to secret vice or open wickedness ; did 

 not those who have brought him into the world 

 in their youth pursue courses which account for 

 his tendencies .-* Such inquiries complicate neces- 

 sarily the problem of responsibility. Each human 

 being is free, and therefore responsible, in a meas- 

 ure ; and yet no child has any voice in saying 

 where he shall be born, what blood shall course 

 in his veins, what tendencies shall impel, or what 

 aspirations thrill him. These two facts are, there- 



