200 HEREDITY AND CHRISTIAN PROBLEMS 



Specialists are agreed in declaring that inebri- 

 ety, though the result of vice, is a disease, with 

 clearly defined symptoms, and that it is often the 

 result of inherited tendencies. Every one knows 

 that a man who inherits a taste for liquor is in 

 far greater peril than the children of the tem- 

 perate. A distinguished clergyman once said 

 that he did . not dare to taste wine, because he 

 had a natural taste for liquor, handed down by a 

 long line of cider-drinking ancestors. Men are 

 born with tendencies to certain forms of sin 

 which make it easy to yield to temptation and 

 hard to resist. Now, he who transmits to a de- 

 scendant a tendency which makes sin easy is a 

 partner with that descendant in his guilt. 



With the introduction of the factor of environ- 

 ment, of the action of which I shall speak pres- 

 ently, the subject becomes complicated. Men are 

 not only what heredity has made them, but the 

 very fibre of their natures is affected by their 

 surroundings ; and the impressions thus made, 

 be they invigorating or debilitating, uplifting or 

 degrading, are transmitted to their offspring. 

 Hence, if in our time we help to produce condi- 

 tions which make it easy for a man to do wrong, 

 and he yields to the temptation, and by his fall 

 his nature is changed so that his children come 



