236 HEREDITY AND CHRISTIAN PROBLEMS 



helped to bring the doctrine of retribution into 

 disfavour with many who are ready to say with 



Whittier : — 



"The wrong that pains my soul below 

 I dare not throne above; 

 I know not of His hate, — I know 

 His goodness and His love." 



The fact of retribution is evident and awful 

 enough. It ought to be guarded against the im- 

 putation of injustice. It is unjust and unreason- 

 able to count evil-doers who have had a good moral 

 heritage and a good environment no more guilty 

 than those whose minds and hearts are stained 

 and poisoned, and whose wills are weakened, by 

 the vice of many generations. This is not the 

 place for a full discussion of this subject. There 

 is room, however, for the question, whether there 

 is anything Christian, and, indeed, anything but 

 hideous caricature in the way the doctrines of 

 original sin, total depravity, and endless retribu- 

 tion have sometimes been preached, as though 

 the hapless individual, through no action and so 

 no responsibility on his part, were damned into 

 an earthly existence only to be damned a second 

 time into another still more horrible. This unfort- 

 unate, and as we believe most untrue, presentation 

 of a great and beneficent truth is responsible for 



