54 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 



nature, as it comes from the hand of God. The 

 well-known and easily observable facts concern- 

 ing the child furnish all the conditions for all the 

 actualizations of its after-life. 



The infant is an animal. It is not sinful for 

 an infant to be an animal and to act as an animal. 

 But it is sinful for an infant forever to remain 

 an animal, and after reason and conscience have 

 arrived to act as an animal. This child is an 

 organization of physical nerves to-day; but to- 

 morrow, by some process, mysterious under any 

 theory of his life, he will be a rational, a moral 

 human spirit, without losing one of his appetites 

 or fleshly passions or nervous impulses. To-day 

 he can not act differently from what he does act, 

 under any possibility within his control; but to- 

 morrow he may go to the right or to the left, up 

 or down, in any direction in which his animalism 

 impels him, or in the direction in which his higher 

 spiritual nature draws. The animalism of his 

 condition accounts for all the facts of action and 

 tendency, impulse and spiritual struggle that the 

 assumed sinful nature accounted for. The ani- 

 mal nature, which is undisputed, provides the field 

 of moral and spiritual conflict that will last as 

 long as life lasts. In this struggle there is no 

 sin implied, but a condition which may issue in 

 sin at any moment that the person may so decide ; 

 but which will never so issue of necessity, never 

 unless and until he so decides. To overcome the 

 animal, subdue the animal, rise triumphant above 



