90 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 



pel and obeyed the divine law. Is this true to 

 the facts as known in the world? 



Physical degeneracy is a fact that it is im- 

 possible to overlook. People who were imper- 

 fectly nourished, or whose physical habits brought 

 physical weakness and loss, have approached the 

 vanishing point, and many have passed it. Luxury 

 and other physical vices have been the cause of 

 different peoples' passing away from history. 

 But this can not be said of moral degeneracy. If a 

 people have so lived as to keep up the physical re- 

 sources, they show an ability to recover from the 

 spiritual degeneracy of a hundred generations in 

 one generation. The spiritual life of the Chinese 

 must be pronounced as very unclean from the 

 point of view of Christianity. So the Japanese. 

 And yet out of the heritage of uncounted genera- 

 tions we find men coming in a single generation 

 to take first rank in our leading American univer- 

 sities, and, having accepted the faith of Jesus, to 

 rank among the most faithful and exemplary mem- 

 bers of His Kingdom in our day. We may take 

 even a more extreme example than those named. 

 We can go into the heart of Africa and select a 

 person for illustration. The life of the people 

 of Africa has been astonishingly sinful, beyond 

 all possibility of civilized people who have not 

 witnessed it to conceive. It has never been re- 

 lieved by a great moral or religious teacher. 

 From the point of view of Christianity, and from 



