94 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 



Africans as degraded as sensuality can bring peo- 

 ple and as deprived of moral light as Africa's long 

 night is known to have been. 



Thus it is seen that the human stock is not ex- 

 hausted by the heredity of sin ; and the only pos- 

 sible explanation for it is that there is no heredity 

 of sin. Each child is directly God's child. Each 

 child is provided with a human outfit morally, no 

 matter how his parents may have wasted theirs. 



Perhaps Lyman Abbott goes too far on the 

 positive side of inheritance, but certainly not too 

 far on the negative, when he says : * ' No man ever 

 inherited sin. There is not any original sin. Men 

 inherit appetites and passions, they inherit temp- 

 tations, they inherit weaknesses and frailties and 

 infirmities, but they do not inherit sin, and they 

 do not inherit virtue. Virtue can not be handed 

 down from father to son. . . . Weaknesses may 

 be handed down so that it will be easier for your 

 son to fall into sin, but virtue is victory by the in- 

 dividual himself, and the victory can not be won 

 by another and the defeat can not be suffered by 

 another. Men are neither born sinners nor 

 saints." ("Modern Sermons," I, 6.) 



And yet this does not deny the law of heredity, 

 in which I most thoroughly believe. But it does 

 announce that morals are not transferable from 

 one generation to another. This generation 

 through heredity is no worse in moral equipment 

 because its ancestors were wicked ; that one is no 

 better because its ancestors were virtuous. He- 



