MR. PAGE-ROBERTS ON HEREDITARY EVIL.
THE Oxford University Sermon of Sunday week dealt with a theological subject in the light of a somewhat new science with singular frankness and force. Mr. Page-Roberts (who was the preacher) took for his text a part of the Second Command- ment, and began his comment on it in the following vigorous words :- "'I, the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments.' These are not favourite verses of the Bible. The priests who read them from the altar and the people who hear them in the Church believe that they are in- spired ; but some of them seem to see cold, sceptical eyes looking into theirs with the question, 'Is this your God of love and righteousness ? Is not that which you are reading in the sanctuary something like heathenism, something you would denounce if it were the utterance of any other religion than your own ?' And so, at times, the words are hurried over by the mind in a guilty, half .ashamed kind of way; and though they are held to be inspired, it is scarcely possible to doubt that many would be relieved from a burden if the Revisers of the Old Testament were to find out that the words which are an offence are no real part of the Second Commandment, but a later and uninspired elaboration. Strange to say, however, there is not so much diffidence in asserting the doctrine of inherited depravity from original sin. People believe, without hesitation, that the iniquity of the first man has been visited upon a thousand generations, but they find it un- comfortable to believe that the iniquity of the fathers is visited to the third and fourth generations. Now, instead of declaiming the one doctrine and awkwardly stammering over the other, we may see in both, revelations of the law which says that God hath made of one blood all nations to dwell upon the face of the earth,' assertions of that organic sympathy recognised by St. Paul when he said, If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it.' The doctrine of inherited depravity, whether the depravity be traced from remote or immediate ancestors, is for all men a law of nature, and for us a law of nature is a law of God."
we have heard it said, "that is all very well for you people who are so utterly convinced of the existence of a per- fectly holy and righteous God, that nothing in the phenomena of Nature disturbs your conviction at all; but what will you say to those who cannot make up their mind that a perfectly holy God is the author of Nature, without first examining the structure of Nature, and fully representing to themselves what they find there. What will you say to people who affirmthat if it is unjust for a human being to visit on a child the sins of its fathers, to the third and fourth generation,' then every principle of Nature which transmits a burden of evil to be borne by the descendants of those who originated the evil, is, in any sense we can understand, radically unjust too ?" Well,
we are quite willing to answer that question with perfect frank- ness. We should say this, first, that no one does even in his inner heart think it a practical injustice that men are not all born into the world under precisely equal con- ditions, or, in other words, are not given what, in the case of a race, we call an equal start. Directly you suggest such a principle, you see that it implies a universe such as it is hardly possible for us even to imagine. It implies a universe in which
there is no bond of society at all, in which the present does not inherit the past, in which the future is not conditioned by the present. If I am not to be burdened by the inheritance of my father's failings, how can I secure the inheritance of my father's highest endeavours and virtues ? If you imagine a universe so constructed that I shall never suffer for what my ancestors have done amiss, you must imagine a universe so constructed that I shall never derive any advantage from what my ancestors have done well. If there is to be a law of inheritance, a law of kinship, a law of consanguinity at all, it must be a law of transmission, and it is impossible even to imagine the transmis- sion of good qualities without the transmission of evil qualities, because evil and good are so bound up together that what is good for one purpose is often evil for another purpose. The man who inherits a passionate temper inherits on the one hand an immense moving force in any direction in which it urges him, and on the other hand an immense risk of catastrophe, as well as of sin. Conceive a law of inherited nature at all, and we defy any one so to conceive it that it shall transmit only what is valuable, and fail to transmit all that is injurious.
Take the case of physical liability to special diseases, is it con- ceivable that if this were untransmissible, the physical consti- tution of the parents could be transmissible at all—that physical constitution having been intrinsically altered by the disease the liability to which is transmitted P It may be said that jest as accidental injuries are (as a rule) not transmitted, so Nature might have been so constructed that only the
original constitution of the parent should be transmitted to the offspring, and not acquired weaknesses or degenerations of con- stitution. But how could that have been, unless acquired changes of the organisation for the better had also been untrans- missible, which would imply, of course, that the most favourable alterations of nervous structure gained by the steady advance
of one generation over the high-water mark of the previous one,
should be untransmissible also. So far as we understand the complaint that the sin of the fathers,—drunkenness, for in- stabee,—is so often visited on the children, it involves the com- plaint that any change of nervous structure due to the con- firmed habits of one generation should be transmitted to the
next, and that is as much a complaint that changes for the better should be transmitted as that changes for the worse
should be so transmitted. It is inconceivable that one class of changes should be transmitted without the other, for often, as we have said, they are bound up together in the closest possible manner. A change for the worse in the way of physical energy
may involve a change for the better in the direction of patience, sensibility, and even genius. A change for the worse in the direction of patience, sensibility, and genius may involve a change for the better in active energy and the enjoyment of life. The close connection of nervous susceptibilities, good and bad, is as clear as the close connection of light with shadow. To conceive that all the better elements of temperament and constitution could be inherited without the worse, is to conceive a contradiction.
Well, then, what do we mean when we say that it is unjust in men to visit the sins of the fathers upon the children ? We mean we believe only this,—that it is unjust to treat a man as if he were responsible for anything for which he is not responsible. And we have far more reason to believe that God never does this, than we have to believe that the human conscience is as much offended by it as it ought to be. It is not treating the children as if they were responsible for the sins of their fathers to make them feel the burden of an evil inheritance, any more than it is treating a child as if he were responsible for the debts of his father to make him feel the odium which a bad bankruptcy diffuses around the whole family of the bankrupt. It is unjust to hold a man responsible for an inheritance he could not refuse, but it is no more unjust to make him feel that he has inherited something painful, when he smarts under some of the bitter consequences of his father's miscon- duct, than it is to make him feel that he has inherited some- thing delightful, when he enjoys the popularity of a good and great name. It seems to us that what is meant when the in- justice of the law of inheritance is complained of, is just this,— that a just God ought not to have created a society, in other words, generations bound together by the closest ties, at all, ought not to have made the heart so that it catches the goodness of others, and is infected by others' sins, but should have made a number of separate, individual souls, springing into a world of perfectly equal conditions, and united by no ties which involve mutual sacrifice and mutual dependence. Com- pare such a conception with the organic life of human society, and you compare, surely, a very poor thing with a very grand thing. Mr. Page-Roberts himself puts the brighter side of the law of inheritance as strongly as he puts the dark :— " For there is an inheritance of good as well as an inheritance of evil ; and if it is true that God visits the sins of the fathers upon the children, it is also true that he showeth mercy unto thousands in them that love him and keep his commandments.' On this side, too, let me offer the opinions of qualified observers. 'It is not impos- sible,' says the wisest and therefore the most cautious of all, that virtuous tendencies may through long practice be inherited.' (Dar- win, Descent of Man,' Vol. II., p. 354.) Again, The higher virtues, or rather the characteristic impulses and dispositions in which they are rooted, are amongst the most transmissible of hereditary qualities.' (Greg, p. 127.) We are justified in believing,' says Dr. Carpenter, that so far as we improve our own intellectual powers, and elevate our moral nature by watchful self-discipline, we are not merely bene- fiting ourselves, and those to whom our personal influence extends, but we are improving the intellectual and moral constitution that our children and our children's children will inherit from us.' (Carpenter, Mental Physiology,' p. 375.) One family alone I will mention, and it shall be in St. Paul's words to St. Timothy, When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmether Lois, and thy mother Eanioe ; and I am persuaded that in thee also.' (II. Tim., i., 5.) It may be asked, Is there no possibility of dilating the stream of de- pravity flowing through the race of man from primitive ancestors, made blacker by the faults of each new generation P Is the same fierce battle to be fought with inherited evil, generation after generation P"
And, of course, the answer must be given that a better nature may be as surely transmitted as a worse. It is just as certain that the moral type of man can be raised, and is raised, by the moral faithfulness of generations, as that the intellectual type of man can be raised, and is raised, by the in- tellectual discipline of generations. We do not mean, of course, that with the higher grade of being there is no new class of temptations to evil, for that would be false ; but that the new class of temptations to evil experienced in the higher stage are far more often successfully resisted than the old, so that the " solidarity " of the race, as it is called, is even more a guarantee of common advance, than a root of vicarious suffering.
Mr. Page-Roberta hints that the Hebrew anticipation of the law of inheritance, as it applies to sin, was so far before the time when science discovered the law, that the second commandment may well serve as one of the evidences that the Hebrew law was given by divine revelation. But he does not add, as he might have added, that the still bolder announcement that God enters into the sufferings and afflictions of his people, instead of standing coldly aloof from them, is the highest vindication that we can imagine
of the law of vicarious suffering, and the only one that could really reconcile man to its hardship. If God himself suffered, that man's sufferings might be alleviated, man surely may be persuaded that it is no cruel lot for him to be made to suffer likewise for the same end. Yet this is the assurance of Hebrew prophecy and the most emphatic of the deliverances of the Christian revelation, and indicates just as much by its early foreshadowing as by its late development the divine origin of the teaching which is at first the most difficult for the human intellect to accept, and in the end the most impossible for it to reject.
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