Greatest blessing of parents.—What is the greatest blessing of parentage? “Riches,” is the answer. Lots of fools think that. The greatest blessing of parents to their children is a good heredity. What a child is at birth he has received largely from his parents. What he receives at birth largely determines his future.
Greatest blessing of society.—What is the greatest blessing of society to a child? It is a good environment. Parents can form only a part of their child’s environment. Society as a whole furnishes the environment of a child. No individual, no class of men, no lawmaker, no municipality, county, state or nation has the shadow of a moral right to place by vote or official act, or permit by passive toleration a lascivious picture, a vile book, a questionable resort, a place of vice, a saloon or a gambling den that may lead a boy or girl to ruin. Whoever assumes that right is an enemy to the social and moral well-being of society. God’s greatest gift to men is salvation through His Son. Bad heredity and environment are the only difficulties in the way of all men’s accepting Christ. The complete effects of any one or two of these agencies are impossible without the normal application of the other. No one can wholly take the place of the other two, and no two can wholly take the place of the other one. These three agencies should be ever active in every life.
Three agencies necessary.—You might as well try to make a triangle out of two sides as to try to produce physical, mental and moral perfection in man by the use of environment and the grace of God, when the individual has inherited little or no physical, mental and moral basis for development. If a child has received ideal heredity, but is left without educational opportunities and compelled to grow up in an immoral atmosphere, never entering a Sunday school or church, it would be impossible for him to develop scholarship or Christian character. If one has good heredity and good environment and leaves the grace of God out of his life, he is not what a man should be and will fall short of the true object of life.
Is there a remedy?—If man’s present degeneracy had its origin in the violation of law; if the evil physical, mental and moral effects have, in some measure, been transmitted from one generation to succeeding ones, until all men are more or less hereditarily degenerate; is there a remedy, or are we the subjects of fate? Must each succeeding generation continue to inherit a possible increase of degeneracy as we have done in the past?
Relation of the three agencies.—Nature and man create environment. The tendency of nature is to furnish only good environment for man. Man has it in his power to help or to hinder nature. The more depraved man is the more he hinders nature and produces for himself and others a bad environment. If hereditary degeneracy could be eliminated from the race, there would be no immoral environment. Bad environment is produced by degenerate men. Degeneracy is both inherited and acquired. Inherited degeneracy indulged, and acquired degeneracy are both transmissible. If it were possible, under present conditions, for one never to violate a law as a result of God’s grace and his own volition he could not directly and personally transmit tendencies towards evil, and he would transmit his inherited tendencies towards evil in a less degree than he inherited them. Even with ideal heredity, environment and the grace of God, one or more generations could not entirely overcome the bad effects of all preceding generations.
The need of Christ.—Each individual is the sum total of all the influences, good and bad, of all preceding lineal generations. The inherited good and bad antagonize each other and are modified by environment and the grace of God. If the good predominates, the bent of that individual will be toward the good, and vice versa. His approach to perfection will be determined by his heredity, his environment and by his relation to Christ. Since all men always will be the sum total of all the influences of the past, they will always need the Christ. There will always be enough temptations in the world to develop the heroic in man.
The race can be improved.—But it is reasonable that through the ideal application of these three agencies one generation can to a very marked degree overcome the evil effects of the past and transmit less degeneracy than it received. If each individual would embrace the grace of God, create for himself and others an ideal environment, this process continued would ultimately give us a race free from the present serious condition of physical, mental and moral degeneracy. If this conclusion is not practical, logical and correct, then science and revelation fail to give us a remedy for present race degeneracy. If this is the correct solution of our physical, mental, social and moral problems, all education, legislation, religious and personal efforts to bring about race regeneration will continue to fail until the three-fold scientific and scriptural gospel of good heredity, good environment and the grace of God for every child, finds its proper place in all our personal efforts, teaching, administration, legislation, and preaching.
CHAPTER XLIV
HEREDITY AND REPRODUCTION
Life is real.—What is life? Many theories have been offered by the leading materialistic students of the past and present, but all have signally failed to tell us what life is in its ultimate essence. All attempts to discover life by aid of the scalpel, microscope and chemical analysis have likewise failed. This class of scientists has made several attempts to explain life as being the phenomena of matter undergoing certain peculiar chemical changes, or due to molecular motion. They have failed to recognize two great realms of existence, the material and the immaterial, the visible and the invisible, the tangible and the intangible. Life, physical, mental and spiritual, though invisible and immaterial, is none the less real in its essence.
The materialists have tried hard to explain reproduction and heredity on a physical basis. By this method they have failed to explain many of the most common facts.