parents, up even to Adam, a constitution and tendencies. which he transmits, improved or deteriorated, to those that come after him; his character, is to a greater or less extent moulded by circumstances; and his opinions and conduct are influenced or directed by those around him.3 Every one

The mechanical law, that action and reaction are equal, has its moral analogue. The deed of one man to another tends ultimately to produce a like effect upon both, be the deed good or bad; . . . and so long as the assimilating influences productive of it continue at work, it is folly to suppose any one grade of a community can be morally different from the rest. In whichever rank you sow corruption, be assured it equally pervades all ranks, and be assured it is the symptom of a bad social diathesis." —(Social Statics.)

1"Ein Jeder empfängt besondere Anlagen als angeborene; seine Freiheit kann dieselben mehr oder weniger ausbilden, aber weder vernicht noch andere an ihre Stelle setzen."—(ROSENKRANZ: Psychologie.) Every part of the constitution, physical, mental, and moral, of each of the parents is found to be related to the constitution of the of child,-related not separately, but blended in proportions, which are dependent on conditions and determined by laws of definite and exquisite operation. . . That the physical constitution of the child is to a great extent a transmitted constitution is too obvious to need remark.

That moral tendencies are transmitted is a doctrine which has been receiving confirmation daily since the birth of the first transgression; for by one man sin entered into the world.'”—(Dr. HARRIS: Patriarchy.) "There are faces which nature charges with a meaning and pathos not belonging to the single human soul which flutters beneath them, but speaking the joys and sorrows of foregone generations. just as a national language may be instinct with poetry unfelt by the lips that use it."-(GEORGE ELIOT.) Dr. Hutchinson, in his introductory lecture at the opening of the London Hospital Medical College, 1872, says that "the teaching of physiology is clearly this, that a man's children are not merely his successors and representatives, but the man himself. In them he continues to live and to reap to the full the benefit of his care or the penalty of his neglect. He knew from experience how very difficult it was to persuade the untrained mind to believe this, and he held that medical men, with whom there ought certainly to be no incredulity, could scarcely do a greater service than by endeavouring to instruct others in it." Mr. F. Galton in his work on Hereditary Genius, says, “I purpose to show in this book that a man's natural abilities are derived by inheritance under exactly the same limitations as are the form and physical features of the whole organic world; " and he believes that "it would be quite practicable to produce a highly gifted race of men by judicious marriages during several consecutive generations."

"A man's character is very materially formed by the circumstances by which he is surrounded, by the objects with which he is conversant, by the characters of men with whom he is associated, by the plans which he of necessity forms to fill up the scheme of life."-(ALBERT BARNES.) "What a man is, depends in a great measure upon his father and mother, and brothers, and sisters, and friends; that is upon the influences that are working upon him in the family, in the society, and in the party to which he belongs."-(H. W. BEECHER.)

in this world has to bear the consequences of sins committed by others, even as all have to suffer the consequences of Adam's transgression;1 and in like manner all enjoy the fruits of much that they have not sown.2 So no one's actions terminate in himself, but exert an influence upon others; and the character or habits which are formed are transmitted to posterity. No man liveth for himself alone,5 -no man doeth good or evil for himself alone. Every one

"In numberless cases the most distressing infirmities and the most torturing diseases, rendering the whole of life one long paroxysm of misery, are hereditary."-(HENRY ROGERS.)

"There is a strong living reality as well as subjective truth in that doctrine of original sin and hereditary depravity. Some persons are born children of the sun,-with cheerful radiant dispositions; lovely and pleasant in their lives are they, and they go through the world winning the affections of every one by the mere natural constitution of their characters. No credit due to them for this, you will say. No, but it is not so clear that there is not some credit due to some of their ancestors, for, happily, good qualities are hereditary as well as bad ones—and when there is born such a blooming rose on the family tree, one cannot help thinking that the stock on which it grew has been carefully cultivated, so that the result of carefully tended temper appears in the happier temperament of the next generation. Yes, intemperance, vindictive passion, unholy propensities, proud, selfish, sullen character in one generation tell upon the birth qualities of the next; and self-discipline, purity, geniality of humour, nobleness of tone and principle, a contented, thankful spirit, count for something, one feels certain, in determining the hereditary qualities of the children of any household, so that if no credit is due to any person for being born good tempered, it is not so clear that no credit is due to the family stock taken as a whole.”(Rev. EDWARD WHITE.)

3"A man may live in the world long after he is dead in the form of an active baneful influence, which shall deprave and corrupt successive generations." "Two hundred years and more after Jeroboam had gone to his grave, his sins, as well as their own, were visited on his people: there was a recognized connection between him and the crimes of a comparatively distant generation-the punitive consequences then wrought out being the product of both.”—(Rev. T. BINNEY.)

...

4" Power which has been laboriously acquired and stored up as statical in one generation becomes the unborn faculty of the next."-(Dr. HENRY MAUDSLEY.) "What we speak of as the original constitution in each individual is in great part (if not entirely) determined by the conditions, dynamical and material, of the parent organism."-(Dr. CAKPENTER: Human Physiology.)

5"No individual in the universe stands alone; he is a component part of a system of mutual dependencies, and by his several acts he either increases or diminishes the sum of human good now and for ever."(SMILES: Self-Help.)

6" We are all set for the whether we will it or not, we could follow with our eyes in

fall and rising again of many; and, beget lives like our own. Oh, if we the present and the future that pos

forms, as it were, the centre of a stream of influences which took their rise in the beginning of time, and which, going out from him, shall continue to flow in an ever-widening course till time shall be no more.1 There is not an influence exerted upon him that had not its commencement in the beginning of all things, nor an act that he does that will not continue in operation to the end of time.2 Men pass terity to which our examples give birth, if we could but count the souls that, during our life, and those that, after our death, will have a right to claim descent from us, and to impute to us in great part their character and destiny-with what terror should we be seized; with what fresh need of throwing ourselves into the arms of God's mercy; but also with what holy emulation, and what joyous hope!"-(VINET.) "Every act we do, or word we utter, as well as every act we witness, or word we hear, carries with it an influence which extends over, and gives a colour not only to the whole of our future life, but makes itself felt upon the whole frame of society. We may not, and indeed cannot, trace the influence working itself into action in its various ramifications among our children, our friends, or associates; yet there it is assuredly working on for ever."-(SMILES: Self-Help.) "The good deed or thought will live, even though we may not see it fructify; but so will the bad; and no person is so insignificant as to be sure that his example will not do good on the one hand, nor evil on the other."-(Ditto.) "There is something solemn and awful in the thought that there is not an act nor thought in the life of a human being but carries with it a train of consequences, the end of which we may never trace."-(Ditto.) "Not in the future world alone do the works of the blessed dead follow them. . . In this world they live also, and from this world new harvests following on will be reported in that from every generation. And is there not a reverse for those of an opposite character, whose influence alike immortal by thought, word, and deed, sins on in like manner in the reproduction of successive harvests of evil?"-(Dr. CHEEVER.)

1“The Christian, as well as the physical man, carries in his veins the blood of thousands and thousands whose successive and combined alliances converge and terminate in him. Ages and nations have been at work for each of you: each is the heir of antiquity, and the product of a whole world." (VINET.)

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2" No motion impressed by natural causes or by human agency is ever obliterated. The ripple on the ocean's surface, caused by a gentle breeze, or the still water which marks the more immediate track of a ponderous vessel gliding with scarcely expanded sails over its bosom, are equally indelible." The air itself is one vast library, on whose pages are for ever written all that man has ever said or ever whispered. There, in their mutable but unerring characters, mixed with the earliest as well as the latest sighs of mortality, stand for ever recorded vows unredeemed, promises unfulfilled, perpetuating in the united movements of each particle the testimony of man's changeful will." "These aerial pulses, unseen by the keenest eye, unheard by the acutest ear, unperceived by human senses, are yet demonstrated to exist by human reason; and in some few and limited instances by calling to our aid the most refined and comprehensive instruments of human thought, their courses are traced and their intensities measured." "Whatever motion is communicated to any of their particles

1

away, but their works live and flourish; and hence ought every one to see to it, that they are such as ought to live, such as tend to further the cause of truth and uprightness in the world.

But as not here, so neither in the next world can there be any individualism. They that sow and they that reap shall rejoice together, or they shall mourn together. Here we enter upon the labours of other men, and others enjoy

2

(earth, air, or ocean) is transmitted to all around it, the share of each being diminished by their number, and depending jointly on the number and position of those acted upon by the original source of disturbance." "If the Almighty stamped on the brow of the earliest murderer the indelible and visible mark of his guilt, he has also established laws by which every succeeding criminal is not less irrevocably chained to the testimony of his crime; for every atom of his mortal frame, through whatever changes its severed particles may migrate, will still retain adhering to it, through every combination, some movement derived from that very muscular effort by which the crime itself was perpetrated."-(CHAS. BABBAGE: Ninth Bridgewater Treatise.) "An action, once begun, never ceases-an impulse given is transmitted on for ever; a sound breathed reverberates in eternity; and thus the past is always present, although for the purpose of fitting us for this mortal life our ordinary senses are so constituted as to be imperceptible of these phenomena."-(Nightside of Nature.) "How wonderful! that even

The passions, prejudices, interests

That sway the meanest being, the weak touch
That moves the finest nerve,

And in one human brain

Causes the faintest thought, becomes a link

In the great chain of nature.”—(SHELLEY.)

1 "The man dies and disappears; but his thoughts and acts survive, and leave an indelible stamp upon his race. And thus the spirit of his life is prolonged and perpetuated, moulding the thought and will, and thereby contributing to form the character of the future."-(SMILES: Character.) "Our deeds are like children that are born to us; they live and act apart from our own will. Nay; children may be strangled, but deeds never; they have an indestructible life both in and out of our consciences."(GEORGE ELIOT.) "Every man has a personal connection with the remotest result that flows from his sin."-(Rev. T. BINNEY.) "No man's acts die utterly; and though his body may resolve into dust and air, his good or his bad deeds will still be bringing forth fruit after their kind, and influencing generations of men for all time to come.". (SMILES: Self-Help.) "We who do not endure accomplish works that do."-(VINET.)

2" Man's part in the formation of the character of others can be fully known only in the eternal world. It will be known perfectly there, as well as the part others have had in the formation of their character. That habit of swearing, lying, drinking, that involves or marks the child or man, had its definite sources and steps of increase, the responsibility of which God appropriates. God knows the first oath the boy heard,

the fruit of our labour, but hereafter each shall reap the fruit of his own labour.1 Now God is pleased to visit the transgressions of the parents upon the children and to punish in the innocent the crimes of the guilty;2 but is there not every reason to believe that hereafter all this will be reversed, and the sins of the children be visited upon the parents, and all whose influence has been for evil have to bear the consequences thereof through all succeeding ages 23

and the person from whom he heard it, and the second, and the third, and the precise effect of each instance on the soul, and the precise degree of conscience, of volition, of knowledge, with which the example was imitated, and the habit formed or not resisted. And for each God will hold a reckoning, and to each person God will distribute the harvest." "And thus, as it is said of the good seed, that those who sow and those who reap shall rejoice together; so of the evil seed, those who sow and those who reap shall lament together."-(Dr. CHEEVER.)

1 "How often a winged word is dropped without a purpose, yet goes down into an immortal soul, and will be found a thousand times reduplicated in eternity! How often a careless listener has received a life-long impression from a still more careless speaker! Words are dropped, and forgotten, and seen no more . . . yet they may be everlasting. . . . You may not be able to follow them now, but they may follow you hereafter; nor to trace them now, but you may reap the harvest hereafter. . . . Our moral influence, except God interpose to prevent it, must be eternal; and if evil, it is more to our own hurt than the hurt of others. There is a time wherein one man ruleth over another to his own hurt; and so I saw the wicked buried. The ruler never rests from his ruling, and the ruled rule others after them, and all pass to successive thrones of fire."(Dr. CHEEVER.)

2" When God inflicts temporal evil on a son for his father's sin, to the father He acts as a judge, but to the son as a lord or sovereign. In many cases, perhaps, in the great majority, the awful mode of procedure here threatened is to the child, ultimately, a blessing, to the parents only an immediate curse, and to them only, or chiefly, an evidence of the divine displeasure against sin." The Almighty will, “in the end, mysteriously show how, though the visitation should fall upon even the third or fourth generation, it has been all along, or chiefly, a punishment to the original offender."(C. ANDERSON: Domestic Constitution.)

In the next world we believe that men "will have a complete knowledge (or may have) of what they did in the body; and that they may also know what they are continuing to do by their perpetuated influence.

In the next world his moral and spiritual nature will be still more alive to every fine impression and impulse, his views of himself and of his earthly doings larger and deeper; his knowledge of what he continues to do may be clear and distinct; his conjectures respecting it cannot but be ripened. As long as they (i. e., the results of his sin) continue to flow here, there must be, it would seem necessarily and inevitably, a parallel and correspondent flowing into his soul of thought and emotion perfectly indescribable; and till the one ceases there appears to be no natural termination possible to the other." "There can be no doubt about the fact that sin in one man does produce sin in another; there can be no