5. This leads us to the thought that retribution for sin does not always end with the sinner. The hereditary taint is not to be denied because it is often abused. Conscious disobedience to a moral law whose authority we recognize as binding us weakens not only the will of the sinner himself, but the will of his descend- ants when their turn comes to combat the forces of evil. This weakness and waywardness of the will in its warfare with the passions is what has been called by theologians, though the phrase has no Scriptural authority, " original sin." It may perhaps be said that the phrase is not a very happy one; it is likely to mislead the unwary. For sin is essentially a personal, conscious act. But it is the expression of a truth which is as surely revealed in Scripture, and as firmly established by experience, as that of individual responsibility.
^| Disease, accidents, pain, and death, reign everywhere, and we call one another mortals, as if our chief peculiarity was that we must die, and you all know how death came into this world. " By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin ; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned ; " and disease, disorder, and distress are the fruits of sin, as truly as that apple grew on that forbidden tree. You have nowadays all sorts of schemes for making bad men good, and good men better. The world is full of such schemes, some of them wise and some foolish ; but to be wise they must all go on the principle of lessening misery by lessening sin ; so that the old weaver at Kilmarnock who, at a meeting for abolishing slavery, the corn laws, and a few more things, said, " Mr. Chairman, I move that we abolish Original Sin," was at least beginning at the right end.2
Tj The most common cause of blindness is ophthalmia of the new-born. One pupil in every three at the institution for the blind in New York City was blinded in infancy by this disease.
1 J. Orr, Sin as a Problem of To-day, 100.
8 Dr. John Brown, Plain, Words on Health, 28.
EZEKIEL xviii. 4, 27 191
One-fourth of the inmates of the New York State Home for the Blind, six hundred sightless persons in the State of New York, between six thousand and seven thousand persons in the United States were plunged into darkness by ophthalmia neonatorum.
What is the cause of this disease ? It is a specific germ com- municated by the mother to the child at birth. Previous to the child's birth she has unconsciously received it through infection from her husband. He has contracted the infection in licentious relations before or since marriage. "The cruellest link in the chain of consequences," says Dr. Prince Marrow, " is the mother's innocent agency. She is made a passive, unconscious medium of instilling into the eyes of her new-born babe a virulent poison which extinguishes its sight." In mercy, let it be remembered the father does not know that he has so foully destroyed the eyes of his child and handicapped him for life. It is part of the bitter harvest of the wild oats he has sown. Society has smiled upon his " youthful recklessness " because society does not know that
They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin.1
^[ Heredity may modify and condition responsibility : it cannot destroy or disannul it in the normal individual. A man is not necessarily responsible for the circumstance that certain possessions were bequeathed to him ; but in so far as they are his possessions he is responsible for the use he makes of them. Where inheritance and heir are one the conditions are not other- wise. " Behold, all souls are mine ; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine. The soul that sinneth, it shall die." At the same time, heredity introduces shades of responsi- bility so subtle and delicate that the more we study men as we see them around us, the more impossible it appears for us to be able to judge any man, the more we feel that God alone can judge righteously.2
III.
God's Offer of Life.
" He shall save his life."
1. Ezekiel urges upon the Hebrews that the pollution of sin is not hopeless. The burden of his exhortation is that the wicked
1 Helen Keller, Out of the Dark, 176.
9 J. Y. Simpson, The Spiritual Interpretation of Nature, 237.
192 THE DEATH OF THE SOUL
man may turn away from his wickedness and live, that repentance and recovery are within man's power. Here is man ; what is his inheritance ? The nature of Adam ? True ; but behind and beyond that he has inherited the image of God. The one inherit- ance is as surely his as the other. For with the tendency to do wrong, man has also received the power to do right. And thus, although it be true that if he yields to temptation he is yielding to that to which his nature is inclined, for he has inherited the weakness of his forefathers, it is also true that such yielding is sin, for he had the strength to resist had it been his choice. He is not the son of Adam only, but the son of God ; and in the power of that Divine inheritance he may overcome. We have inherited the consequences of Adam's sin ; but it is only in so far as we embrace and accept them, only in so far as we make his sin our sin, by transgressing under temptation some known and recog- nized law of God, that we are responsible, that we are guilty. Each soul bears its own sin ; " the soul that sinneth, it shall die." But if " the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness, he shall save his soul alive." How much farther than even this splendid outburst of hope does the teaching of St. Paul reach. What does he say ? " As through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous." In Adam the taint, in Christ the remedy ; in Adam the inherited slavery of the will, in Christ the grace which frees us from these bonds.