[1] As colour and favour, and proportion of hair and face and
lineament, and as disease and infirmities of the body, so,
commonly, the liabilities and dispositions and tempers of
the mind and affections become hereditary, and run in the
blood. An evil bird hatches an evil egg, and one viper will
breed a generation of vipers. Most sins pass along from the
father to the son, and so downward, by a kind of lineal
descent, from predecessors to posterity, and that for the
most part with advantage and increase, whole families being
tainted with the special vices of their stock. John the
Baptist speaks of "a generation of vipers;" and if we
should but observe the condition of some families in a long
line of succession, might we not espy here and there even
whole generations of drunkards, and generations of
swearers, and generations of idolaters, and generations of
worldlings, and generations of seditious, and of envious,
and of riotous, and of haughty, and of unclean persons, and
of sinners in other kinds.--_Sanderson,_ 1587-1662.
Original or birth sin is not merely a doctrine in religion,
it is a fact in man's world acknowledged by all, whether
religious or not. Let a man be providing for an unborn
child: in case of distribution of worldly property, he will
take care to bind him by conditions and covenants which
shall guard against his fraudulently helping himself to
that which he is to hold for or to apportion to another. He
never saw that child; he does not know but that child may
be the most pure and perfect of men; but he knows it will
not be safe to put temptation in his way, because he knows
he will be born in sin, and liable to sin, and sure to
commit sin.--_Alford,_ 1810-1871.
[2] While children are the children of Christian parents, as
_they_ were children of Christian parents, the presumptions
are that they will turn out right; not without parental
training, but, that being implied, the presumptions are
that they will, by the force of natural law, tend in that
direction. All the presumptions are that the children of
moral and sensible parents will become moral and sensible.
Only the grossest neglect and the most culpable exposure to
temptation will overrule the presumption and likelihood
that the children of good parents will be good. There may
be opposing influences; there may be temptations and
perversions that shall interrupt the natural course of
things; but this does not invalidate the truth that there
is a great law by which like produces like. And I say that
under this law the Christian parent has a right to this
comforting presumption--"My children have all the chances
in their favour by reason of the moral constitution which
they have inherited."
I know multitudes of families in which the moral element is
hereditary; and it is not surprising that the children of
these families are moral. Moral qualities are as
transmissible as mental traits or physical traits. The same
principle applies to every part of the human constitution.
And where families have been from generation to generation
God-fearing, passion-restraining, truth-telling, and
conscience-obeying, the chances are ninety-nine in every
hundred in favour of the children.--_Beecher._