3 1822026594010

Private Library

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Vv. F. Morrison

THE UNIVhRSIlr LirfKARY

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEM

LA JOLLA, CALIFORNIA

UN ERS TY OFCAL FORNJA, SAN DIEG

3 1822026594010

THE MORAL CONDITION AND
DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD

The Moral Condition and

Development of the

Child

BY

W. ARTER WRIGHT, Ph. D., D. D.

WITH INTRODUCTION BY

TRUMBULL G. DUVALL, B. D., PH. D.

Professor of Philosophy in Ohio Wesleyan University.

HODDER & STOUGHTON

NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1911
GEORGE H. DOR AN COMPANY

TO MY CHILDREN,

WHO IN THE REALIZATIONS OP LIFE HAVE

ILLUSTRATED THE THEORIES

OF THIS BOOK.

INTRODUCTION

IT was a saying of Borden Parker Bowne that,
although a sound philosophy might conceivably
be of no benefit to the world, there could be no
doubt of the real damage done by an unsound
philosophy. With even greater emphasis might
one say this of theological dogma ; for in no other
field has the lust for system at the expense of life
borne more bitter fruit. And good men have sel-
dom strayed further than when, under the ty-
ranny of the a priori, they have essayed to extend
their deductions to the moral and religious status
of the child.

Not the least of the merits of the following
discussion, while the author makes no claim of be-
ing a specialist in psychology, is his appreciation
of the bearing of psychology upon his subject
The point of view and the method of approach
adopted by the psychologist bring to light ma-
terial that may be obtained in no other way. And
no safe theological structure can be built without
this material. The child-mind and the child-life
have their own secrets to tell, and they only learn
these who patiently ask what the facts are, and
not what the facts ought to be.

But in these chapters there is more serious

vu

viii INTRODUCTION

business than exploding unsound dogmas of
childhood. The stress seems not so much to be
laid upon the child as upon children, and the main
plea is the children's plea for a higher standard
of parentage and a recognition of the parents'
place in the world. And this plea deserves to
be heard. The child, summoned into existence by
no will of his own, has every right to expect that
his parents will undertake the moral burdens of
fatherhood and motherhood. He has the right to
expect them to maintain the wholesome idealism
of the home: for it is the home that gives set
and direction to his appreciations and shapes his
unconscious tendencies and reasons for doing
things. His opportunity for achieving a charac-
ter— a perfectly fashioned will — depends, in the
main, upon the fidelity of mother and father in
meeting these conditions. To give the world a
healthy-minded, generous youth, one who respects
others as he respects himself, who has learned
the lessons of self-control and unselfish service,
means mothering and fathering the growing soul
for almost a score of years, and is the greatest
undertaking, as it is the true business of life.
The world needs men and women of this sort,
and it can not have too many of them. To give
it any other sort is to sin grievously against so-
ciety. Parents who fail at this point, whatever
they may have amassed or achieved, have failed
in the one thing where failure is irretrievable.
In these later years the psychologist has pro-

INTRODUCTION ix

duced abundant material which the theologian has
as yet not appropriated. Much of this material
bears directly on the problem of the moral and
religious education of the child. And the student
of social conditions has been daily tracing the
vices and crimes of society back to their begin-
nings in the morally bankrupt home. There is a
timeliness in this discussion, therefore, which
ought to insure for it the wide interest and
thoughtful consideration which it merits.

TEUMBULL GILLETT DUVALL.
Ohio Wesleyan University.

CONTENTS

PAGK

INTRODUCTION, vii

FOREWORD, .... . xjii

I. ORIGINS, 19

II. THE CHILD AS A FACT GIVEN BY NATURE, 42

III. THE BIRTH OF THE SPIRIT, 59

IV. Is THERE A MORAL BIAS IN HUMAN NA- ;

TURK ? 69

V. HEREDITY A'ND ENVIRONMENT, 80

VI. HEREDITARY SIN DISPROVEN BY KECOVERT, 89
VII. ACQUIRED TRAITS NOT TRANSMISSIBLE BY

HEREDITY, 96

VIII. THE PERIODS OF DEVELOPMENT:

SECTION 1. FIRST CHILDHOOD, - 115

SECTION 2. SECOND CHILDHOOD, - 120

SECTION 3. THIRD CHILDHOOD, - 126

SECTION 4. LATER CHILDHOOD, - 133

SECTION 5. THE YEARS THAT FOLLOW, 142

IX. THE MORAL SENSE, - 145

X. SCIENTIFIC ERA OF RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION, 155

XL BAPTISM, - 163

XII. How CAN A CHILD BE SAVED? - - 173

XIII. THE BIRTH FROM ABOVE, 178

XIV. WHICH ROAD? 195
XV. SUMMARY, 204

xi

FOREWORD

OUR point of view is that of Divine Immanence.
All real forces are God's forces. Undoubtedly
man, and possibly devils, may use these forces in
fighting against God. But when we discover how
those forces operate in themselves, we know what
God has planned. All laws, wherever found,
whether biological, psychological, or moral, are
God's laws and make known to us the divine
method and will. Their origin being identical,
they are all equally sacred and obligatory. I have
never found myself in the predicament where a
psychological law contradicted a revealed law,
and hence where I must eliminate one or the
other; but I do find aid from the biologic or
psychologic law in the interpretation of the re-
vealed law. Assuming the divine origin of both,
I am bound to find an interpretation of both that
harmonizes and not to leave them in apparent
contradiction.

The "Boy Problem" is solved usually before
it is attacked. If it remains until it becomes
acute, it is never solved. Unless solved in child-
hood, it is insoluble except in rare cases. A
youth is confessedly difficult to influence and
guide. He has come to the period of self -guidance

xiv FOEEWOED

and independence, and is suspicious of all at-
tempts to control him by others. He is influenced
by the "gang" more easily and naturally than
by those who are in places of authority. Unless
he has already had safe principles instilled into
him, by which he may safely direct his own
course, the battle is probably already lost. The
insuperable difficulty is not so much with the boy
—for there is a pretty sure law of his character-
formation — but with the parent who will not
awaken to the problem until it is no longer sol-
uble. The saddest hour that ever comes to a par-
ent is that hour when he must reap the fruit of
the neglect of the training of his child. It is far
darker than the hour when the body of a loved
child is consigned to the grave.

"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
to have a thankless child!" A father said to
me not long ago: "I do not know what to do
with my boy. He left home this morning after
breakfast and probably will not be home before
midnight. I do not know where he is, or what
he is doing. He has no respect for me." He
seriously discussed turning him over to the State
to be controlled in one of its institutions. Par-
ents quite usually listen in incredulity when a
pastor points out to them in advance that such
an hour is coming. Afterwards, when it has
come, they make frantic appeals for aid; but it
is usually too late. God's laws of child-training
can not be violated or neglected by Christian peo-

FOREWORD xv

pie with any greater impunity than His general
laws by other people. That which they sow they
must reap just as others do.

The practical bearing of the discussion in the
following pages should be largely in the direction
of a different approach to the religion of children.
The traditional door of entrance for them into re-
lations with God has been through the teaching
that they have a sinful nature of which they must
be conscious and make confession, and concern-
ing which they must repent. It is proper here
for me to point out the sad consequences of that
teaching in my own experience. As I look back
upon it now I am certain that it was wholly
mistaken, and that my childhood was greatly
wronged. I say this without attaching blame to
any one; for all were under the dominion of a
theory that was unquestioned at that time, and
which still widely prevails.

I grew up in a home that was Christian in a
very genuine sense. My father was a faithful
preacher of the gospel for nearly fifty years. My
parents' religious leading was always consistent
and genuine. It was not their direct solicitude
concerning me that caused the misdirected ef-
forts; but rather the influence of the religious
teaching heard on all hands, in pulpit and Sunday
school and religious gatherings.

Very early, at most at seven years of age, I
wanted to commence the religious life, and pre-

xvi FOREWOED

sented myself again and again as a seeker during
four or five years. Among the people who talked
to me on the subject was a certain preacher, who
was often in our home for some years and who
never missed an opportunity of urging me to
become a Christian. He was a very zealous man,
though probably not very learned or wise. I do
not know why I should have come to dread the
contact with the man; for his suggestion was in
line with all the teaching of those days, and I had
not rebelled against it, but rather had striven to
realize it. It must have been some instinct, bet-
ter than my teaching or my thought, that gave
me an aversion to his suggestions, and to him
personally — an instinct that resented the idea that
I was not a Christian. I do not remember that
the matter was strongly urged upon me by any
other person. So far as my home was concerned,
I was treated as though I were a Christian,
though this practice was not supported by any
doctrinal teaching. In seeking for an experience,
I never made the least headway. I can remember
the instructions given to me at the altar, that I
should repent of my sins — not specific sins, but
of sin in general. I was taught that I should feel
that I was a sinner, and I tried to have a sorrow-
ful feeling. But it was of no use. I could not
enter into the experience portrayed, and finally,
when about eleven or twelve years of age, I be-
came discouraged, and for two or three years en-
tered into some sinful habits. I thought that I

FOREWORD xvii

had adopted the Calvinistic doctrine of the non-
elect ; tha.t I was one such ; that there was no sal-
vation for me. I became hardened and rather
careless in some matters. I say that I thought
that I had adopted this doctrine. I would have
explained my situation at that time by so saying.
I very much doubt now that it was a real convic-
tion. It did not take me long to discard it, at
least, when a way into the Christian life was at
last clear before me.

All this' childish instruction I now believe was
an entire mistake, and seven years of my life were
spent in religious darkness, with great risk that
my alienation from Christ should become per-
manent, by the teaching that I needed an experi-
ence of repentance from sin, and a conversion.
I believe this without assuming that my childhood
life was without fault. I at least was not in a
state of rebellion against God. I wanted to be
counted among His followers. Actual sin should
have been dealt with as individual faults, as we
deal with all of God 's children, and not as a proof
of a depraved heart.

If the following discussion shall save some
from such years of suffering, and prevent such
risks as I passed through, it, no doubt, will be
amply justified.

W. ARTEB WBIGHT.

Delaware, Ohio, June 1, 1911.

CHAPTEE I

ORIGINS

FEOM the standpoint of modern science nothing
can be more absurd than the discussion of Orig-
inal Sin by Augustin as he comes to deal with
sin in its action in our animal nature. That
which the scientist regards as the necessary im-
pulse of nature, wisely and divinely arranged for
the continuance of human beings on the earth,
and the provision for their health and well-being,
Augustin assumes to be the result of the intro-
duction of sin. This sinfulness may be assumed
as axiomatic from his point of view, because the
functioning of nature is attended with fleshly
gratification; as if the hatefulness and painful-
ness of an action were the only conditions that
would save if from being sinful. He seeks to de-
duce from Scripture hints as to the pleasureless
working of human nature before sin had entered
the world.

The assumption that sin only is pleasurable
is unfounded; the necessity of explaining away
the gratification is forced; and any such inter-
pretation of Scripture must be erroneous, unless
we assume that the Bible was written by some
authority as inimical to modern science as Augus-

19

20 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

tin himself. This latter assumption I believe is
entirely unnecessary; but as I turn away from,
it, I turn away with equal decision from the whole
traditional intepretation of human nature's re-
lation to sin.

One can not read the literature of the day
when the traditional doctrine of human depravity
arose without having the strong suspicion that
it all originated from the assumed sinfulness of
the act of human procreation. It grew up in the
same atmosphere which produced the celibate
clergy and the immaculateness of the virgin life-
two of the most prolific sources of the corruption
of Christianity, as well as being doctrines of un-
bounded offense against the spirit of modern
science. The purity of the race, or the excellence
of any one of the races, is now held to be identified
with the power of reproduction as with no other
one human element. Biologically, virginity is the
fundamental sin, and Nature has sought to pro-
tect living beings against it by her strongest pas-
sion. Eace senility accompanies the vices which
destroy this fundamental physical virtue. Race
suicide is the deepest, the most prolific, the far-
thest-reaching vice of a boasting civilization.
When religion strikes at the fundamental human
function of reproduction as in its very nature sin-
ful, it flies in the face of all modern thought and
conviction. We owe it to our faith to eradicate
this so fundamental error and offense, not only
from our creed, but the least suggestion of it

ORIGINS

even from our consciousness. This monstrous
barnacle is not of the essence of our faith. It
must be as offensive to God as it is to truth.

It was the view of Schopenhauer that the
"essential element in human nature, and finally
in the whole of reality, consists in a mys-
terious impulse toward life, a blind restlessly
struggling will wholly unguided of reason. . . .
In nature intelligence yields place entirely to this
vital impulsion; such knowledge as is here devel-
oped merely subserves the interests of self-pres-
ervation. ' ' ( Eucken : ' l Problem of Human Life, ' '
511.) This will or impulse of Schopenhauer may
be compared to what Augustin called sin in
human nature. Schopenhauer regarded existence
as a calamity. If Augustin had frankly taken the
view that human existence was to be deplored,
then it would have been consistent to regard the
passion toward reproduction as sinful.

If the doctrine of Original Sin grew from such
a root as this, then the whole subject needs to be
restudied and restated in the light of what we
now know of human nature, conditioned as it is
by a physical or animal foundation.

Augustin was orthodox and Pelagius was het-
erodox ; but from the view of the modern student
Pelagius 's statements are verbally nearer the
truth than are those of Augustin. This may be
the mere accidents of words that have in reality
changed their content. It is altogether likely that
Pelagius was not so near modern belief as his

22 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

words may indicate. At any rate we are not to
disavow what is now evident, just because the
form of words was once pronounced heretical.
The words no longer convey the same conceptions
that they did as used by Augustin. The whole
point of view has been changed. It is no longer
enlightening or helpful to affirm or deny some
of the old points of controversy; e. g., it is ap-
proaching the subject under a wrong presupposi-
tion to affirm or deny that infants should be re-
generated in order to be admitted into the King-
dom of God. It is not illuminating to affirm or
deny that * ' children are in the same state in which
the first man was before transgression ; ' ' and yet
this was precisely the point of the Pelagian con-
troversy. The whole subject of the moral con-
dition of the child has to be restudied from the
point of view of modern biology and psychology.

THE TRADITIONAL, VIEW WAS Too MATERIALISTIC.

Harnack points out that one of the early de-
velopments of Christianity, a contribution of
Orientalism on the soil of Hellenism, was the
"depreciation of the world, the contention that
it were better never to have existed, that it was
the result of a blunder, and that it was a prison,
or at least a penitentiary for the spirit." An-
other development was "the conviction that the
connection with the flesh ('that soiled robe')
depreciated and stained tine spirit; in fact that
the latter would inevitably be ruined unless the

ORIGINS 23

connection were broken or its influence counter-
acted." ("Mission and Expansion of Christian-
ity," I, 32.) We thus see that the later deduc-
tions concerning the sin inherent in the flesh,
which are noted in Augustin 's teaching and since,
may have been a contribution of Oriental myth-
ical thought, brought under the formative power
of Hellenizing thought — something read into
Christianity, and not a just product of it.

Augustin thought of sin as something phys-
ical, something inhering in the flesh, and did not
confine it to the will and the moral nature. To
him a "movement" of the flesh could be a sin,
even when that "movement" was subjugated by
the will and denied gratification. This is as ab-
surd as to affirm sin of the animals of the field
or the interaction of chemical forces.*

* While Augustin has stated more explicitly than any other the doctrine of the
medieval Church concerning the evil nature of the "movements" of the flesh, yet there
is evidence that his belief far antedated him. It can hardly be traced to the Jews in the
form in which he held it, for they have a saying in the Talmud which reflects a different
sontiment. It says: "These four are reckoned as dead — the blind, the leper, the poor,
and the childless." But the sentiment was so strong in the time of Origen, who lived
from 185-254 A. D., that in his youth in his aspiration for purity he mutilated himself
for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake. (Eusebius H. E., vi, 8.) If any of the fathers of the
Church deserves to be styled the "greatest of the fathers," it was this Origen, undoubt-
edly the most learned of them all. The volumes that he wrote are said to have been
numbered in the thousands, and his impress on the Church has never perished.

Meanwhile the doctrines of virginity and celibacy grew apace and the foundations
of marriage were undermined, leading to the greatest crimes and scandals that ever dis-
graced the Christian Church. For many centuries marriage was regarded as a purely
civil contract, and in that form bitterly assailed by the Church fathers. Chastity was
preached not because it was a good thing in itself, but because man's fall and the neces-
sity for his redemption was traced to an indiscretion committed in the Garden of Eden.
All intercourse between the sexes was discountenanced; to have children under any cir-
cumstances was a sin. Young people were enjoined to enter into vows of celibacy, and
multitudes of them did so. Marriage was regarded as evil and vicious. Decrees were
made forbidding married women to approach the altar or to touch the Eucharist, and
it was even declared to be doubtful whether married persons cohabiting with each other

24 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

We will not overlook those instances of the
lustful movements of the flesh which are not re-
strained, and those sexual relations which are ad-
mittedly sinful. Of such improper relations there
are two classes: (1) Those which are physically
forbidden; (2) those which are morally forbid-
den. Social science is making a careful study of
the first class and denouncing marriage or sexual
relations between certain classes of people : those
who are so physically diseased or defective that
they can not transmit to their offspring sound
minds or healthy bodies. The known law of he-
redity out of such violation of physical laws brings
to children its fearful penalty of a debilitated or

could be saved. St. Chrysostom declared in the fifth century that if man had not sinned
the world would have been peopled by other means. Any married woman who desired
to be a nun was allowed to leave her husband, and he was forbidden to take another
wife. Marriage was forbidden during Lent and at sundry other specified seasons, until,
as an old writer quietly remarks, "There were but few weeks or days in the year in
which people could get married at all." "In the fifth century priests were expected
at least to abstain from the privileges of marriage, if not from marriage itself. Pope
Innocent I. refused holy orders to any priest who had married a widow, and commanded
every priest to be deposed who should be guilty of the crime of having children by his
wife. It was not, however, until the twelfth century that the wives of the clergy were
driven forth for good, and that the Roman Catholic priesthood was firmly established
upon a celibate basis. . . . Marriage was restrained, but not indulgence. Some
of the popes led scandalous lives, and the clergy who did abstain from marriage kept
concubines, sometimes in large numbers. . . . Enactments had to be passed for-
bidding priests from living with their mothers and sisters, because of the prevalence of
incest; nunneries and monasteries were hotbeds of debauchery, and congregations who
had an unmarried priest to minister stipulated in some cases, with a view to the protec-
tion of their wives and daughters, that he should keep a concubine. In a similar spirit
it was decreed by a council that no priest should be allowed to go out at night without
a candle." (From Marriage and Heredity, by J. F. Nisbet, 40-45, who refers as his
authority to Lea's Sacerdotal Celibacy.)

It is not at all remarkable that from centuries of such abhorrent doctrine and
more horrible practices that we should have as a heritage the doctrine of Original Sin.
We only affirm that it is high time that our age which has clear moral vision concerning
the practices, which are the root of this doctrine, should now turn away from the doc-
trine, which is its inevitable fruit. Humanity is disgraced by the doctrine aa really aa
by the practices.

OEIGINS 25

degenerate nervous constitution. Children of
such parents will probably be physically weak or
idiotic or criminal. Thus physical heredity of
physical consequences is freely admitted and
greatly to be emphasized.

But it will be readily noted that this is not
the inheritance which has given rise to the doc-
trine of Original Sin. We pass to a considera-
tion of the second class : those who violate moral
standards. Here we are dealing with fleshly lust
and sinful gratification. The sinfulness, however,
does not directly consist in the physical act, ac-
cording to the general estimate of mankind; but
in the violation of certain moral standards that
society has erected governing the sexual relation.
So that we have no reason to expect that the fruit
of this sin will be shown in the physical nature
or constitution of the child ; but as a moral fault,
if the law of heredity holds, it should be mani-
fest in the moral constitution. Does the law of
heredity manifest itself in the moral nature of
illegitimate children! Are they more vicious,
more morally perverse, more inaccessible to vir-
tuous influence than other children? There are
no known facts to establish the affirmative of this.
In Eoman Catholic countries of South America
from fifty to ninety per cent of the children are
born out of wedlock, or were previous to the en-
actment of recent civil marriage laws. These
children can not be differentiated from others by
any marks of vice or sinfulness. They start, so

26 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

far as personal moral equipment is concerned, on
a level with others. Nor can it be shown that the
case is different in the far smaller percentage
of illegitimate children in our own land.

When we consider the environment of these
children and its legitimate moral effects, we will
see that there is a real handicap in the race for
life. The immoral conditions which produced the
illegitimate relations persist after birth and
through life. They can not fail to leave their
impression. The child grows up deprived of the
helpfulness of one or both parents. Even when
the relations were not the outcome of unusual de-
pravity of one or both parents, the lack of a
proper family life is a great deprivation to the
moral character of the child. Aside from this
consideration we have no ground for affirming
that the illegitimate child is more sinful in tend-
ency than are other children.

But we return from this digression on the per-
ennial elements of this subject to the primitive
discussion which laid the foundation of the tra-
ditional doctrine. Coelestius, the disciple of Pe-
lagius, is credited with holding that "sin is not
born with a man — it is subsequently committed
by the man: for it is shown to be a fault, not of
nature, but of the will." ("Nicene and Post-
Nicene Fathers," V, 239.) In condemning this
opinion and excommunicating Coelestius, the
Church seemed committed to the materialistic
view of sin, as something born in the flesh, and to

ORIGINS 27

have denounced the spiritual view that it is of
the moral nature. Pelagius is quoted by Augustin
as saying : ' * Everything good and everything evil
on account of which we are either laudable or
blameworthy, is not born with us but is done by
us : for we are born not fully developed, but with
a capacity for either conduct; and we are pro-
created as without virtue, so also without vice;
and previous to the action of our own proper will,
that alone is man which God has formed." (do.
241.) The other statement for which both of
these men were condemned and which, it was as-
sumed, was identical in import, is far from being
so; it was, " Adam's sin injured only himself, and
not the human race." The word "injure" is too
physical a term to cover the transmission of such
a spiritual fact as the guilt of sin. Again, Augus-
tin says ("Original Sin," 45): "A regenerate
man does not regenerate, but generates sons ac-
cording to the flesh; and thus he transmits to
his posterity not the condition of the regenerated
but only of the generated." This play upon
words, without any pretense of estimating the re-
alities behind the words, has held the Church in
bondage to the doctrine of the unregenerated con-
dition of children at birth for fourteen hundred
years. It sounds like holy foolery that the prac-
tices of parents and Churches in child-training
during all these centuries should be based upon
word-plays without meaning. What possible
meaning could the word regenerate have in ap-

28 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

plication to a new-born child! The child is not
even a person; it is only a non-moral being as
yet. Augustin again says: "The real objection
against them (the heretics) is that they refuse
to confess that unbaptized infants are liable to
the condemnation of the first man, and that orig-
inal sin has been transmitted to them and requires
to be purged by regeneration. " It is not so very
wonderful that such a physical disease, as sin is
thus thought to be, could be cured by such a phys-
ical remedy as baptism in material water.

But sin and its cure can be applied only to a
moral being. Moral qualities pertain to persons.
An infant is not a person. Universal recognition
of this fact is evident from reference to a child
as it. Human law recognizes this, and the whole
field of common sense affirms it. It does not even
have a mind that functions, to say nothing of a
conscience. It has not self-consciousness, much
less moral consciousness. Theology has for long
been an exception to the otherwise universal ac-
knowledgment of this truth. At just what point
we shall say the child attains to personality, it is
difficult and somewhat arbitrary to say. That it
is on the way to personality at five years, ten
years, there will be general agreement, no doubt.
That it has attained full personality before the
close of adolescence would not be agreed to by all.
That it has no moral character at birth, that it
has full moral character at seventeen, are the two
fixed points. That it is a partial moral being be-

OBIGINS 29

tween these points seems to be the necessary con-
clusion. Where the personality comes from is a
question that the materialist can hardly answer.
G. Stanley Hall says (''Adolescence," I, 2):
1 ' Certain it is that the cellular theory needs to be
supplemented by assuming, both in the organism
as a whole and in the species, powers that can
not be derived from the cells." So if we should
find that at one time the child is not a moral be-
ing, and later that he is, we would not need to
be staggered by the fact, as it is no more con-
trary to the history of the individual than many
a physical crisis through which he has passed.
He has received from without that which was not
within himself. We have to assume an outside
Builder even of the body of the child.

To affirm sin of a being without personality
or moral character is a confused use of the word,
in which we must be thinking of some physical as
distinguished from some moral conditions. The
child-condition is a sort of larva-condition of per-
sonality. At puberty it throws off the old en-
closure and passes definitely into a new state of
personality for which the larva state was a prep-
aration. The subordination of the child to the
parent is based as much in its moral inabilities
as in its physical. The parent is moral character
for the child, and he has no distinct moral respon-
sibility in himself, although he is constantly grow-
ing toward it through the years.

We must, then, avoid the confusion of moral

30 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

and physical terms, and clearly apprehend sin as
a quality of a moral being, and allow the appe-
tites of the flesh to stand uncondemned as long
as they perform their work of maintaining a
normal physical basis for the spiritual life. We
may have a diseased body, a riotous and uncon-
trollable nervous constitution, a deranged brain;
but a sinful physical nature we can not have with-
out robbing ourselves of words which describe the
condition of a spiritual being, and leaving our-
selves without any means of portraying the na-
ture and working as well as the abnormalities of
that being, so different from the physical.*

Without doubt the great weakness of tradi-
tional theology in its hold upon the people is the
seeming unreality of some of its doctrines. The
world's vital creed is wrought out in the experi-
mental laboratory of life. The theologian 's creed
often smells of the cloister and the study. Some
people will give assent to a fictitious creed that
at the same time takes no hold upon their lives.
They will still continue to repeat shibboleths into
which they neglect to translate conviction. This
is a triumph for formalism, but a loss for godli-
ness. Moreover, those who balk are they who are

• "It had been a tendency of the Enlightenment to see in evil a mere defect of
our sensual nature, which would disappear in proportion as reason became stronger.
Kant, on the contrary, traces evil to the will: for him it is not a mere falling short of
the good, but is in direct antagonism to it; it is not dependent on outward conditions,
but is "radically" evil. The problem becomes thus more acute, but the philosopher
is not thereby constituted a believer in the dogma of the Fall and Original Sin, that
"most unseemly of all conceptions.' For man has also a permanent disposition toward
goodness, and this must be energetically called upon to confront the foe." — (Eucken:
"Problem of Human Life," 540.)

ORIGINS 31

most earnest and honest and thoughtful. The
skeptics produced by this unreality are likely to
be those who are the real leaders of men: while
those who slip through are likely to be the un-
critical followers of others' thought

That which does not appeal to us as real does
not seem to us important. Hence doctrinal dis-
cussion fails to awaken popular interest. It is
in vain that any effort is made to electrify doc-
trines into life which seem remote from the prac-
tical results of life. On the other hand, those dis-
cussions of great principles which appear to be
close to actual destiny are listened to with great
interest. If the preacher of to-day will go into
the field of realities, discover the principles which
are there working, and come forth and announce
them to the people, he will have a hearing in any
pulpit, unless perchance the pulpit itself refuses
to give him admission to it.

Into some of the theology of our religious
books fictitious elements have been introduced on
one side to build a theory, and then another fiction
is introduced to cancel it, so that the result may
be somewhere near what the universal sense of
mankind demands. For an example, in Pope's
work on "Christian Theology" (III, 317) we find
him saying: "Children of wrath as belonging to
the lineage of the first Adam, they are grafted
into the second. . . . Unholy by nature, they
are sanctified through baptismal consecration to
God." This is evidently dealing with imaginary

32 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

transactions; there is nothing real about it on
either side. The process of salvation is made a
sort of arithmetical problem, worked out by some
second person, without ever touching the actual
personality of the person who is saved. John
Jones from the hand of God was a child of God;
but something happened with which he never had
anything to do, which subtracted something from
his acceptable relation to God. But this seems
rather hard; so something on the other side was
done, with which also he had nothing to do, which
restored him to his original relation of accepta-
bility.* This is a fiction, as needless as it is ir-
rational. There is no warrant for saying that
God really is, or ever was, angry with children
before they had ever done wrong. The concep-
tion is revoltingly repudiated as dishonoring to
God by the unbiased judgment of enlightened
mankind. The author himself very well knows
this, and hence he invents another fiction to right
himself in practical results. (I will not insist

* Luther in his commentary on Galatians says: "And this (no doubt) all the proph-
ets did foresee in spirit, that Christ should become the greatest transgressor, murderer,
adulterer, thief, rebel, and blasphemer that ever was or could be in all the world. For
He being made a sacrifice for the sins of the world, is not now an innocent person and
without sins, He is not now the Son of God born of the Virgin Mary, but a sinner, which
hath and carrieth the sin of Paul, who was a blasphemer, an oppressor, and a persecutor;
of Peter, which denied Christ; of David, which was an adulterer, a murderer, and caused
the Gentiles to blaspheme the name of the Lord; and briefly, which hath and beareth
the sins of all men in TTi« body; not that He Himself committeth them, but for that He
received them being committed or done of us, and laid them upon His own body that
He might make satisfaction for them with His blood. . . . Our most merciful Father
. . . sent His only Son into the world, and laid upon Him all the sins of all men,
saying, Be Thou Peter that denier; Paul that persecutor, blasphemer, and cruel oppres-
sor; David that adulterer; that sinner that did eat the apple in Paradise; that thief which
hanged upon the cross; and briefly, be Thou the person which hath committed the sina
of all men."— (Quoted by W. Hale White: "Bunyan," 98, 99.)

ORIGINS 33

that it was his personal invention — for it is hoary
with age; his responsibility may only be that he
did not reject it.) It is as profound a fiction as
was ever conceived to affirm that water baptism
has anything whatever to do with the moral na-
ture of a child. It is simply not true. No evi-
dence for it from life can be produced. No ra-
tional necessity for it can be shown. I will not
undertake to prove this negative position. Like
any other axiomatic position, it is impossible to
make its offensiveness to truth and justice any
clearer to him that does not see it. But one in-
ference from the position it is worth our while
to arraign. If baptism is necessary to arrange
children's relation with God, then those children
whose parents are too negligent to attend to their
baptism remain under the wrath of God. This
horrible conclusion might have gained a standing
in the darkest Middle Ages, and may still occa-
sionally be heard among those who have not
moved entirely out of the twilight; but it is so
nearly extinct, and its death-gasps are so nearly
inaudible that there is no motive in striking it
another blow, unless to quickly end its dying
misery. We are so far away from it in our
thought that we are startled when we see the evi-
dence that it once lived on this side of the At-
lantic. But there is material evidence of it in
Copp's Hill Graveyard in Boston, where there is
a mound raised over the place where the fathers
buried the little bodies of their unbaptized chil-
3

dren. The superstition was so cruel that they be-
lieved that the very dust of their loved babies was
so vile with original sin that it could not share
the consecrated places where other dust, that had
had a little water ceremonially sprinkled upon it,
rested! I here record the revolt of my nature
against this misuse of children's baptism. In an-
other place I shall give reason for my unquali-
fied approval of its rational and useful observ-
ance. (See Chap. XL)

ORIGINAL SIN AND THE VIRGIN BIRTH.

It has been thought possible that the story of
the virgin birth of Jesus has had some relation
to the assumed sinfulness of the act of human
procreation. On the affirmatory side of that con-
clusion are the following considerations:

1. Those who accept that account would ex-
plain some of the silences of some current nar-
ratives by the supposition that it was a subject
that would not be talked about until after Jesus
was worshiped. One writer (Garvie : "Inner Life
of Jesus," p. 90) thinks that it may have been
"only after the death of the mother of Jesus"
hence long after the death of Jesus Himself — that
it came to be more openly spoken about. Con-
cerning this it should be noted: unless it was
known and used to establish the Deity of Jesus,
the record of it was needless. If it came to be
spoken of only after Jesus was regarded the Son
of God, it is difficult to see why the account was

ORIGINS 35

not altogether superfluous, in the thought of any
other age than one that regarded natural pro-
creation as sinful.

There were two persons to whom, if for any
one, the knowledge of the supernatural conception
was important, viz., Mary and Jesus. Yet those
who seem to think it an important link in the
establishment of Christ's Deity, think it was not
an appropriate subject to be communicated to
Jesus even when He was twelve years of age and
had arrived at some degree of divine conscious-
ness. They seem prone to put off the necessity
of that information until Jesus had come to the
Messianic consciousness by the direct operation
or suggestion of the Spirit. But one is bound to
ask, If not used to communicate and establish
that consciousness; if that consciousness is pos-
sible by other means, of what value is the com-
munication then? Is it needed to confirm the
other communication, as if that in itself were
doubtful? We feel much like insisting that the
communication of the Holy Spirit to the con-
sciousness of Jesus was so immeasurably more
sure than any assurance coming through human
channels concerning an event long past could pos-
sibly be, that the latter is not to be mentioned as
a ground of assurance of His divine nature for
Him.

Further, the importance of the knowledge of
this event to Mary rests on the part that she
would have in establishing by testimony to it the

36 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

divinity of her Son. If now we suppose that she
never so used it, and that it was used only after
her death, we have destroyed its value for her,
and hence for others.

If the value of the account to these two is thus
eliminated, there remains no value in it except to
the apologist, and for him it rests upon the false
assumption, as we contend, of the doctrine of
hereditary sin in normal human nature. If Mary
is not the witness that established the fact, it
clearly is in the region of speculation, the motive
of which is to relieve Jesus of the taint of orig-
inal sin.

2. From a biological point of view this story
is of trivial importance in any age which knows
the process of the origin of a physical human life.
It is a physical fact that is to be accounted for
in any possible supposition, and the alleged vir-
ginal conception in any case can account only for
an animal life which is to be used by a spiritual
being. That God should use one physical agency
rather than another has no significance whatever
as to the nature of the spiritual being, who shall
instrumentally use the animal nature thus pro-
duced.

Concerning the ascetic tendency which may
have been a factor in the origin of the story,
Garvie (op. cit. 93) says: "The ascetic tendency
to depreciate marriage and to exalt celibacy did
undoubtedly find encouragement in the belief in
the virginity of the mother of Jesus. But this

ORIGINS 37

ascetic tendency appeared in the Christian Church
at a later period than the narratives of the birth
of Jesus. If it had had any connection with the
origin of these narratives it would have been at
pains so to tell the story as to put Mary's per-
petual virginity beyond doubt or question,
whereas the impression conveyed in the Gospels
is that after the birth of Jesus, Mary lived with
Joseph in wedlock. It is now generally agreed
that the stories of the infancy are of undoubtedly
Jewish origin, and in Judaism marriage was not
depreciated, but regarded as honorable.'*

It is evident from the reasoning of certain
authors that this matter of the virgin birth has
something to do with the sinlessness of Jesus. It
may be that that is its real if not entire signifi-
cance in their minds. To quote again from Gar-
vie, who may stand for many others who thus
reason. He says (op. cit. 98) : "It is also certain
that there is no other human personality, except
Jesus, in which a hereditary tendency to sin and
distrust has not appeared. It is a fact beyond
question that all children are born members of
a sinful race, and have been tainted from their
source (italics ours). A sinless and godly devel-
opment appears impossible for all who are com-
pletely, by natural generation, incorporated in the
human race. . . . While it would be rash and
bold- dogmatism to affirm that, had Jesus been
born naturally, He must have displayed the in-
herited defects of the race, as we can conjecture

38 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

that divine grace might have acted prior to
thought and will so as to suppress all hostile ele-
ments to a perfect moral and religious develop-
ment; yet as a supernatural mode of birth is
ascribed to Him in records, the witness of which
to His words and works secures our credit and
commands our respect, it is not a vain imagina-
tion, but a good reason to connect these charac-
teristics of His personality with this unique fea-
ture of His birth." The drift of the thought of
this writer is easily seen: Jesus was sinless, be-
cause He was procreated in a unique way. But
it remains to ask, Did Mary transmit to Jesus
real human nature? If not, what is to be our es-
timate of the Incarnation fact? If she did, what
has this unique birth to do with the fact of His
sinlessness, if we assume, as does this author
above, that all real human beings are sinful?
Would it not be more to the point if we should
account for His sinlessness from the birth of His
spirit? (Our own view of the distinction of the
birth of the spirit from that of the body is set
forth in a later chapter, Vid. chapter III. It is
only necessary here to suggest that it is not iden-
tical with the fleshly birth.) Garvie makes a
strong reply to himself when he says : " It seems
to the writer unfortunate that the term virgin
birth throws so great emphasis on the absence of
the paternal function, as though the maternal
function under normal conditions were not as
liable to be the channel of hereditary taint, or as

(ORIGINS 39

though it were the union of two functions, that
caused the transmission of evil." (Op. cit. 99.)
How inconsistent are they who admit that Joseph
was competent to be the instructor and governor
of the child Jesus, but not to be His physical fa-
ther, and yet allow that to be the spiritual father
of a child is a much higher function than that of
being his physical father! We believe that we
are marching rapidly toward that day when the
spiritual will take a primary place in life and be
emancipated from the hitherto dominance of the
physical.

A further examination of this particular
author, and possibly of others who draw similar
conclusions, would show that he entirely mistakes
the part which heredity plays, as when, for exam-
ple, he speaks of Jesus inheriting from His
mother " faith in, and surrender to, God." We
shall show later on that moral and spiritual, in-
dividual as distinguished from race, qualities are
not transmissible by heredity. (Vid. chapter
VII.) Nor is he scientifically justified when he
says (p. 105): "The pre-natal influence of the
mother on the child was a channel of grace, con-
firming the tendency of faith."

Finally, the question may be considered to
have bearings in three directions: (1) The in-
tegrity of the manuscripts. That is a question
for the lower or textual critics to decide. (2) The
influence of the doctrine of hereditary sin in the
origin of the account in the Gospels. That ques-

40 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

tion the higher critics may decide. (3) The the-
ological bearing of the account. That is simply
nothing. The theologian may look on in serene
indifference while the question is being settled by
the two sets of scholars mentioned, knowing that
the doctrine of the Sonship of Jesus is not in-
volved in the least degree. As already stated, it
may not always have been a matter of indiffer-
ence to the theologian. There may have been a
time when everything from his point of view
seemed to hang from it. But to emphasize this
fact is only playing into the hands of the higher
critic, who may claim, if the case is made strong
enough, that the story is accounted for by that
fact. It may still be a matter of weight, although
involved in much difficulty, to the theologian who
has inherited a scientific doctrine, now quite gen-
erally repudiated, that a spiritual or moral qual-
ity is a subject of heredity. It may still seem im-
portant to those who pin their faith to the mar-
velous and the extraordinary; but to him that
believes that all processes of nature, common and
extraordinary alike, are equally manifestations
of the divine, and may be used by God as the in-
strument of His plans, it can not matter how this
controversy is settled. His faith can be adjusted
with equal ease to either solution, not because he
has a spirit of indifference; but rather because
he has the vision of God as filling all in all. Our
contention is not an effort to eliminate the virgin
birth as a part of the creed ; we have no interest

ORIGINS 41

in that. But we do find it necessary to divorce
from that belief the assumption that the sinless-
ness of Jesus depends upon it. For such a con-
clusion it is an entirely illogical premise and is
utterly inadequate. From the point of view of
transmissible hereditary sin, if Mary is the sole
human parent of Jesus, for such a sequence she
must be removed from the class of the sinful.
Eoman Catholic theologians were entirely logical
in seeing the necessity of the doctrine of the Im-
maculate Conception of Mary, and then of her
mother Anna, and all down the line of her an-
cestry, if they would be thorough. If the doctrine
of Original sin makes the virgin birth a necessity
to faith, there will be exactly the same necessity
for the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of
Mary and her ancestry.

CHAPTER II

THE CHILD AS A FACT GIVEN BY NATURE

WITH the above criticism of the traditional the-
ological doctrine, we prefer now to turn away
from this method of investigation to the true sci-
entific method of recording what we actually see
in the child as a fact of nature.

We will avoid the exegetical method for sev-
eral reasons: 1. It would involve an estimate of
the point of view of Biblical writers, after the
methods^of the Higher Criticism ; e. g., What must
be said of Psalm 51:5, "Behold, I was brought
forth in iniquity; and in sin did my mother con-
ceive me?" Is it scientific prose; or poetic emo-
tion? Is it a doctrinal enunciation; or the out-
burst of a penitent heart concerning an individual
experience? We fancy that the outcome of such
an examination would be somewhat affected by
the personal equation.

2. The history of exegesis has shown that pre-
vious views have the deciding influence in exe-
getical balances, where Scripture passages, seem-
ingly in opposition, can be quoted on both sides.
So from the Biblical side I satisfy myself with re-

42

THE CHILD AS GIVEN BY NATURE 48

calling the words of Jesus, "Of such is the King-
dom of heaven," as equally weighty with any-
thing that can be quoted against them, and pass
to what I believe a more decisive method of in-
vestigation.* Until the data and methods of exe-
gesis are more correctly defined it will hardly be
a sufficient method of settling even theological
questions. The age-long controversy concerning
the method of baptism, which bade fair to be
eternal on the battlefield of exegesis, received its
quietus when ' ' The Teaching of the Twelve Apos-
tles" was discovered or recovered from its long
hiding. An ounce of fact is worth a ton of argu-
ment.

* We may anticipate the probability that those who regard us in error in rejecting
the doctrine of Original Sin will bring forward some of the passages of Scripture that
have bfeen used to perpetuate that doctrine. Our limits do not permit us to take up
those passages in detail and show them harmonious with our position. We can only
say that we feel that our Scriptural authority is sufficient in building on this saying of
Jesus — "of such is the Kingdom of heaven." No possible interpretation of these words
can leave standing the doctrine that children are sinful when born. If now some one
is able to show that other passages of Scripture are incompatible with it, while not inter-
ested in making Scripture thus contradict itself, we are not moved from our standpoint by
it. In caseof acontradictionbetweenJesusandsomeotherormany other Scripture writers,
we stand by the word of Jesus as invincible authority. In case of an apparent contra-
diction, as by the words of David — "in sin did my mother conceive me" — we would
seek if possible some explanation that would not make out such a direct contradiction
between Jesus and David, such as: this passage is an expression of extreme emotion
and not intended as a statement of universal application; it is a poetical statement, and
must not be interpreted as prose, etc. Our motive would be to relieve Scripture of con-
tradiction, and it would never occur to us that even several such passages would make
it necessary to conclude that Jesues was mistaken in a statement so very simple, whose
meaning is incontrovertible, and whose interpretation can not be twisted in support of
the doctrine which we renounce. In other words, a clear word of Jesus is of such pre-
eminent authority that it can not be overthrown by any number of other writers, even
writers in the Scriptures themselves. Furthermore, if we have found an unmistakable
teaching of Jesus, why must we seek further light in an age admittedly dark? For pur-
poses of corroboration, it is needless; for purposes of refutation, it is futile; it could only
be useful when the word of Jesus was of uncertain meaning.

44 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

WHAT DOES THE BOOK OF LIFE TELL Us OF A CHILD
AT THE TIME OF ITS ENTRANCE INTO THE WORLD ?

That book presents us with an animal, indis-
tinguishable up to this point from the other ani-
mals that inhabit the earth. I now quote at large
from Prof. Edward Porter St. John, who is an
authority good enough in science and religion to
have his findings in the Sunday School Journal.

" Every human being begins his existence in
the form of a one-celled germ, which is anatom-
ically and biologically very like the lowest forms
of animal life that are known. Later the embryo
takes on a wormlike character. This is followed
at about the third week of development by what
embryologiste universally call the fish stage. The
body is elongated, there are four finlike limbs, the
lungs appear only as a bladder-like rudiment, and
the neck is furnished with gill slits. There are
other resemblances in the shape of the brain and
face.

"At about the beginning of the third month
the gills have disappeared, the lungs have de-
veloped, and the limbs have taken on marked char-
acteristics of reptilian life. At the fourth month
the spine has the double curve of the lower verte-
brates. In the sixth month the whole body, except
the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet
and a few other small spots, is covered with a fine,
dark hair, known as the lanugo. The direction of

THE CHILD AS GIVEN BY NATURE 45

the growth of this hair on various parts of the
body is precisely like that on the corresponding
parts of the bodies of apes and monkeys; for
example, from the shoulder to the elbow the hair
points down, from the wrist to the elbow the di-
rection is reversed. This hair usually falls off
before birth, though occasionally it persists on
the scalp for some time, to be replaced later by
the growth that is characteristic of men.

"At about this time the hands and the feet
of the fetus are practically alike, the great toe
being shorter than the others and projecting at
an angle, as in the case of apes. Through several
of the stages the fetus has a clearly defined tail,
and at one period it is longer than the legs, as
in some of the highest mammals. Throughout
these various stages of prenatal development the
brain and the nervous system show very close
likeness to those of the animals of the correspond-
ing levels.

"Even at birth the body of the child in some
particulars resembles that of the ape more than
that of the adult man. ... In some of the early
instincts the likeness between the child and the
lower animals is quite marked. Especially re-
markable is the fact that for a few weeks, begin-
ning a few hours after birth, the child will sup-
port its entire weight for periods lasting from a
few seconds to nearly two minutes by clinging
with the hands to a cane or similar object. The
power to do this is soon lost, and does not re-

46 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

appear until a much later period." (Sunday
School Journal, 1910.)

I have made this extended quotation to show
that this child is so evidently related to other ani-
mals thus far in its history that we are justified
in calling it an animal, unless there are other rev-
elations that make it transcend the animal king-
dom. Are there such evidences?

It is perhaps quite difficult now for us to con-
fine our attention to just what we see. We have
seen other infants grow up to show reason, intelli-
gence, conscience, imagination, and other marks
of personality and moral character. It is almost
inevitable that we think this being has all of these
qualities, but for the present that it does not know
how to express them, or that they are in a sort
of undeveloped state, or — something; we may
have never explained to ourselves just what. We
spontaneously think he is a person; he has
thoughts, if we only knew how to get at them.
But this is allowing imagination, and not obser-
vation, to form our convictions. The child is what
we see; we have no good right to read into him
what we have seen developed into other children
that had the same kind of beginning. It would
require much marshaling of technical authorities
to prove this in detail. I do not feel called upon
to prove a negative, but simply to call attention
to what the living child testifies. This little be-
ing has no morals ; he has not even thoughts ; he
can not see objects or discern colors ; he has not

THE CHILD AS GIVEN BY NATURE 47

even perception, much less conceptions or ideas.
"Infancy is mental vacuity. Human life makes
its appearance wholly destitute of intellectual con-
tent. And not only is there the absence of knowl-
edge, but also of the power of knowing. Mind
potentially is a substantial foundation of powers
and ideas, but at first there are neither ideas nor
powers." (L. R. Fiske: "Man Building," 251-2.)
If the above can be said of the mental powers
of the child, much more may it be said of the
moral powers. Infancy is moral vacuity. Human
life makes its appearance wholly destitute of
moral content. The conscience, or moral nature
of a child, is a vessel, indeed ; but it is absolutely
empty at birth of moral ideas and of moral char-
acter, either in the form of merit or demerit.
The view of De Pressense is as follows: "Man
begins with purely instinctive life, without any
clear consciousness of itself. In this phase the
individuality, the ego, the person, exists only in
germ, and is not separable from indistinct im-
pressions of which it is vaguely the subject. This
instinctive life makes man in the first stage of
his existence closely akin to the animal, though
there are already indications of the essential dif-
ference which will ultimately appear between
them. . . . It is governed by the sensations, af-
fected and modified by them, and apparently sub-
merged, like the swimmer who can not lift his
head above the rapid stream that is carrying him
along. He does not truly know, because he does

48 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

not clearly distinguish himself from the object
affecting him. Instinctive knowledge is then only
sensation more or less confused. The will, at this
stage, is nothing but an impulse urging on to a
blind movement, under the influence of the in-
stinctive feeling which makes man seek the pleas-
ant and avoid the painful." ("A Study of Ori-
gins," 251, 252.) He sums up the activities of
the soul in the three faculties: to know, to love,
to will. The infant has none of these faculties in
exercise. He is classified as a human being, not
because of the manifestation of either of these
or of any other faculty distinctly human, but
solely because of his birth from human parents
and the known development of other beings like
him. The infant has few instincts, and these in-
complete, but he has an enormous capacity to
learn.

" The baby new to earth and sky,

What time his tender palm is prest
Against the circle of the breast,
Has never thought that 'this is I.'

But as he grows he gathers much,
And learns the use of 'I' and 'me,'
And finds 'I am not what I see,

And other than the things I touch.'

So rounds he to a separate mind
From whence clear memory may begin,
As thro' the frame that binds him in

His isolation grows defined."

— Tennyson: In Memoriam. XLV.

THE CHILD AS GIVEN BY NATURE 49

WHAT, THEN, Is THIS NEW-BOBN BABY?

He is not a moral being. He is not even an
intellectual being. If we say he is an animal,
what is implied in that statement? It would be
quite beside our present purpose to describe his
muscular and anatomical construction. But it is
not so far from our purpose to sa,y that he is a
nervous organization. All his present reactions
from the outside world are nervous. The first
nervous response from his new habitat is a gasp
and a cry that establishes his new respiratory
method of life. Now and increasingly in the days
just ahead of him there are various actions of
which he is capable, but they are all nervous re-
sponses to outward stimuli, plus certain inherited
reflexes, which are generally known as instinctive
tendencies. He does nothing as the result of
thought. He does nothing as the result of willing,
and consequently he does nothing as the product
of a malicious will or an evil disposition. Never-
theless we will hear longheaded observers point-
ing out soon the evidences of his fallen nature.
They will observe that he is mad. They will soon
see that he is stubborn, etc. And they can point
out numerous indications very soon that he is
acting in the way he does in consequence of the
sin of Adam.

Before we leave the child under this Adamic
condemnation, let us observe a kitten. How many
days after its birth will it be before it spits at

4

50 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

you when you act upon it in a way that it does
not like. Can it not show a pretty good case of
cat-stubbornness and strike-back-a-tive-ness, while
the child a.s yet is quite innocent of such action?
Is it sin in the kitten ? Is it the evil nature within
it resulting from the transgression of some primi-
tive Adamic cat? If this is absurd, why on simi-
lar evidence do we condemn the child ? Before the
dawn of reason and of the moral sense, is there
anything culpable in a being that is nothing more
than a nervous machine acting in a manner that
tends to self-preservation? At this stage, is not
self-defensive reaction the only virtue it can dis-
play? For the time divine wisdom can do noth-
ing more for it.

I am sure that I shall be more than pardoned
for introducing the following words, so illumina-
tive of this point, from Prof. Edward Porter St.
John. He says: "In the early selfishness, which
later gives way to altruism, we gain another
glimpse of nature's way of working. . . . One
must get before he can give, and so she bends her
energies at first of all to the building up of a
strong personality, which shall be able to serve
another generation. There are certain large
moths in which the caterpillar stage lasts for
weeks or months, during which time the insect
lives to eat; in the adult stage, when they have
acquired wings, they take no food at all, and live
simply to prepare for the next generation. Here
is nature's parable of the spiritual life. Here is

the biological explanation of the unselfishness of
parents — and of the selfishness of children as well.

"But in the egoism of the child we can see
more than this of nature's plans; for she is never
inconsistent with herself, and the development of
morality is one of her chief concerns. Not only
is it true that morality does not suffer from the
natural selfishness of the child, but it is really
dependent upon it. In the development of almost
every one of its elements we can trace an egoistic
or selfish stage. The child feels resentment for
a wrong done to himself. If it were not so, how
could he ever feel indignation for a wrong done
to another? The boy is not content with simply
exhibiting his own attainments; he must outdo
another. The self-feeling which now finds ex-
pression in rivalry, will, by and by, manifest itself
in the positive form of self-respect and the nega-
tive form of humility, which seem more admirable
traits. But how can he ever feel humility unless
he measures himself by another? And how can
he so well gain his standards of self-respect as
by comparing himself with one who has reached
the higher level? Until a child has built up a
feeling of ownership in property that is his own,
how can he learn to sympathetically regard the
property rights of another? Surely God has not
blundered in shaping the soul of a child." (Sun-
day School Journal, 1910, p. 487.)

The fact is that many things are charged
against the child sheerly because he can not de-

52 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

fend himself against the slander, and has to re-
ceive, under adult promises of punishment if he
should talk back, many unpleasant conclusions.
A little girl one day in tears said to her mother,
"When you do that, it 's nervous; when I do it,
it 's naughty." In fact, this is just the reverse
of the truth. An adult with a developed con-
science and power of self-control can not do cer-
tain things without moral condemnation, which a
child might do as the reaction of a nervous or-
ganization against an unpleasant stimulus, with-
out feeling any sense of wrong. This little nerv-
ous organism, a full-blooded member of the ani-
mal kingdom, and only a candidate for the human
kingdom, can not commit a sinful act until there
is within him, given by some process profoundly
mysterious, a standard of righteousness and ap-
prehension of a Person whose rights are violated
by the action. As yet there is not in the child
the first gleam of such a standard, nor the re-
motest possibility of perceiving such a Person.
How meaningless, then, to speak of his sinfulness,
when he has not the most incipient power of sin !
How can they be essentially sinful in origin
of whom one can so beautifully and truthfully
say: "The breath of God breathes in them and
through them upon our concerns. Motherhood
dawns when they appear, and the inexpressible
sanctity and tenderness and charm that wait upon
their arrival are the cardinal blessings of life in
its diviner aspects. Let nothing rob us of this

THE CHILD AS GIVEN BY NATURE 53

humanness which proceeds from the Everlasting
Father; permit nothing to make us forget that
every life born of a woman is a visible expression
of the life of God. Whatever in our race is up-
lifting and most worthy, its strength, its peren-
nial honor, its divine likeness and growth, depend
alike on childhood." (Dr. S. P. Cadman in Brook-
lyn Eagle.)

But one replies, "The child has a sinful na-
ture."

This word "nature" is made to do large work
in the world. Upon its very vague and indefinite
corporosity are piled many a burden of logic,
theology, and philosophy. "What do people mean
by a sinful nature or fallen nature, which latter
term is used to convey the same meaning? Is a
sinful nature a nature that sins T No ; it can not
be that : for we have seen that the infant can not
sin. Well, then, it may be said that a sinful na-
ture is one that will develop into a nature that
will sin. This puts sinfulness back in the order
of nature where there is no volition, no moral
choosing; back into the causal order of things
where there are no alternatives ; back in the iron
grip of powers that can not be other than they
are, and for which no one but God, who made
them so, is responsible. If there is one heresy
in the world more heretical than another, it is
the heresy that makes God the author of sin.
Moreover, there is absolutely no logical necessity
for this assumption of the sinfulness of human

54 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

nature, as it comes from the hand of God. The
well-known and easily observable facts concern-
ing the child furnish all the conditions for all the
actualizations of its after-life.

The infant is an animal. It is not sinful for
an infant to be an animal and to act as an animal.
But it is sinful for an infant forever to remain
an animal, and after reason and conscience have
arrived to act as an animal. This child is an
organization of physical nerves to-day; but to-
morrow, by some process, mysterious under any
theory of his life, he will be a rational, a moral
human spirit, without losing one of his appetites
or fleshly passions or nervous impulses. To-day
he can not act differently from what he does act,
under any possibility within his control; but to-
morrow he may go to the right or to the left, up
or down, in any direction in which his animalism
impels him, or in the direction in which his higher
spiritual nature draws. The animalism of his
condition accounts for all the facts of action and
tendency, impulse and spiritual struggle that the
assumed sinful nature accounted for. The ani-
mal nature, which is undisputed, provides the field
of moral and spiritual conflict that will last as
long as life lasts. In this struggle there is no
sin implied, but a condition which may issue in
sin at any moment that the person may so decide ;
but which will never so issue of necessity, never
unless and until he so decides. To overcome the
animal, subdue the animal, rise triumphant above

THE CHILD AS GIVEN BY NATURE 55

the animal, is life's problem of personal char-
acter.

In the struggle with animalism, as in the tra-
ditional struggle with inbred sin, there is no per-
sonal deliverance and victory except through
God's aid, which is graciously offered to all, and
by it sinning is destroyed as a necessity.

It is not the problem of spiritual life to kill
this animal, which God gave us at birth. It was
God's first gift, and unmistakably represents His
goodness and wisdom. But it was never given
us as representing man's final condition; rather
it is only the starting-point of life. As such it
has nothing but an impelling force. It can not see
the way for a man; it can not appreciate the
worth of a man ; it can not choose the way or the
destiny of a man. It, then, needs control, limita.-
tion, denial, guidance. The moral problem of
life, as related to the animal nature, is contained
in these actions of mastery by the rational na-
ture.* We are never to attempt to destroy any
animal impulse, much less to claim that by the
power of God's grace any animal impulse has
been destroyed. These impulses are not sinful.
Life under grace tends to their strength and
health rather than to their weakness and nega-

* "Men, it is true, no longer believe in the devil's agency; at least, they no longer
believe in the power of calling up the devil and transacting business with him; other-
wise there would be hundreds of such stories as that of Faust. But the spirit which
created the story and rendered it credible to all Europe remains unchanged. . . . We
do not make compacts, but we throw away our lives; we have no tempter face to face
with us, offering illimitable powers in exchange for our futurity; but we have our own
desires, imperious, insiduous, and for them we bartor our existence — for one moment's
pleasure risking years of anguish." — (Lewes: "Life of Goethe," II, 270.)

56 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

tion. Their destruction is not sanctification, as
many suppose ; but is rather the retributive effect
of their unrestrained abuse. They are to be used
and mastered in the interest of the rational life,
under the over-guidance of divine law and pur-
pose, by the assistance of the Divine Spirit.

It is an ordinary assumption that sin inheres
in the flesh. Writers who treat of the nature of
Jesus argue that it was necessary for His per-
sonality to have a fleshly nature in which there is
no taint. Says one writer: "How much more,
then, in the nature of things, is it necessary that
He who came to redeem men from sin should Him-
self be without sin in His own flesh ! An immacu-
late spirit demands an immaculate organism."
(Cooke: "Incarnation and Eecent Criticism,"
147.) What can this mean? It is hard to an-
swer, unless we assume that the absence of sin
in the flesh will be evidenced by the absence of
fleshly appetite, passion, impulse. But such an
absence is not purity, it is mutilation, destruction
of the bodily function in one form or another. It
is something that has no analogy or suggestion in
the experience of Christians. The Christian who
attains the highest degree and experience of pu-
rity does not thereby lose any animal appetite
or passion; he receives only such a spiritual en-
dowment that he is able completely to control
them. This control is the vital and sufficient thing
in a member of our race. Not absence of conflict,
but victory, is human excellence. This demand

THE CHILD AS GIVEN BY NATURE 57

for the elimination of passion and appetite, usu-
ally prejudged by being called "sinful appetites
and passions," arises probably from the assump-
tion that animal appetites and passions are in
themselves sinful. But this throws the burden of
sinfulness back on to God, who alone is respon-
sible for human nature in this form, and who in
the beginning pronounced them good.

A little reflection will bring the conviction that
sin is a moral thing; a something where choice
is involved; something which pertains to the will
and the spirit; something which is not grounded
in a nature ; not an unavoidable, normal impulse ;
not a thing for the elminiation of which no pro-
vision is made by grace through faith in Jesus.
Sin has a moral remedy; but appetite and pas-
sion have none except drugs and the surgeon's
knife.

Have we, then, merely substituted one term for
another — the term animalism for sin! Is this all
a discussion about words? I think that can
hardly be said. The whole conception has been
changed. The traditional view had a sin on its
hand for which there was no rational cause, either
human or divine. The human causation, Adam's
primeval sin, always involved injustice, confusion
of moral conceptions, and an irrational philoso-
phy. It has long been rejected by scientific minds.
The assumed divine causation reflected on the
goodness and equity of God, and should be given
up in the interest of divine honor, even if we

58 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

are left without any means of accounting for the
moral history of the individual. Our explana-
tion, on the other hand, throws back no great
burden of responsibility on the first man; allows
the wisdom, the goodness, and the justice of God
to stand unchallenged, and at the same time af-
fords every datum of explanation of the subse-
quent history of the child that the traditional
view possessed. And it does much more : it allows
us to use physical descriptions of physical condi-
tions, and reserves to us the word "sin" for ap-
plication to a fact purely moral and spiritual. It
gives us a rational and possible basis for a life
of struggle, which no man ever could avoid, what-
ever his professions and claims, which life God
can smile upon and reward. It gives an expli-
cable view of the sanctified life, which, under the
supposition that animal propensity was sin, was
made impossible and absurd. These are not small
contributions to an explanation of our spiritual
life and its reconciliation with our actual life in
the body. Moreover, it creates no difficulties to
offset its gains, unless it be the straightening out
of some exegesis based on the materialistic view
of sin. Having meditated much upon it, I know
of no Scripture that may not be explained in an
atmosphere of candor, although there are several
that may be quoted in a controversial spirit.

CHAPTER III

THE BIRTH OP THE SPIRIT

HAS the child a soul? Lotze places the proof of
a soul in the possession of a unity of conscious-
ness. The test seems to be that a being having a
soul (or a rational spirit) is one that recognizes
itself as one being, or the experiences which it
has as belonging to its one self. It is doubtful if
the child can stand this test. His reactions
against the external world are purely nervous.
The nerves feel pain, but the child is not conscious
of a pained self. His hands and feet are as ex-
ternal to his consciousness as any other objects
he may see. To say that he has a potential soul,
a something that will come to unity of conscious-
ness soon, may be true enough. It is immaterial
to our discussion, and its investigation would lead
us far afield. It is enough to notice that such a
soul is of no value to his present constitution of
moral character.

That the new-born child has an animal soul,
a forming principle which builds his body and
animates it, is beyond question. As much pos-
sibly can be said for the cell which was its start-
ing-point of being. But that he has not a ra-

59

60 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

tional mind, rendering him capable of moral ac-
tion, is almost as indisputable as that the cell
had not. The relation between these two, the cell
and the rational nature, constitutes one of the
most interesting and intricate problems of human
life. Whether the Bible holds to a tripartite or
dual nature for man is, I believe, an unsolved
puzzle. According to Franz Delitsch, in his great
work, " Biblical Psychology," (103), the Scrip-
tures make a sharp distinction between flesh and
spirit, and yet the flesh is endowed with soul.
This soul of flesh the child has; but there is as
yet no exhibition of the spirit. When is this
higher spirit born?

Evolutionary philosophy can not furnish us
an answer. There are two things for which Evo-
lution has no explanation, nor can it give us the
slightest hint concerning their origin. They are :
the origin of life and the origin of spirit. Many
attempts have been made to deduce life from mat-
ter ; but they have always been unsuccessful, and
for the time being, at least, they are now definitely
abandoned. Just as little can Evolution account
for the introduction of spirit. This task, then,
we may place beyond human power to perform.
We can not, apart from revelation, give any ac-
count of the origin of the human spirit. Its ex-
istence we accept as a fact ; the evidences of it are
abundant; but whence and how it came to be we
have nothing to say, except that the Bible says
we are sons of God. If Traducianism be true, that

THE BIETH OF THE SPIRIT Gl

the spirit of the child is derived from the spirits
of the parents, we might assume that it originated
at conception; though the assumption would not
be compelled and in itself is very difficult. If the
origin of the spirit is subsequent to conception
and previous to birth, it then seems a necessity
of belief that the child's spirit is derived from its
mother, but not from its father. The difficulties
that gather about Traducianism seem to make it
an almost impossible belief. On the other hand,
if we accept the doctrine of Creationism, that each
human spirit is a direct creation of the Divine
Spirit, the time of its origin may fall within a
wide range.

When the spirit is born, is about as easy to
answer as where it is located, a question which
has been one of the puzzles of philosophers, little
and big, of all ages. If I am not mistaken, Joseph
Cook lectured on this subject in his Boston course
more than thirty years ago. But I do not remem-
ber that he solved the mystery.

The pre-existence of the spirit as pictured by
Wordsworth in the following lines, is a beautiful
poetic conception; but hardly needs serious dis-
cussion. Its truth or untruth is outside the limits
of our investigation.

" Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar ;

Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,

62 MOBAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy ;
Shades of the prison house begin to close

Upon the growing boy,
But he beholds the light and whence it flows.

He sees it in his joy ;

The youth whom daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended ;
At length the man perceives it die away ;
And fade into the light of common day."

(Wordsworth: "Ode to Immortality," V.)

The uncritical, no doubt, assume that a child
is born with a rational spirit and may lift their
eyebrows in astonishment that such a position
could ever be questioned. But such persons would
be at their wits J end if they should be asked when
the spirit became identified with the child's body.
Was it when it was a single cell? Was it when
it was in the fish stage 1 or in the reptilian stage ?
or the simian stage? Did it come to it at its first
gasp for breath ? Did its first cry become the an-
guish of a human spirit? I fancy that it would
be rather difficult to reply affirmatively to any
of these questions, and I, at least, will not have
the temerity to reply negatively. If we reason
from the analogy of the origin of the body, and
suppose that the spirit is not the product of any
one moment of time, and that only its germinal
potentiality is given in birth, and that this poten-
tiality in no wise functions as it does in its com-
plete manifestation, we may best account for all

THE BIRTH OF THE SPIRIT 63

the facts. The ground for assuming this poten-
tial beginning is admittedly a priori. We can not
observe in the child any more evidences of spirit
than we can in the kitten; but we believe it be-
longs to the genus homo, and if not an idiot, has
powers which will unfold into spirit-action after
awhile, and respond to environment as the kitten
never will.

Of one thing, however, there can hardly be a
dispute: at birth the human spirit, if existent at
all, has not come to its manifestation. So our in-
quiry may take the form: when does it come to
manifestation, so as to be clothed with moral
freedom and human responsibility? For myself
there are no more rational difficulties in assuming
that the spirit is coming to its birth than there are
in assuming that it is coming to its manifestation
and responsibility. But our purpose is equally
served with the question in either form.

A child may profitably be contemplated as
two selves: his realized self; what he can do.
This depends upon his past ; what he has learned
to do. Second, his potential self; what he can
learn to do and may become. This latter depends
upon the contribution of others. His potential
self is not yet born or actualized. If at birth
thrown upon his own resources, what he can do
is quite insignificant. He will never be able to
talk, and without speech his thought will always
be infantile and meager. One writer has said that
he can never be a person unless he mingles with

64 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

persons. It is certain that lie will be so circum-
scribed in power, lie will be so unlike other per-
sons that we know a.s such, that the remark is
practically true. A new-born babe, henceforth
cared for by some kind animal, such as the fabled
wolf which suckled Romulus and Remus, and
never coming in contact with human kind, would
be such a defective human being, and so much
like the animals with which he grew up, that there
would be no suggestion of personality except the
form of his body. So the real self is the second
self, which is yet to become after his physical
birth, and the contribution to his being is chiefly
through the mother and father who watch over
him. They are giving birth to him all through
the years of his developing selfhood.

In assuming the possibility of a germinal ori-
gin of the spirit apart from the germinal origin
of the body, we recognize that we are quite be-
yond the boundary of the known. However, the
supposition will be justified if by it we can ra-
tionalize, even in a small degree, this very mys-
terious realm. The objections to it seem to be
born chiefly from materialism, and make the doc-
trine of immortality impossible. In our specula-
tion we are doing much the same as we do after
the death of the body. It is about as much out-
side the realm of the known to imagine the spirit
as existing after the physical dissolution of the
body as it is to imagine the physical organism
before birth as not yet inhabited with a spirit. It

THE BIRTH OF THE SPIRIT 65

is quite as rational to assume that the spirit is
a separate direct creation of God as it is to believe
that the spirit "returns to God who gave it" after
the body is placed in the grave. If the latter is
a belief dear to all the world, the former may well
be used as its harmonious if not inevitable foun-
dation.

In the attainment of human condition the child
has a long way to go — farther than any other ani-
mal born into the world. There is more differ-
ence between the infant homo and the adult homo
than between the infancy and adulthood of any
other being which comes into the world. Not only
is the distance to be traveled greater, but there is
actually to be a translation from one kind of be-
ing into another, which does not occur with any
other being subject to birth. Says Major J. W.
Powell ("From Barbarism to Civilization," 505,
p. 97) : "Every child is born destitute of things
possessed in manhood, which distinguishes him
from the lower animals. Of all industries he is
artless; of all languages he is speechless; of all
reasoning he is thoughtless; of all philosophies
he is opinionless ; but arts, institutions, languages,
opinions, and mentations he acquires as the years
go by from childhood to manhood. In all these
respects the new-born babe is hardly the peer of
the new-born beast; but as the years go by, ever
and ever he exhibits his superiority in all of the
great classes of activities, until the distance by
which he is separated from the brute is so great

5

66 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

that his realm of existence is in another kingdom
of nature. ' '

The prolonged infancy of the child not only
means that he is born at the foot of the ladder
and ''crawls to maturity" at a far slower pace
than any of the animal species; but also that he
climbs so much higher. The lion is as old at three
and six years as man is at fifteen and twenty-five,
and yet it lives to half the total age of the man.
Its infancy is only one-fifth as long; its adulthood
is almost equal. Moreover, this prolonged infancy
belongs only to those races of men who achieve
the highest attainments of civilization. The Aleu-
tian boy is an independent hunter at ten, and may
marry. In Tahiti, children become practically
free from parental control at eight, and may set
up a sort of group life for themselves. (Cham-
berlain: "The Child," 53.) Says Tyler: "Man
is a being of extraordinary complexity and of in-
numerable possibilities. He can rise to the
heights of wisdom and power of which we as yet
have little conception, or he can sink lower than
any brute. He can press upward in the line of
progress, can stray or straggle from the line of
march, or stagnate or turn back. He has more
possibilities of failure than the lower animal, and
the attractions and allurements to stray from the
upward course are more numerous and more
powerful." ("Man in Evolution," 84.)

Lessing said that "education was revelation
coming to the individual man. ' ' Spirit-formation,

THE BIETH OF THE SPIRIT 67

if this be true, is not synonymous with education :
for the process is not a mere revelation of the out-
side world; because there are required certain
subjective changes which condition the incoming
revelation. At the first the child can take in a
certain class of impressions only. Before others
are perceived the very cells of the brain must
undergo transformation, and the brain come to
what may be called its human size. The new-born
child probably does not use the front or intellec-
tual part of the brain — only the medulla, and per-
haps only the nervous ganglia at the base of the
skull ("The Child," 81.) If spirit-birth were
education merely, then the time of its arrival
might be noted when the child had attained some
standard arbitrarily fixed. But there are certain
periods in child development, fixed by nature, and
they are by no means arbitrarily designated rela-
tively to an advancing standard. These periods
are attained and passed whether we note them
or not, and condition entrance upon the succeeding
stage. If we know what a human spirit is? and
how it acts, we can easily determine when it has
arrived, though we may not have perceived the
moment of its coming. We can easily distinguish
between the infantile and dependent being and the
adult and completely responsible spirit. Nothing
is more important in the administration of the
home and the school and the Church than knowl-
edge of these periods and their appropriate activi-
ties. Parental responsibility increases as childish

68 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

irresponsibility is recognized. If the infant has
not a rational spirit, the parent must discharge
the functions of the spiritual life for the child.
If the child of six years has not come to moral re-
sponsibility, the parent must assume before God
and the community that responsibility for the
child, and so on up in diminishing measure until
the youth has come to the place in life where he
may bear his moral burdens on his own shoulders.

CHAPTER IV

IS THEEE A MOKAL BIAS IN HUMAN NATURE ?

IF the question be raised, Is there a bias toward
sin in human nature, as we know it, that is not the
consequence of actual transgression of law by the
individual ? we can not return an answer in a sim-
ple word. We eliminate the case of actual per-
sonal transgression : for it is conceded by all that
in such a person there has resulted a weakness
which gives sin the advantage in the contest.

In answering we must remember that human
nature is complex — flesh and spirit, with the pro-
pensities and qualities of each in their various re-
lations. In dealing with the new-born child we
have to deal immediately, as we have seen, only
with the flesh. But as this child is the individual
that is to become a complete human being, we are
hardly dealing candidly with the problem unless
we seek to analyze human nature as it is in its
developed but normal form. It might be con-
ceded that the child needs no change of nature,
but that that concession does not inevitably follow
concerning the complete human being, who is the
normal and inevitable development of the child.
So we must face the question in its application to

69

70 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

the human being that has arrived at the full form
of his powers. With this understanding of our
question, what shall be our answer?

First, we consider that part of human nature
which we call the flesh: The animal nature cer-
tainly does furnish the conditions which make a
struggle against sin necessary. It is not that sin
is located in the animal nature, or that its work-
ings are sinful in themselves. But it grows out
of the fact that animalism has nothing in it but
impulse. It has no self-limiting power within it-
self. It has nothing but a tendency to function or
a pressure toward gratification.

Legitimate gratification is not sinful; but the
flesh does not of itself stop at the line of legiti-
macy. Its only tendency, when it arrives at that
line, is to push on. But the passing of that line
is sin ; and the effort to hold it to that line consti-
tutes a direct struggle of the spirit with the
flesh. The sin that occurs from a transgression
of the boundary is not a sin of the flesh — for the
flesh can not sin ; but it is a sin of the spirit, whose
function of regency in the personality has not
been made good. "Sin is no factor of the true
humanity, but only a feature of empirical human-
ity which is absolutely fatal to the true. What is
truly human is not sin, but the power to be
tempted to sin. It is not perdition, but freedom. ' '
(Forsyth: "Person and Place of Jesus Christ,"
302.)

So we have the paradoxical answer: the ani-

MORAL BIAS IN HUMAN NATUEE 71

mal nature has in it a pull toward sin; but that
pull is not a state of sin or an act of sin. The
state of sin is that condition of personality in
which the fleshly impulse is enthroned. The de-
gree of sinfulness of the state is a balance between
the intensity of the fleshly impulse and the
strength of the guiding spirit ; just as the degree
of danger in a horse is the balance between the
animal spirits of the horse and the strength of the
driver who guides and restrains him. The
strength of the first, unmatched by the strength
of the other, produces a condition of lawlessness
and wreckage. The act of sin is the transgression
of the legitimate boundaries of fleshly action.
Neither state nor act is inevitable from the rela-
tion of flesh and spirit, the proffered aid of the
Spirit of God being always assumed.

The question as it relates itself to the working
of the spirit is still more intricate. There are cer-
tain sins that are not the result of the operation
of the flesh, but are the result of the activities of
the spirit itself. They are such sins as pride,
haughtiness, selfishness, self-indulgence, etc.

By close analysis we will discover that these
are but the exaggerated form of certain germinal,
fundamental, personal principles, that are virtues.
For example, self-respect is a fundamental virtue,
without which character-building is impossible;
but the exaggerated forms of this virtue are pride,
vanity, haughtiness, etc. Paul says : ' ' For I say
through grace that was given to me, to every man

72 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

that is among you, not to think of himself more
highly than he ought to think; but so to think as
to think soberly, according as God has dealt to
each man a measure of faith." (Bom. 12:3.)
Here it is clear that Paul allows that one should
think "highly" of himself. Up to that point he
is virtuous ; but when he passes a certain point he
becomes vicious.

Again, self-love is a fundamental virtue, fur-
nishing the fulcrum for all moral appeal, and
without it virtue would have no foundation in
human motive ; it would become a perfectly capri-
cious thing. The Bible from beginning to end is
full of appeals to this fundamental and normal
human element. It is represented as a motive in
the sacrificial career of Jesus Christ, "Who for
the joy that was set before Him endured the
cross, despising shame, and hath sat down at the
right hand of the throne of God." (Heb. 12: 2.)
So that we think it is clear that self-love is a
fundamental excellence in human or even in di-
vine nature. But its exaggerated working is self-
ishness, in its manifold forms — a sin so compre-
hensive that it has been estimated as the one cen-
tral principle of all sin.

Recognizing this distinction between the legiti-
mate root-form of a principle, which is a virtue,
and the exaggerated form, which is a sin, are we
not able to see that here also is ground for a
struggle within the activities of the spirit itself,
similar to that which we have seen between the

MORAL BIAS IN HUMAN NATURE 73

flesh and the spirit, and that the struggle is not
of itself an indication of a sinful condition? The
human spirit is to seek its welfare as an end of
its existence; but the manner of the attainment
of that end, paradoxically enough, is to transfer
the center of its activities from its own being to
the heart of God Himself. One must love him-
self ; but when he looks for the means of promoting
his welfare, he discovers that it is self-forgetful-
ness and mindfulness of the glory of God, of His
Kingdom, and of His other children. This does
not constitute a contradiction, even though it be
a paradox. It is simply a revelation of the mar-
velous wisdom of God in His provision for the
welfare of myself and my brother at the same
time by a single action through an altruistic law.

That discovery, whenever it comes, will pre-
cipitate a crisis. Until the hour of that discovery
it can not be said that the direct seeking of our
individual good is a sin ; it is only a mistake. Now,
if one shall reject the operation of this altruistic
law, the identical direct seeking of the good for
one 's self is no longer a mistake ; it is a sin. But
if one yields his self-seeking, he will avoid the sin
and be lifted out of his mistake*

If any one shall regard this crisis and its so-
lution as a conversion, we will have no contro-
versy. We point out only that the change is a
change in the spiritual nature, but not of moral
character. There was no condemnation before;
there is none after. It is a change that grows

74 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

out of spiritual enlightenment and the workings
of the already inwrought Divine Spirit. It is not
a turning away from sin to holiness; it is only
an essential step in holiness, and the life of God 's
children are full of such normal crises.

Our answer to the whole question, then, is
somewhat a paradox. In the working of both flesh
and spirit there is a pull, an impulse that leads
toward sin, but stops short of it when the higher
nature recognizes the boundaries where virtue
ends and sin begins, draws the line and says that
the movement must end at that line. It is a strug-
gle with an impulse that, uncontrolled and unlim-
ited, would end in sin, and thus it is not very
far wrong to call it a struggle against sin. But
it ought ever to be remembered that it is not a
sinful struggle.

If one would look for a living illustration of
what we have said, he may find it in the tempta-
tions of Jesus.* If struggle were sinful, Jesus,
as a pure Being, could never have known the pull
of temptation. That He did feel it in proportion
to the wealth of His nature, the exaltation of His
mission, and the power of His passion to accom-
plish that mission, we are ready to believe. The
point of that temptation seems to be the demon-
stration of the truth of that testimony, which had
just been given Him from heaven, that He was the

* Of Jesus it is said: "The only temptation with real power to Him was a temp-
tation to good — to inferior forms of good. It was not the temptation to forsake the
righteousness of God, but to seek it by other paths, less moral and less patient paths,
than God's highway of the holy cross." — (Forsyth: "Person and Place of Jesus Christ."
803.)

MORAL BIAS IN HUMAN NATURE 75

Son of God. What was implied in that testi-
mony? That He had creative power. Then, turn
these stones into bread : for His hunger furnished
a real occasion. If He be the Son of God, then
it is very desirable that some unmistakable sign
should be given to the people that they might be-
lieve it. Then, cast Thyself down from a pin-
nacle of the temple and let the people see that
angels from heaven bear Thee up and no harm
comes to Thee. If He be the Son of God, it is
very necessary that all of earth's forces, evil as
well as good, shall unite in the formation of His
Kingdom. Then fall down at the feet of Satan;
make some compromise with evil ; seek an alliance
with the powers of a degenerate world, and they
will all join in bringing the world to Thy feet.
All the objects presented in these temptations are
legitimate. All of them Jesus sincerely desired
to encompass, and His desire was commensurate
in intensity with the passion of His nature. But
the means in each case was illegitimate, and the
moral divergence of means and end furnished to
Him, and the same divergence may furnish to
us, an intense conflict, a fierce temptation.

We then have to do in normal human nature
with the double impulse — one toward sensuous
gratification, and one toward spiritual or tem-
peramental exaggeration. The flesh says : indulg-
ence without limit; the mind says: indulgence as
a means toward a higher purpose only. One of
the elements of the spirit says : let me develop re-

76 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

gardless of other virtues or other persons. The
instructed spirit says: development can only be
in God. All other growth is but losing the way,
and consequently losing the goal.

There is not, then, in normal human nature a
single bias unopposed, but an impulse met by a
higher faculty, operating under the guidance of a
higher law, and for a more ultimate end.* The
condition of struggle with the flesh will end with
the earth-life. The conditions of spiritual strug-
gle are eternal. There are hints, which we may
be in no situation to analyze or criticise, though
not irrational in their suggestion, that angels who
had not the fleshly bias at all, yet fell while in the
situation of a pure spiritual condition.

If any one shall say that this discussion is
academic only; that there is no individual adult
that is normal, none whose nature is not damaged
by some sin of his own, we will not join issue
on the point. Its introduction was necessary to
show what kind of a thing is the human nature
which the child inherits.

To many it seems that the impulse of the flesh
is too strong for the spiritual nature to resist.
That if we may not use the word 1 1 bias, ' ' at least
that the impulse sinward has the preponderance.

*Lydston states this truth in a little different way when he says: "It is fair to
say that the human being is an animal primarily possessing instinctive tendencies to
crime, but who is subjected under civilized conditions to certain inhibitory influences
that have accumulated through the ages, and which prevent the average man from be-
coming vicious or criminal. When these inhibitions or restraints are removed, criminal
act result." — ("Diseases of Society," 27) He is speaking of crime, and hence speaks of
external inhibitions; we are analyzing the tendency to sin, and hence bring to view the
Internal inhibitions.

MOEAL BIAS IN HUMAN NATURE 77

Hence, as a matter of fact, no individual ever
passes through his career without giving way to
sin. Is sin therefore a necessity of our inherit-
ance? or how shall we explain this universal fact?

We may say that the Spirit of God is given
to every man, or offered to all, to assist in with-
standing the onslaught of impulse. This is ac-
cepted by all, but it does not clear up the situation.
Even regenerate persons give the same general
testimony : that they all at some time fall into sin.
Is this, then, a disproof of the divine ability to
keep one from sinning? Does this universal testi-
mony establish a law of necessity? Has God put
us under sin at our birth and furnished us with
no way of escape even through Jesus Christ? To
say that the universal experience proves sinful
inheritance, is to allow that the same experience
proves that there is no relief through faith in
Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. This is a
conclusion from which all will draw back. Is it
not better to seek an explanation of the universal
experience from the nature of freedom and the
general influences that pervade all society, even
the best-known Christian society?

"It has been concluded that regeneration so
affects the will, the affections, and the intelligence
as to establish in its subject a preponderant tend-
ency toward God and His Kingdom of righteous-
ness. But a right tendency is not necessarily one
of perfect and indefectible strength. The complex
life of the human soul makes it possible that the

78 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

heavenly attraction should prevail over it, while
yet it feels the drawings of the things of sense,
and is in more or less danger of conceding too
much to that inferior drawing." (Sheldon:
" System of Doctrine," 459.)

It is only necessary to hold that sin is not ne-
cessitated; that any given experience may be an
experience in holiness, as well as to allow that in
the mysterious working of freedom it may be an
experience in sin.

This discussion, if followed out, would lead
us too far off from our subject. We leave it with
the observation that any explanation that will sat-
isfy in the case of the regenerated adults will
also clarify the case of children. Their experi-
ence in sinning is no whit more universal than is
that of those who have passed through adult con-
version. It is a fair question for investigation
whether, in the cases of carefully trained children,
their record is not better than that of adult Chris-
tians. But our position does not demand the af-
firmation of this, and we leave it an open question.
Justly Professor Tyler has said: "Appetites are
old and deep-seated, rude and very strong. Man 's
senses are keen. Old motives, like fear or hate,
are always threatening revolt against the higher
and younger moral and religious ruling powers.
... It has been a long and fearful struggle.
Rex regis rebellis. The king has always been in
rebellion against the king. The lower always ap-
peals from and against the higher. Ape and tiger

die hard." ("Man in Evolution," 59.) This he
says from the evolutionist's point of view. May
we not hope on that assumption that the higher
nature may continually strengthen, and the lower,
being continually awed into obedience, may learn
to be more tractable !

The question is often put in the form, Is human
nature, unassisted by the Spirit of God, more in-
clined to evil than to good? In this form the sub-
ject is obscured rather than illuminated. Man is
made for fellowship and communion with God
through the Holy Spirit. We might as well inves-
tigate the physical powers of man by raising the
question, What can he do without an atmosphere?
When communion with God is rejected he is ab-
normal, unnatural, and the answer to the question,
what he can do in that condition, has no signifi-
cance. The proper inquiry is concerning man as
God has planned his nature. We then would ask,
Is man in his natural condition of fellowship with
God more inclined to evil than to good! The an-
swer even then must be : Man is in a moral strug-
gle with his animal nature, but the issue is not
uncertain so long as he maintains this living re-
lation with God.

CHAPTER V

HEKEDITY AND ENVIRONMENT

Too MUCH and too little have been said about he-
redity : too much if mere physical heredity only is
meant; too little if spiritual heredity also is con-
sidered. It is one of the unsolved problems, and
agreement concerning it has not been reached.
Perhaps it has never been properly conceived.
Some exalt it to a supreme position ; others think
it may be overcome and nullified by environment.
Lewes in his "Life of Goethe" says: "It is
profoundly false to say that * character is formed
by circumstances, ' unless the phrase with unphilo-
sophic equivocation include the whole complexity
of circumstances, from creation downward. Char-
acter is to circumstances what the organism is to
the outer world : living in it, but not specially de-
termined by it. ... Every biologist knows that
circumstance has a modifying influence; but he
also knows th#t modifications are possible only
within certain limits. . . . Goethe truly says
that if Eaphael were to paint peasants at an inn,
he could not help making them look like apostles,
whereas Teniers would make his apostles look like
Dutch boors. Instead, therefore, of saying that

80

HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 81

man is the creature of circumstances, it would be
nearer the mark to say that he is the architect of
circumstances. It is character which builds a ca-
reer out of circumstances. ' ' In dealing with such
a surpassing genius as Goethe we may excuse
Lewes somewhat for putting the case very strong.
There is something that precedes circumstance,
but it can hardly be character. And unless char-
acter does precede circumstances it can hardly
be credited with building anything out of them.
Ruskin ("Modern Painters," III, 42) gives even
more credit to heredity, although, as we shall see,
in a somewhat mixed conception. "The great-
ness or the smallness of a man is determined for
him at his birth, as strictly as it is determined for
a fruit, whether it is to be a currant or an apricot.
Education, favorable circumstances, resolution, in-
dustry, may do much, in a certain sense they may
do everything; that is to say, they determine
whether the poor apricot shall fall in the form of
a green bead, blighted by the east wind, and be
trodden under foot; or whether it shall expand
into tender pride and sweet brightness of golden
velvet. ' ' These two sentences are hardly consist-
ent with each other. The latter allows to circum-
stances what the former denies to them. A great
man and a small man belong to the same species.
Birth has fixed it that neither shall be of some
other species. This granted, it is within the power
of circumstance to modify the degree of manhood
which either shall be. Lacassagne, a French crim-

82 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

inologist, has said, "The social environment is
the culture medium of criminality." But society
not only fashions its criminals by its social condi-
tions; it also produces by social conditions high-
class citizens. The same law works for preserva-
tion in one direction, that in the opposite works
for corruption. Its workings in the preservative
line we see more clearly, however, in that form of
society which we call the family, because the
family has its opportunity at that period when
character is most impressible and formative.*
Dr. Lydston gives the following very striking il-
lustration of the lines of destiny formed by en-
vironment: "Two boys were truants and went to
a farmer's orchard to steal apples. One of the
boys was caught: the other escaped. The one
who was caught was turned over to the constable
and placed in jail, where he was thrown among
criminals long enough to fall under the influence
of evil associations. When released he was much
worse than when arrested, and got deeper and
deeper into crime. The other boy, with whom
he had gone to steal apples, remained in school,

* The first form of our Indian corn is a grass about two feet high, " bearing at its
summit a handsome panicle of male flowers, and on the culm below one or two fertile
spikes three inches long and half an inch in diameter, having the seeds arranged around
the elongated rachis. . . . This represented all that nature (heredity) could do.
The vast cornfields of the West, the stalks fifteen feet in height, loaded with three or
four ears, each nearly a foot in length and two or three inches in diameter, represent what
nurture (environment) has done." — (Ward: "Applied Sociology," 126.)

The above is an example of improvement through the power of environment. The
same author gives an illustration also of the degeneration that may be produced by
environment. He tells of a grass which he found growing near Washington, D. C.,
pauperized but still very green, and to his astonishment, it was nothing else than de-
generated wheat. It had arrived at its present condition by having lost the care which
man gives to it.

HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 83

was looked upon as respectable, acquired an edu-
cation, became a lawyer, and finally a judge.
Twenty-five years after the apple-stealing episode
the boy who ran away and escaped punishment
was the judge who sentenced to death for murder
the boy who had been caught and whose punish-
ment had started him in a career of crime."
(" Diseases of Society," 95.)

A prominent preacher in Chicago said a few
days ago, "We have handed down to us the ambi-
tions and appetites, talents and taints, virtues and
vices of our ancestors, just as we get from them
our forms and features, our manners and voices."
This is probably true, but possibly not by the
identically same heredity. The heredity of the
flesh is somewhat differently conditioned from the
heredity of mind. The form and feature came to
us in the fleshly birth, and no matter what hap-
pens to us afterwards, they can not be wholly
eradicated. But the virtues and vices of our an-
cestors will have little influence upon us unless we
remain with them during those years when the
spirit is coming to its birth. Physical heredity is
about all that is given to us at birth. That which
is born of the flesh is flesh. There is no sort of
dispute concerning the power of heredity in the
nervous system. This accounts for all that is cer-
tainly proven concerning it. The moral traits, the
acquired traits, parents are not able to hand down
to their children unless they also have their train-
ing. But training is usually credited to environ-

84 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

merit. Many things are credited to heredity incor-
rectly, unless some broader than ordinary view is
given to it. It is sometimes said, Some men were
born Republicans or Presbyterians, and no earthly
power can change their tendencies. On the con-
trary, this must be credited to training, and not
to birth. If these same persons had been removed
to the center of Africa at birth, they never would
have had a notion of Republicanism or Presbyte-
rianism.

But we raise the question, Is this intimate
training environment, or on the level with other
influences known as environment? Would it not
be a better conception to think of soul-formation
as the spiritual birth, and as being the spiritual
heritage of the child from his parents! This
would give to heredity all that is claimed for it,
but would hold it to certain conditions, the ab-
sence of which would nullify it. When the eyes of
the child look up into the eyes of the mother,
which answer back with her own soul illumination ;
when she presses him close up to her bosom, and
he feels in the physical heart-beat her spiritual
pulsations of love for him; when prayer and so-
licitude ever create about him an atmosphere of
spiritual dynamic that gives him courage and
guidance, there is something more vital being com-
municated to him than can ever come from a dull
and passive environment, to which he may or may
not decide to respond. About the first recognition
that a child has is the recognition of personality.

HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 85

' ' As early as the second month it distinguishes its
mother's or nurse's touch in the dark. It learns
the characteristic methods of holding, taking up,
patting, and adapts itself to these personal varia-
tions. It is quite a different thing from the child's
behavior toward things which are not persons."
(Baldwin: "Mental Development in the Child,"
335.) "When the child takes the next step from
recognition of personality to the development of
his own personality, he does so through the func-
tion of imitation. When the organism is ripe for
the enlargement of its active range by new ac-
commodations, then he begins to be dissatisfied
with . . . contemplation, and starts on his ca-
reer of imitation. And of course he imitates
persons." Thus the soul of the child and the
soul of the parent are in vital communication to
a degree not existing between him and things.
It is this ascertained law of vital relation between
parent and child that demands some intenser name
than the term environment conveys, and suggests
the propriety of calling it heredity. No physical
communication was ever more vital to him, even
when he formed a part of the physical organism of
the mother, than the spiritual tides that now flow
through him from the ardent spiritual nature of
father or mother. Much attention has been given
to pre-natal impressions — perhaps not too much,
if we are thinking of the nervous system alone.
But the spirit of the mother has its supreme op-
portunity in the post-natal life, when the child has

86 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

come to those human conditions where he may re-
ceive spiritual influences through channels of
spirit, and not through mere blood arteries. Dr.
Duvall, of Ohio Wesleyan University, allows the
statement that the child grows up in the matrix
of the home-life for the first nine years of his
life as he grew in the matrix of his mother's body
for the first nine months. The higher nature is
spiritual ; its period of gestation is the years when
parental influences enfold it; streams of habit
flow into it; bands of power are bound round it,
directing its growth and controlling the spiritual
nutriment that is built into its character. Let us
take a single example of the invincible power of
the parent, the law of Imitation. Imitation in a
child is not volitional. He can not help imitating.
His nature acts that way independently of choice.
Yet every action performed through imitation
drops some reflex back into his self -life. His self
is but the product of his past actions. "What we
do is a function of what we think; what we think
is a function of what we have done." (Baldwin.)
We thus can control the action of the child, and
hence the character of the child through the ac-
tions we live before him, and the authority we
have over him. Thus these years of childhood up
to adolescence are much more important for char-
acter than anything known that can come to him
in his pre-natal life. If this truth could be ade-
quately appreciated by parents, they would not,
as is now frequently done, allow the life of the

HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 87

street to beget the character of their child, to
whom they have given only a physical structure.
If this be an allowable conception of spiritual
heredity, then a child is greatly wronged whose
parents do not give themselves vitally to him.
They must allow the arteries of spiritual life to
pump into his forming being that character which
he has a right to inherit from them. The child
that is brought up by nurses instead of by a
mother is the spiritual offspring of the nurse
rather than of the mother, and will be more in-
debted for character to the nurse than to its own
mother. Nothing saves such a transaction from
being a tragedy except the not unprecedented fact
that the character of the nurse is often more noble
than that of the mother. That mother is mistaken
who assumes that in giving her child fleshly birth
she has given him a spiritual being, which now
she may have cultivated by a hired servant. Noth-
ing but daily, living contact with herself will im-
part her own self to him. If separation from the
parents is complete, the spiritual heritage from
them will be insignificant. A spiritual heritage
for our children can not be purchased with money ;
it must be drawn from us by living processes. A
child is not indebted to his mother's milk so much
for his character as he is to his mother's hope,
courage, faith. "Children have certain inalien-
able rights which fatherhood and motherhood
must recognize. They have a right to stand first
in the affections, the interest, and the endeavor

of the parents; they have a right to all that is
good and noble and encouraging in the parent
life; they have a right to find their home the
most pleasant spot on earth; they have a right
to all the means of refinement that lie within
the limits of the parents' purse; they have a
right to proper food and clothing for the body,
but equally as great right to mental and moral
nourishment, that neither body nor soul may be
atrophied; they have the right to have the laws
of their development, both physiological and psy-
chological, well understood and held sacred by
those in authority over them; they have a right
to have their better nature so strengthened that
when the seeds of evil speech and evil action fall
upon their life they will take no abiding root, be-
cause the soil is already occupied with the fruits
of better hopes. > ' (MacDonald : ' ' Child Study, ' '
1343.)

"Nor nurse, nor parent dear can know
The way these infant feet must go ;
And yet a nation's help and hope
Are sealed within that horoscope."

CHAPTEE VI

HEEEDITAEY SIN IS DISPROVED BY RECOVERY

IP there is one thing we know about sin, it is that
it is a waste of human resources. Its direct effect
is to poison, tear down, dissipate, disintegrate, de-
stroy the elements, powers, faculties, even the very
tissue of human nature. Its power in a single life-
time to change a human being into a worse than
beast is marvelous. The body becomes weak and
refuses its functions, becomes incapable of its
normal actions. The mind breaks down until it
is dethroned, and the gross sinner must be directed
and provided for by organized society. The soul
loses every semblance to divinity, or even to nor-
mal humanity.

Now, if sin were hereditary, one generation
would commence at the low level at which the last
generation had arrived. A people whose habits
were gross, whose practices were lawless, whose
minds were vicious and impure, whose spiritual
life was vile and unchaste, under the law of sinful
development from generation to generation would
be dragged down so low in fifty generations that
it would take fifty generations to uplift them to
the level of those who had lived under a pure gos-

89

90 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

pel and obeyed the divine law. Is this true to
the facts as known in the world?

Physical degeneracy is a fact that it is im-
possible to overlook. People who were imper-
fectly nourished, or whose physical habits brought
physical weakness and loss, have approached the
vanishing point, and many have passed it. Luxury
and other physical vices have been the cause of
different peoples' passing away from history.
But this can not be said of moral degeneracy. If a
people have so lived as to keep up the physical re-
sources, they show an ability to recover from the
spiritual degeneracy of a hundred generations in
one generation. The spiritual life of the Chinese
must be pronounced as very unclean from the
point of view of Christianity. So the Japanese.
And yet out of the heritage of uncounted genera-
tions we find men coming in a single generation
to take first rank in our leading American univer-
sities, and, having accepted the faith of Jesus, to
rank among the most faithful and exemplary mem-
bers of His Kingdom in our day. We may take
even a more extreme example than those named.
We can go into the heart of Africa and select a
person for illustration. The life of the people
of Africa has been astonishingly sinful, beyond
all possibility of civilized people who have not
witnessed it to conceive. It has never been re-
lieved by a great moral or religious teacher.
From the point of view of Christianity, and from

HEREDITARY SIN IS DISPROVEN 91

that of any ethnic religion of history, the life of
the people of Africa has been a continual stream
of the most revolting and wasteful sin. The only
thing that is saved from human wreckage is the
physical structure, which is found in most perfect
form and strength.

And yet Bishop William Taylor brings from
Africa a little child, whose heritage is this be-
sotted life of her people for unknown centuries;
places her in school; friends gather about her;
by means gained through nursing and other em-
ployment she pushes her way through college,
graduates in 1909 from the University of South-
ern California as the equal of any in her class, and
takes her master's degree from the same institu-
tion the following year, and then seeks special
preparation in a missionary training school to go
back as a missionary to her own people. What is
the meaning of this? Does it mean that sin is
not a very evil thing? Does it mean that there
is very little difference between those who have
known its power and those who have lived above
it? Or does it not rather prove, beyond a per-
adventure, that God allows all human beings to
start on the same level morally? It was this same
Bishop William Taylor who said, ' ' There are no
heathen children in the world." God is so just
and equable in His ways with men that, so far
as morals are concerned, each child is really in
spiritual nature at the top. Every fall is a per-

92 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

sonal fall. Children may become heathen; they
are not born heathen. If the facts of life do not
prove this, I am unable to interpret them.*

This question will be complicated somewhat,
without doubt, by the question of environment.
It will not be true that those converts to Chris-
tianity who remain in their native country, sur-
rounded by their native people, can in a single
generation be lifted out of their heritage. They
will have the ways of thinking and the national
habits, the prejudices and the moral practices of
their people. They can not be lifted entirely out
of environmental consequences until their whole
race has been lifted out of them. That is another
problem. The point, however, is: lift them out
of their environment at birth; give them Chris-
tian teaching and Christian training, and they
will take their place immediately among those of

* Evolutionary writers speak as if the Fall were an epoch in the history of the
race. E. G. Henderson ("God and Man in the Light of To-day") says: "Man had
reached a higher stage of development. To him for the first time right and wrong had
meaning. To him for the first time belonged freedom of choice. To him for the first
time was presented the upward and the downward course. But having reached the
new stage in his development, he ought to have taken the upward course, he ought to have
chosen the good. He actually took the downward course. He chose evil instead of good.
He turned aside from the path of progress. He fell into sin." (p. 113.) A moment's re-
flection will show that such a description of a race-act is and can be only a fiction. The
above language is highly intelligible as the description of the act of an individual; but
an individual in the evolutionary sense does not thus come "for the first time," etc. It
is a race that thus emerges from the moral darkness of animal life into the moral light
of a human life. The race could not fall into sin by an act. Only such a fall is pos-
sible in an individual. Such an account of the fall from an evolutionary point of view
is reasonable only if we assume that at some time the race was an individual, as Gen-
esis pictures. But that is a somewhat difficult assumption to fit into an evolutionary proc-
ess. An attempt to think it through will result, we verily believe, in a rejection of the
Fall as a race experience, and will leave the sinful condition of the race as the result of
individual sins.

HEREDITARY SIN IS DISPBOVEN 93

another race whose ancestors have had the gospel
for fifty generations. Moreover, while the indi-
vidual can not be lifted out of his social and men-
tal habits and practices in a generation, while
abiding among those who are teaching him by
example the old ways, yet, marvelous as it may
seem, Christian Chinamen exhibit individual vir-
tues of the most sacrificing type as a result of
the acceptance of Christian doctrine. Chinamen
died in the Boxer uprising with all the abandon
to their Savior ever exhibited by the choicest
spirits of any race.

In modern times there is no story exceeding
that of the faithfulness of Susi and Chuma, two
native Africans, the attendants of Dr. David Liv-
ingstone, who took charge of his remains after his
death in the heart of Africa. The care and intelli-
gence used in embalming his body, the resources
shown in disguising it for conveyance through
hostile tribes, the resistance even to the pressure
of English officials to bury it on the way, the per-
sistence when sick themselves through nine long
months against obstacles and difficulties of every
conceivable description, until at last they gave it
into the care of relatives and friends in London,
and all without promise of reward, reads like a
romance of loyal-heartedness and is almost un-
equaled in literature. Yet these men, whose virtue
shines out so suddenly and so brilliantly, had as
their progenitors for thousands of years native

94 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

Africans as degraded as sensuality can bring peo-
ple and as deprived of moral light as Africa's long
night is known to have been.

Thus it is seen that the human stock is not ex-
hausted by the heredity of sin ; and the only pos-
sible explanation for it is that there is no heredity
of sin. Each child is directly God's child. Each
child is provided with a human outfit morally, no
matter how his parents may have wasted theirs.

Perhaps Lyman Abbott goes too far on the
positive side of inheritance, but certainly not too
far on the negative, when he says : * ' No man ever
inherited sin. There is not any original sin. Men
inherit appetites and passions, they inherit temp-
tations, they inherit weaknesses and frailties and
infirmities, but they do not inherit sin, and they
do not inherit virtue. Virtue can not be handed
down from father to son. . . . Weaknesses may
be handed down so that it will be easier for your
son to fall into sin, but virtue is victory by the in-
dividual himself, and the victory can not be won
by another and the defeat can not be suffered by
another. Men are neither born sinners nor
saints." ("Modern Sermons," I, 6.)

And yet this does not deny the law of heredity,
in which I most thoroughly believe. But it does
announce that morals are not transferable from
one generation to another. This generation
through heredity is no worse in moral equipment
because its ancestors were wicked ; that one is no
better because its ancestors were virtuous. He-

HEEEDITAEY SIN IS DISPEOVEN 95

redity is a thing of the flesh, of the nervous sys-
tem, and hence has immense importance. God has
given our children to us for fleshly weal or woe.
We have much to say as to what they shall be;
but we can not directly consign them to guiltiness
and spiritual poverty by our sins, through the law
of heredity.*

* "The purifying grace of God in human nature does weaken the power of sin,
and to the degree that it loses its dominion over the flesh, (1) and its enticing influence
over the spirit, to that extent is its transmissive power weakened." (2) (Cooke: In-
carnation and Recent Criticism, 151.)

(1) "Power of sin in the flesh," is here manifestly intended to be understood.
This would be probably true if there were any sin in the flesh, which there is not. Sin
is not an attribute of a material substance. There may be disease in the flesh. Whether
the grace of God weakens the power of disease, we will not discuss, because it is not
relevant at this point. We can readily believe that it would, but it is simply a question
of fact to be established.

That Paul speaks repeatedly of "sin in the flesh" we are aware, but even a slight
examination will show that he is not thinking of the substance, flesh; but is using the
word *arx as a figure of speech for a nature or person, who is giving himself to the do-
minion of fleshly impulses.

(2) This is an easy and at first view apparently pleasant assumption; one that
has been much indulged in in recent years by different writers. But first, when heredity
and environment are properly discriminated, the experience of the race furnishes no con-
firmation of it. It is now rejected by scientists, although the whole subject can hardly
be said as yet to be worked out definitely. In the second place, if it were true, such
a law of heredity would produce a condition of hopelessness for mankind. If moral
qualities are transmissible by heredity, then the bad as well as the good would have
their cumulative consequences. Unfortunately the history of the race has been so pre-
ponderantly evil that such a law would long ago have brought us below salvabilit^.
However such a law would be on its upward side, the downward side must go with it,
and would have placed mankind in a hopeless condition. There are few things from
which we have escaped for which we should be more thankful than that the law of her-
edity does not include in its operation the transmission of moral qualities from gener-
ation to generation.

CHAPTER VII

ACQUIRED TKAITS NOT TRANSMISSIBLE BY HEREDITY

IN seeking for a statement of the doctrine of he-
reditary sin that would fairly represent the gen-
eral doctrine that has been held through the cen-
turies, we have found a considerable variation of
opinion. But Anselm and Augustin will agree
in the following summary : God created human na-
ture without sin. If Adam had not sinned, his
posterity would have been without sin. But by
sinning he corrupted human nature (not merely
himself as an individual, but human nature, of
which he was the only representative), and his
posterity now partake of the modified human na-
ture which he by sinning acquired. His acquired,
not created or, as we would now say, inborn trait,
is transmitted to posterity through heredity.
Both these teachers make a distinction between
human nature and the individual. They assume
that Adam was both in himself; that he sinned,
not as an individual, but as the embodiment of
human nature. In this they will hardly be justi-
fied. The accident of being the first individual
gave Adam no more power to modify human na-
ture than any other ancestor, unless we assume
in the start that heredity transmits acquired

96

TRAITS NOT TRANSMISSIBLE 97

traits. Adam was as much an individual as any
other that lives after him. The law of heredity
will have no different effect in his case than if
he had not been humanity's only representative.
We dare to apply the law of heredity to him as
exactly and as comprehensively as we would if
there had been a thousand progenitors instead of
one. It was no different law because he was the
first man than if he had been in the second or the
tenth generation. If the law of heredity does not
transmit the acquired trait now, it would not do
so then. This doctrine, then, will be much affected
by our conclusion concerning this matter of fact.
It has never been contended that heredity can
operate to the restoration of humanity to his orig-
inal righteousness; yet it is difficult to see why
the law should not operate both ways if it oper-
ates at all.*

*The opposite of our contention is widely held, and even taught by some writers
appealing to public influence. John B. Robins says:

"We maintain that the best families religiously transmit better qualities to their
children than irreligious families; religious communities more than irreligious communi-
ties; and a religious nation more spiritual worth to its citizens than irreligious nations.
These are some of the practical results of heredity." — (The Family, 129, cp. 137.)

That he announces practical sequences in the above statement is too apparent
to need iteration, but that heredity is the law that accounts for it is a too swift and too
unscientific conclusion to announce. The cases mentioned cover heredity and envi-
ronment working together, which produce the results. But scientific observation is
against the conclusion that heredity alone will account for the transmission of religious
qualities.

His Biblical illustrations are not much, if any, better than his scientific foundations.
He refers to the persistence of race qualities in the Jews. These qualities, however,
persist only while they remain under the peculiar Jewish environment and training.
Many Jews have left their race connections, have married with Gentiles, and given
up their religious culture. Does any one presume it to be possible to trace the blood
stream of Jewish parentage out into the Gentile peoples? The illustration proves that
as long as you maintain the Jewish environment, Jewish types persist; but heredity has
no power to perpetuate them as soon as this environment is abandoned.

7

08 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

Saleeby says, in his very recent (1909) work on
''Parenthood and Eace Culture:" " 'Heredity,'
by Professor J. A. Thomson, is the most recent
and most valuable (work) for general purposes
of all books on the subject of heredity. No lay-
man should express opinions on heredity or eugen-
ics until he has read it, for it is extremely im-
probable that they will be valuable." We shall
agree that this is a subject which must be sub-
mitted to the testimony of experts. We need not
transfer Professor Thomson's extended argu-
ment. The subject has been surrounded with va-
rious misunderstandings. These he undertakes to
clear away. Having done so, he lends his author-
ity unquestionably to the side that acquired traits
are not transmissible by heredity. We permit our-
selves the following extract which he quotes from
Thomas Fuller, "Scripture Observations," No.
VIII. It puts our question in a vivid form:

"Lord, I find the genealogy of my Savior
strangely checkered with four remarkable changes
in four immediate generations.

* ' 1. Boboam begat Abia ; that is, a bad father
begat a bad son.

"2. Abia begat Asa; that is, a bad father, a
good son.

' ' 3. Asa begat Josaphat ; that is, a good father,
a good son.

' ' 4. Josaphat begat Joram ; that is, a good fa-
ther, a bad son.

' ' I see, Lord, from hence that my father's piety

TRAITS NOT TRANSMISSIBLE 99

can not be entailed ; that is bad news for me. But
I see also that actual impiety is not always he-
reditary; that is good news for my son."

The idea that acquired qualities are transmit-
ted to succeeding generations lends itself readily
to the imagination and passes from one speaker
to another to adorn many a theory. It has be-
come very current in connection with popular con-
ceptions of evolutionary theories to account for
the mutations of species in successive generations.
It has been oft repeated as a self-evident truth
that "the giraffe has attained its long neck by
stretching it for many generations; swimming
birds have got webbed feet because they stretched
their toes in the water ; wading birds have got long
legs because they stretched them; the mole has
very small eyes because it has ceased to use them ;
the whalebone whale has no functional teeth be-
cause it has acquired the habit of swallowing its
food without mastication." This sounds much
like evolution, and evolution is a victorious theory ;
therefore this must be taken for granted. Yet
it is not believed that the long neck of the giraffe
is due to the stretching; but rather that the
stretching is due to the long neck. That is, a new
species of animals had a start in the leaf-eating
direction by the modification of an animal born
with a neck longer than usual, from some cause
to us untraceable— a cause certainly not traceable
to the acquirement of its ancestor. The start was
not due to environment, but to the selection of ger-

100 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

minal variation in heredity, which variation, how-
ever, fits into the environment, or the animal mani-
festing it would perish and the tendency proceed
no farther.

Mutilations, such as dehorning cattle, cutting
off dogs' tails, binding the feet of Chinese girls,
circumcision, ear and nose-boring among savages,
continued many generations, have had no influ-
ence upon offspring. It is conceded that any
modification that does not affect the germ cells
has no tendency to influence children.

The popular belief that moral qualities are
hereditary is due to the fact largely that heredity
and environment are not often separated. These
two influences combined are usually able to repro-
duce the moral character of the parents. It is often
believed that children of drunken parents are pre-
disposed toward inebriety. This is a case rather
different from the transmission of moral traits.
The popular belief is probably not well substan-
tiated, and other factors than acquired traits are
involved. " Intemperate habits of parents may
be the expression of an inherited psychopathic
disposition, and it is this which is transmitted to
the offspring." Children of drunken parents
grow up in a drunkard 's home ; often are fed on
alcoholic drinks from infancy. Moreover, there
are facts of heredity that make credible the idea
that a toxin or anti-toxin in the blood of the father
may have its effects upon the child. Alcohol has
an effect upon the whole nervous constitution that

TRAITS NOT TRANSMISSIBLE 101

might easily be transmitted. In this case it is
not the moral quality of the act of drunkenness
that is transmitted, but the physical effect of alco-
hol, producing degeneracy of the nervous system,
showing itself in some physical weakness in the
child. But even this is still in the region of con-
troverted theory, awaiting confirmation. "Most
of the babies born in the slums are splendid little
specimens of humanity — so far as physique is con-
cerned— bearing no marks of the degeneration of
their parents. In a word, heredity works — the
racial poisons apart — so that each generation gets
a fresh start. If there be no process of selection,
each new generation begins where its predecessor
began and is as a whole neither worse nor better,
whether physically or psychically." (Saleeby,
22.) The famous Jukes family of New York State
has so often been quoted that it is well wrought
into the belief of people that bad parents have
bad children through the power of heredity. In
this case, however, there was first of all a de-
generate physical heritage producing its inevi-
table crop of insane and degenerate criminals.
Concerning this physical inheritance there is no
dispute ; but this case in no way substantiates the
claim that wicked parents have wicked children
through the power of inborn moral inheritance
What children of this family escaped a physical
degeneracy were kept in a corrupt environment,
which insured the moral reproduction of the par-
ents. The law of moral heritage can only be

102 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

shown in those cases where no physical deformity
is known in the parentage, and where the off-
spring is removed from the evil environment es-
tablished by the evil parents.

The doctrine of the heredity of the spirit from
our parents mnst assume that the disposition of
the child will be like that of the parents. If this
were a true assumption, then all children of the
same parents would be of like disposition and
have the same moral qualities. This is not even
approximately true. Again, an analysis of the
moral and character qualities of the parents does
not account for the moral constitution of the
child. Abraham Lincoln was a conspicuous ex-
ample of one who can not be accounted for by
his parents. The biographical mystery of his per-
sonality, so often mentioned, would no longer hold
the attention if the assumed law of heredity
should be put aside as invalid. Who can ac-
count on the basis of this law for the fact that
Aaron Burr, the greatest moral degenerate that
America has ever produced, is the grandson of
Jonathan Edwards, the greatest spiritual genius
that America has yet produced?

Still there are noticeable resemblances between
children and parents. Musicians are often the
children of musicians; many other instances of
resemblance may be noted. (1) The influence of
environment may account for most of this. (2)
We do inherit from our parents a physical life.
The peculiarities of this physique show them-

selves in our nervous constitution. This nervous
system in contact with a certain environment will
seek the lines of least resistance, which should
produce great similarity in .developed personality
between parent and child. The physical predis-
position of the child is likely to follow the same
or similar lines that were taken by the predispo-
sition of the parent. The musician will have very
delicate, susceptible nerves. His case is some-
what complicated. Musical temperament implies
both heredity and culture. The delicate nervous
constitution — a thing of the flesh — must be inher-
ited ; it can never be acquired or produced by any
reaction on the environment. But to be a really
great musician — especially a vocalist — one must
also have a great, a cultured soul — a matter of
the spirit, which comes only by culture and en-
vironment. Some fine, nervous temperaments,
able to give the technique of music, need a broad
literary education, that they may have great
thoughts to express. Other physical construc-
tions are favorable to a certain course, as they re-
act on a certain environment. This seems ade-
quate to account for all that is proven concerning
the inheritance of disposition. On the other hand,
from the same family will come children of the
most diverse temperaments — an utterly incompre-
hensible fact from the old theory. It is well es-
tablished that the moral and religious acquire-
ments of parents in, the direction of righteousness
can not be transmitted directly. They must be

104 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

independently acquired by the child. It would be
strange injustice that God had put us under the
operation of a law by which we could inherit the
sins of our parents, but could not inherit their
virtues.*

The persistence of a similar environment
through several generations may produce the
semblance of heredity without ever establishing
it in the least degree. "The Alpine plants which
Naegeli transferred to a southern garden were
changed by their new surroundings; their de-
scendants were likewise changed, and the new

*"A11 will admit this kind of inheritance, There is no trouble in regard to char-
acteristics that are evil. All admit this kind of inheritance. 'Like begets like.' The
books are full of it. Adam sinned and begat a child in his own sinful likeness. All
other Adams have done the same thing. Here heredity serves a good purpose. It fur-
nishes a foundation for all our theologies and theodicies. . . . Has God made it pos-
sible for us to inherit irreligion, or an evil nature, and not made it possible for us to in-
herit religion, or a good nature? If so, then why did He make us creatures of inheritance
at all? Would a wise and good God place in our natures a law that becomes effective
only when, and as soon as, we become evil? Would it not have been better to have
left this law out altogether?"— (Robins: "The Family," 142, 143.)

The possibility that this latter question might have an affirmative reply did not seem
to have entered the mind of this author. His argument cuts the ground from under-
neath himself as well as from underneath those whom he combats. Science says that
neither virtues nor vices, as moral qualities, are hereditable, and hence God is vindi-
cated as thoroughly as in his conclusion that both are transmissible. But from his point
of view, that of the heritage of original sin, his argument is very effective.

This author, and doubtless many others, base their belief upon Exod. 20: 5, 34: 7;
Num. 14: 18, in which it is said that God visits "the iniquity of the fathers upon the
children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation." They take this as a state-
ment of the law of heredity. Such, however, it is not. It is a social law, and in the
form in which it was practiced in that period of society is indefensible to-day. It will
be noticed that it is not a law of heredity, which would never run out in its influences,
but it covers just generations enough to comprehend those who might at the time be
living with the father-criminal at the time of the commission of his crime. It is not
hereditary in its character: for it does not specifically apply to those who are to be born
after the commission of the crime, but to those who may be already living with the sin-
ner, and presumably participants in his deed, or sympathetic with it afterwards. The
commentary on this law is the cases where sinners were punished with their wife or
wives, their children and relatives, and even their cattle. It in no sense is an anticipa-
tion of the modern law of heredity by which the very physical stock of a man is degen-
erated by some race poison, and its effects handed down to his posterity forever

TRAITS NOT TRANSMISSIBLE 105

characters reappeared with constancy generation
after generation. But this was acquired or modi-
ficational, not heredity or innate resemblance, as
shown by the fact that removal from the garden
to poor gravelly soil was followed by a reappear-
ance of the original Alpine characteristics."
( Thomson : ' ' Heredity, ' ' 184. ) So a parent whose
upright character is due to his environment may
be the father of a son, who in similar moral in-
fluences is like him. That sequence kept up for
a few generations, however, would have no effect
through heredity to keep a son from evil charac-
ter who was brought up under evil influences dur-
ing the formative period of his life. We can
transmit to our children human nature, which is
in itself neither moral nor immoral. Environ-
ment makes the child moral or immoral, without
regard to who was his parent, in so far as any
influence outside of his own freedom accounts for
what he is.

James Harvey Robinson, professor of History
in Columbia University, says: " Almost all biolo-
gists now agree that acquired characters are not
transmitted hereditarily; for we do not come
about in a way to permit this. The assiduity of
one generation in acquiring increasing culture or
its lethargy in neglecting the heritage of the past
does not affect the minute egg from which the
next generation springs. Culture does not get
into the blood; not even language, man's earliest
characteristic achievement. Had Aristotle him-

106 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

self been reared among the chimpanzees he might
have been a Grruebelkopf, but he would not have
known how to talk." ("Survey," May 6, 1911.)
The impossibility of handing down any posi-
tive moral traits is apparent again from the na-
ture of the content of consciousness. In our na-
ture there are certain powers capable of receiv-
ing and dealing with that which comes to us from
without. This is the gift of heredity. But this
power innate does not of itself furnish itself with
any material to work with or to build into char-
acter. That must all come from the outer world.
The soul is at first an empty chamber with no
hidden inhabitants in secret closets which after
a while present themselves to it. Says Baldwin:
"There is no question in psychological circles to-
day of the absolute mental creation which was
formerly assumed. The newer doctrine of 'men-
tal content, ' on the one hand, which holds that no
elements of representation can get into conscious-
ness except as they have been already present in
some form in presentation; and, on the other
hand, the doctrine that the activities of conscious-
ness are always conditioned on the content of
presentation and representation present at the
time — these positions make it impossible to hold
that the agent or mind can make anything for it-
self 'out of whole cloth,' so to speak." ("Social
and Ethical Interpretations," 100.) One may
say, indeed, that these powers forming conscious-
ness are weak or defective.; but that is quite dif-

TRAITS NOT TRANSMISSIBLE 107

ferent from saying that they are sinful, which
involves a voluntary element.

But after all we persistently believe in the her-
itage of a disposition that is born with us, to
which we attribute the moral course of our life.
We need not deny the reality of disposition; but
we need to give more attention to its interpreta-
tion. What are the elements of the disposition
with which the child is born I We answer: He is
social, curious, imitative, active, etc. Among
these qualities there is none that can be identified
as sheerly evil. What, then, is an evil disposi-
tion? How does it arise? There is a certain
average of qualities which we call human nature,
the possession of which is thought to constitute
normality, and is sometimes called "horse sense, "
because we have no proper term for it. Baldwin,
seeking a term for it, calls it " average social
judgment" Deviation from this is called pe-
culiarity of disposition. The difference of dispo-
sition depends upon the preponderance of traits.
It might remove some presuppositions from our
mind if we should compare the "average social
judgment" of the various races and peoples.
What a different thing it is in China from what
it is in America! How different in civilization
now from what it was a thousand years ago. This
might indicate that its standards are quite un-
der the power of education and environment,
rather than an invariable innate something.

How do individuals vary from this human

108 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

standard of character? By heredity and educa-
tion. One is born so defective mentally that he
can never keep step with society, and we call him
an idiot and place him in an institution to be
cared for. The aberration of another is not in
the same direction, yet he is against the standards
of society; will not comply with them; interferes
with the rights of others. He is a criminal. Some
of these we kill ; some we imprison for life ; some
we undertake to reform. What is the matter with
them? Why are they as they are? Well, some
of them are born with this disposition. Is this
disposition a positive element in their nature, or
a defect, a minus quantity? Confining our an-
swer now to those born with the criminal dispo-
sition, we believe it is a minus, not a plus quan-
tity. They are not born with a whole human na-
ture plus something which we call sin ; but with a
human nature in which something is lacking.
Miss Maude E. Miner, secretary of the New York
Probation Association, says in the Second Annual
Eeport concerning the girls coming under the cus-
tody of the society: "The large number are not
guilty of moral obliquity because they are natu-
rally bad, vicious, and depraved. In my work with
girls in and out of courts and prisons during the
last five years I can truthfully say that I have
seen very few girls who could be so classed. In
comparison with the total number few have chosen
the life deliberately. The general truth is that
they have drifted into a life of vice through weak-

TEAITS NOT TBANSMISSIBLE 109

ness of will or through domination by a stronger
will, and have gone down enslaved by drugs,
drink, and 'the life' itself. Many of the girls
are weak-willed, and in some instances weak-
minded, and they have not had the normal resist-
ing power." ("The Survey," May 27, 1911, pp.
337, 8.) Let one stand before a company of men
in a State reformatory institution assembled for
chapel exercises. If one has not studied the situ-
ation he will experience a surprise. These men,
for the most part, are not the bold, reckless, bra-
vado, daring fellows that he expected to see.
They are not in possession of all that average
men have, plus an element that leads them to defy
society. They are weak men, defectives. Calling
them men, we see that they are not fully men.
Being less than men, we call them effeminate, al-
though we do not apologize to the ladies. They
have not full, broad jaws, but rather undersized,
receding chins, showing them defective in will-
power. Instead of round heads and square fore-
heads, they are thin between the temples. Their
eyes are restless and unsteady. They are not all
so; for there is another class here also. But we
may rightly conclude that those who have the
right to the charity of judgment because of her-
itage are, as we have described, with different va-
riations showing the same general defects. The
others that show the lion's strength, whom you
would not want to meet in the dark, we may rea-
sonably believe are they who have been trained

110 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

to crime. Their environment, not their inherit-
ance, has been their ruin.

If under the head of disposition we are think-
ing of the born genius, it is yet a debatable ques-
tion whether his genius is due to strength or weak-
ness, a plus to average human nature or a minus.
While forming an opinion on this question, let one
study Edgar Allan Poe, our greatest American
poetic genius, and answer the question for him-
self. At any rate ..this matter of disposition does
not seem to be a direct moral equipment, indicat-
ing a certain attitude of the will; but rather
something seated in the physical equipment of
nerves, or that which sustains the nerves, either
in the brain or the viscera. These are subject
to hereditary laws, with all the moral advantage
or disadvantage that they imply; but the moral
or spiritual qualities so often accredited to he-
redity are not directly derivable from ancestors.
Born dispositions are imbedded in the physical
qualities ; moral dispositions are personal acquire-
ments of life.

Other differences of disposition, not classified
as degenerate or criminal, are simply the prepon-
derance of certain traits or their absence in usual
size, and are rationally traceable to the physical
equipment or the culture of the physical or moral
nature. One has a different disposition when
drunk from that which he has when sober, when
tired than when rested, when hungry than when
satisfied. As one may strengthen his arm by ex-

TRAITS NOT TRANSMISSIBLE 111

ercise, so he may his sense of justice, or purity,
or honesty. Why he emphasizes this or that in
his growth is as mysterious as why he chooses
this or that avocation ; but it is just as little trace-
able to heredity. No man is born a lawyer; no
man is born a hero.

The transmissibility of Adam's sin or its
moral effects can not take the form of transmis-
sion from the individual father to his son; for of
such transmission there is not the slightest evi-
dence. Indeed, it is not thought of in that form.
The form of its popular belief is that the whole
human race now occupy a common level of de-
pravity, and that individual exhibitions of wicked-
ness are chargeable not to the nature derived
from one's immediate ancestors, but to one's
choice. Each individual, unless evidently a degen-
erate, must bear his own moral responsibility.
Logically, then, the conclusion which this popular
belief must draw is that, as a consequence of
Adam's sin, God gave to the whole race a differ-
ent and a lower moral constitution than it had
possessed before.

As thus conceived there is no possibility of in-
vestigation: for we have no knowledge of what
the constitution of the race was before the as-
sumed fall. But the conclusion can not be upheld
on the foundation of heredity: for the transmis-
sion of moral qualities, which of course are ac-
quired, is not provided for by the working of
heredity. The belief must rest upon a special act

112 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

of divine judgment, by which God visited moral
calamity not only upon Adam, who had sinned,
but upon the individuals who constitute his pos-
terity, who had not sinned. To say that "in
Adam's fall we sinned all," is a moral and meta-
physical confusion of thought no longer permis-
sible. The belief, then, has no foundation in any
known law; it is held in the face of our estimate
of justice, and attributes to God what the uni-
versal consciousness of mankind condemns in
men; we must say it is arbitrarily held, with no
support save the inertia of a past credulity.

That God should have lowered the physical
efficiency of the race is a possible conception,
based upon the law of heredity, whose justice we
shall in a moment consider; but even this does
not imply that into the constitution of this fallen
race an active principle of sin was injected which
made inevitable all the acts of sin committed by
men in all history. To go so far as that is a seri-
ous charge against Deity : for such a fiat is some-
thing more than a negative act — something more
than withdrawing from man some power or effi-
ciency which he had before. It is the creation
and implantation of an active principle of evil,
and in making man a sinner served not the ends
of divine justice, but the purposes of his Satanic
Majesty. In so far as it transcended Adam's per-
sonality in its effects, it was no corrective of evil
in him, while it worked an indisputable injustice
to all other men.

TEAITS NOT TRANSMISSIBLE 113

The workings of the law of physical heredity
we can not gainsay. Whether we can construe it
or not in our apologetics, it remains an unques-
tioned fact. But we surely need not make the
problem more difficult by any exaggeration of the
facts. We should carefully study its workings
and know its extent and limitation before we make
it a problem or feel the need of its defense.

1. God has written it in the constitution of
humanity. It is an implication of the solidarity
of the race. However much trouble it may seem
to have caused, its blessings are beyond all meas-
uring. Indeed, the race as known is an impossi-
bility without it.

2. It tends to betterment. By its workings de-
fectives come to such a point that at last they
drop out, while anything in the direction of per-
fection tends to greater stability and greater re-
productiveness. So that we may say: the law
weeds out the poorest and preserves and increases
the best.

3. While the race is physically a unit, morally
each individual is a unit, subject to influence from
others, but not to complete mastery. So the very
nature of morality is such — having at its heart
individual freedom — that there is no ground for
desiring that moral character be subject to hered-
ity or believing that it is.

CHAPTER VIII

THE PERIODS OF DEVELOPMENT

THERE are certain natural stages in the develop-
ment of the child, but they vary somewhat in dif-
ferent children. Their noticeable expression de-
pends much upon the influences that gather about
the child at the time. So many items are involved
in this development that their grouping is more
or less arbitrary, and hence different authors may
vary much in their delimitation and classification.
We will name the following periods and will seek
only such description as suggests the opportunity
of moral impression. In this, however, it is easy
to make mistake by omission. We are coming to
see more and more that every physical fact may
have some relation to moral change as it does to
intellectual. We note also that certain develop-
ments cross the lines of division and characterize
two or more periods: 1. First childhood to the
seventh month; 2. Second childhood to the end
of the second year ; 3. Third childhood to the end
of the seventh year ; 4. Later childhood, from the
seventh to the twelfth year ; 5. Adolescence. Our
subject does not directly carry us farther than
later childhood ; what we shall say of later periods

114

PERIODS OF DEVELOPMENT 115

will be guided by the purpose only of showing the
fruitage of childhood training and guidance.

SECTION I. THE FIKST CHILDHOOD.

The new-born babe is a very interesting being,
but very helpless and very insignificant in his at-
tainments. He can see nothing, can hear nothing,
and can feel no sorrow. It is probable that in all
the actions of which he is capable he could get
along quite as well with a spinal cord and could
dispense for the time being with his brain. Na-
ture has done very much and very little for him :
very little in present realization, very much in giv-
ing him a capacity for becoming. A fly, a bee, or
a mosquito is born comparatively complete, ready
for business at its first salutation. Any one of
these can take up its life-tasks and make its way
immediately. It knows everything it ever can
know; it can do everything now it ever can do.
The penalty, however, of this full equipment is
that it can never become ; it can never learn any-
thing; it can never change into any other condi-
tion. All the resources of its whole lifetime are
immediately available ; nothing will ever be added
to them. Not so the child. He has no complete
instincts, so that he can do scarcely anything with
their help; and he has no reason or thought by
which he may make his way. But his capacity to
become is boundless. He knows nothing, but can
learn everything. He is next to nothing; his ca-

116 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

pacity to be can be measured only in divine units
of being. The psalmist's conception is justified by
the latest conclusions of research: "Thou hast
made him a little lower than God." "The baby
lives in a sort of coelentareate stage of almost
vegetative life. His whole business seems to be
to eat, digest, breathe and sleep, to survive and
grow. His education consists very largely in
making his physical surroundings as favorable to
bodily health as they possibly can be. But the
baby gives dim promise of something higher and
better. . . . He kicks and wriggles; he will soon
run and walk. The young child wishes to be con-
tinually in motion. He can not sit still long. The
muscular system is the seat and center of his de-
velopment. . . . This muscular exercise is lift-
ing all his vital organs, heart, lungs, digestive
system, and is giving him the first elements of
power — a tough body. It is tuning up the nerv-
ous system and stimulating the brain. . . . He
is still in the muscular stage, but curiosity and
wonder and some thought show the dawn of the
era of mind which quickly follows." (Tyler:
"Man in Evolution," 87.)

The first childhood is the period of the first
dentition; it is the instinctive period. Virchow
calls a child at this stage a "spinal reflex being."
He has a purely reflex activity up to about the
third month. That means that his actions have
no volitional element, and consequently no moral
quality, any more than the motions of a frog un-

PERIODS OF DEVELOPMENT 117

der an electric stimulus. The baby- comes into the
world with an apparatus ready to act as if angry;
but such action can have no moral significance.
Preyer likens the early cries of a child "to the
peeping of a chick breaking its shell, or the bleat-
ing of a new-born lamb, and observes that they
have no more intellectual or emotional significance
than the first cries of these animals. They are
produced as well by a child without a cerebrum
as by a child with one. The basal ganglia and
the appropriate stimulus are all that are nec-
essary on the neural side for their production."
(Major: "First Steps in Mental Growth," 282, 3.)
However, the cries soon come to have the value
of expressing hunger, pain, cold, discomfort. The
first step in the development of the sense of sight
is the perception of light, which is soon after
birth. This is followed sometimes as early as the
fourth day by the ability to hear sounds. Light
reflected from bright-colored objects will be noted.
The co-ordination of the muscles which direct the
eyes, the fixation of the eyes upon objects, and
following the objects with the eyes, are the next
steps in sight development. This has been ob-
served, and therefore clear visual perception es-
tablished, when the child was from one to two
months old. Among objects which attracted the
child first and most was the human face; the
mother's face and voice may be known within two
months. When two senses work together they
hold the attention more closely than one working

118 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

alone. We emphasize the importance of this early
recognition of the mother because, as we have ar-
gued in another place, the spirit of the child is
to be formed by the spirit of the mother chiefly,
and before any other object begins its work the
mother has gripped the spirit of the child and
has begun her work. Very early he differentiates
the character of sounds, whether agreeable or
otherwise, and is soothed by gentle sounds and
distressed by harsh sounds. The ear is the sense
organ through which the nervous system is most
powerfully and profoundly acted upon. Loud or
sudden noises produce instinctive fear in the
early days. True or genuine fear, however, is not
possible to a child under three or four months;
for that implies a definite idea of evil or danger.
A child that has suffered much is more likely to
show these apparent fears than one that is
stronger and healthier. This fear is excited by
sudden changes, and fear of strangers is some-
times awakened when he is four to twelve months
old. Thus again nature is shutting out the
strange world and locking him up with his mother
and the family life where he is cherished and
whose right it is to fashion his soul.

The following general remarks have their ap-
plication as well to later periods ; but they are in-
troduced here because they are not inapplicable
to this earliest period. Perhaps the most impor-
tant thing to be noted in the very early period of
life is that "habits of feeling" and fundamental

PERIODS OF DEVELOPMENT 119

tastes may be formed and modified. Feelings lie
quite close to the instincts. For this reason it has
been thought that they could not be changed. But
even the instincts of animals can be modified. A
chicken, if not given the opportunity to follow
within the first few days, will never develop it;
or, if opportunity is given, will learn to follow
human beings. When quite young an animal may
be made vicious by teasing, which by kindness
could be made docile and kind. A colt may be so
fooled with as to be almost useless afterwards as
a horse. So the habitual mood of a child may
be turned this way or that to a very essential de-
gree. A child may be teased into habitual sus-
picion. He may be nagged into habitual defen-
siveness. A great battle in after life may be
brought about by the carelessness with which he
is handled. Many people handle babies as if they
were playthings, entirely for their own amuse-
ment, regardless of the present or permanent im-
pression on their nature. They do not forecast the
permanent twist made in the disposition by their
thoughtless actions and words. Yet there is no
future time when the impressions made are so
deep and, therefore, so permanent. Thoughtless
hands should never touch a child.

Character's formation is largely the question
of the acquirement of certain tastes. When these
lie deep down in the nature they will load the
balances of the great decisions made in life be-
tween the right road and the wrong. Does a child

120 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

love the beautiful, the true, the chaste; does he
love to study, to investigate, to discover facts and
truths? Each one of these tastes is like a hook
on which may be securely fastened certain moral
appeals in the after life. Appeals have influence
not because of their own weight and justness, but
rather because of the reaction that the nature
makes to which the appeal is made. So in the
first or second childhood we are arranging the
conditions on which future conquests may be se-
cured. This chance lost, and after-efforts will
have little effect. Habits, which are originally
merely habits' imposed by the parent, come later
to be rationalized, adopted, and made the basis
of feeling and intellectual attitudes.

SECTION II. SECOND CHILDHOOD.

Many conceive of the nature of a child as an
•infolded being like a rosebud. The petals, the sta-
mens, and every element are already there in the
form in which they will afterwards be manifested.
One may take the rose and analyze it and find
all of these parts as they will afterwards appear
in the complete rose. It may change its color and
acquire toughness of texture as it opens, but noth-
ing new will be added to it as it unfolds. Such
is a rather popular conception of the child. Many
do not conceive of the possibility of adding any-
thing to his nature or putting anything into his
character. They think of the child as having a

PERIODS OF DEVELOPMENT 121

certain spiritual form, given to him through in-
heritance, and there is nothing to do but to give
him a chance to unfold. At about fourteen years
of age he will have acquired the power to give
the real and final expression to his nature, which
he will do notwithstanding any influences that
may have been brought to bear to change him.
Indeed, they think that any interference with his
spontaneous development would be likely to mar
him, just as any manipulation of a rosebud would
permanently mar its potential beauty. Parents
accepting this theory of the child-nature object to
teaching him practices or instilling in him habits
that anticipate his ultimate choices. They would
not approve of infant baptism, or the learning
the forms of prayer, or church-going habits, or
anything in general of a religious nature that is
not his personal choice.

This assumption is certainly of the greatest
and most fundamental importance. If true, there
is little significance in the parental function. To
have given the child physical birth and to provide
physical sustenance and educational opportuni-
ties is about all that a parent can do. The people
who adopt this view do not apply it in its edu-
cational form. They do not wait to see what is
in a child's mind before sending him to school.
On questions of mathematics, logic, or history
they would not submit the decision to him. It is
apparent, even to those believing this general
view of the child, that the mental life is rather

122 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

empty until it is filled. But by some rather ex-
ceptional mode of reasoning they are ready to act
on this theory concerning his moral and religious
nature.

The view is just as untrue morally as it is
mentally. No doubt at birth there are certain ele-
ments given that can with difficulty and only par-
tially be changed. These are all implications of
the nervous constitution; it will be very hard to
modify that or defy its workings. If we know
the nerve weaknesses we may protect him at that
point and secure to him a different and a longer
career than would be afforded by the average en-
vironment. The nerve qualities will aid or defeat
the avocation in life. They may make possible
or impossible the career of a musician, and modify
to a degree the possible success in various other
pursuits. But it is quite an extreme to say the
child is a born musician, or poet, or mathemati-
cian. It is better to think of him as an empty
vessel of a certain size and texture. He is made
so that he can hold certain things and a certain
amount; but the vessel has nothing in it yet. It
will never have in it anything that is not put in it.
It will be very hard to put into it something that
it was not made to hold, or to make it hold more
than nature constructed it for. Yet no one in
advance can profitably estimate the character-
capacity of a child. I think the prognosticates
would have missed it on Abraham Lincoln by very
large measurements. We can not make a brute

PERIODS OF DEVELOPMENT 123

of the child — unless he is born an idiot; we can
not make him an angel. But somewhere between
these limits he will be what we put into him
mentally and morally. His boundaries are set
by human nature; but inside this limitation we
may put in the moral qualities that we choose,
provided we will work according to the law of
his being. The strength of the animal impulse
will give the conditions of the moral contest which
will ensue ; but for the spiritual side of that con-
flict we may equip him. If this be the true view
of human nature, then the parental function is as
essential morally as it is physically. Physically
the parents give to him being; morally they may
also give him well-being. He will perish physic-
ally if they do not supply him material food; he
will just as surely perish spiritually if they do not
supply him with spirit-food. As both parents are
essential to his physical existence, so both parents
have an essential part in his spiritual building.
The function of the mother in rearing the child
is generally conceded; but the elements that a
father contributes are not so usually observed. A
boy is wonderfully handicapped who loses either
early in life. The kindlier qualities, the elements
noted in good manners are apt to be unacquired
unless a mother-love shall instill them. On the
other hand, the deeper elements of honor and
moral endurance are not acquired so easily with-
out the father. A shell of respectability will be
built up in a boy who grows up with women ; but

124 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

he will be unreliable in the rugged struggles
known to public life — I speak of tendency, know-
ing well how successfully certain fathers and
mothers have overcome their difficulties when
compelled to work out the problem alone.

This view of the child increases immensely the
parental responsibility and accentuates the impor-
tance of influences received as early as the period
we are now studying. He is now receiving ele-
ments of life, real character-stuff, through eye
and ear, and nothing capable of making an impres-
sion upon him is unimportant. The child ia this
period learns to walk and to talk ; mastication be-
gins, which is the first break in his close physical
connection with the mother-life. These powers
indicate the broadening of the sources of influence
that reach him. Hitherto he could receive only
those influences which came to him; now he can
go after impressions, and when they are not ap-
parent, can ask for them. While at this time the
majority of the higher animals — also automatic
idiots — have their mental development arrested,
the child parts company forever with them; for
he is now beginning in real earnest that mental
growth which distinguishes him from them. The
social life is now established and will grow more
and more. Fear and anger, the animal emotions,
are very early exhibited. If the fear is allayed
or dispelled, its exhibition becomes rare; if the
anger is never allowed to avail anything, it be-

PERIODS OF DEVELOPMENT 125

conies very infrequent. Affection and sympathy,
the higher emotions, come later ; and compassion,
one of the highest emotions, does not appear until
near the close of the period. Different authors
have noted the evident sorrow of the child when
the picture of a man was cut into by a pair of
scissors. These higher emotions, being encour-
aged, grow rapidly and become habitual.

Among intellectual qualities, attention, mem-
ory, volition, and somatic consciousness, powers
shared by the lower animals, are first developed,
while active imagination and reason, the essen-
tially human powers, are the last to be developed.
Some idea of number is now shown. Imitation,
the power which is of so great importance through
all the years of parental guidance, now appears.
It is the spiritual hand which the child out-
stretches and with which he takes to himself all
within sight and hearing. It is deeply imbedded
in the nature; arises as an impulse previous to
reason and volition, so that he can have no choice ;
he must imitate. Before reason or volition can
play any great role this activity has the child's
development in its grip and reigns supreme. Its
causal law is, "The idea of a movement is al-
ready the beginning of that movement." The
idea is not completely known until it has been
experienced. In other places we have called at-
tention to the advantage that it gives the parent.
We need not dwell further upon it here. The

126 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

period of the creative imagination begins now
and extends on to the tenth year. Its importance
will appear in the next period.

SECTION III. THE THIRD CHILDHOOD.

The Third Childhood extends from the end
of the second to the seventh year. In the work
of parental direction of character-formation this
is undoubtedly the most important period of all.
It has been preceded by a physical foundation-
laying; it will be followed by other periods im-
portant in child self -direction ; but this is the
golden opportunity for the work of parent or
guardian spirit. Imitation and authority have
their fullest operation now, the two arms which
may encompass the child-life with a fair degree
of absoluteness. The important physical changes
are the second dentition and the arrival of the
brain to its full size. He is now slowly growing
out of the absolute domination of the emotional
element. In the ideal imitative period, from the
fourth to the tenth year, he is building with the
best material that is within his observation, and
with the power of a creative imagination which
runs through the same time he is dissecting this
observed material and building up its elements
into a life-castle of his own. He will not rebel at
authority if consistently and unvaryingly ap-
plied. He is now forming habits that lie at the
deepest foundation of his life, which like guard-

PERIODS OF DEVELOPMENT 127

rails will fence the whole subsequent career.
Blessed is the child whose parent now recognizes
and conscientiously uses his opportunity, which is
very ample, but once passed, can never be recalled.
Imitation precedes the acquisition of language
and is a powerful aid in its acquirement. Indeed,
language is acquired through the imitation of
sounds. While imitation is an activity which the
lower animals exercise, and is sometimes ac-
counted a power of low grade for that reason, yet
in the forms above mimicry only self-acting be-
ings or souls imitate. Not only is language its
product, but habit is also: for habit is nothing
more than self-imitation. Underneath it lies a
power which gives it all the greater effect in char-
acter-formation, the power of admiration or love.
"The individual sees ideals before him and im-
personates them; loves them, and imitates them.
Gradually he acquires as a second nature his
ideals, and must keep growing on into new and
higher ideals." Thus imitation is based on love,
and it is emphatically true of the actively appro-
priating nature of a child that what he loves he
becomes — as true as that other law : what he does
he becomes. Imitation plays an important role
from another point of view : it is a sort of eman-
cipation from a self without content to a self
which he admires. Here, as everywhere, nature
abhors a vacuum. Imitation is powerful again,
because it begins so early, about the fifteenth
week, and holds its compelling place on until rea-

128 MOBAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

soning has crowded it from its regnant rule in
the adolescent years.

As we analyze this imitative activity we dis-
cover there is a slight tendency to imitate things,
as an engine; but much more to imitate persons.
Another important element of this tendency is
that the child imitates the adult much more than
other children or animals, and the imitation of
adults increases with the years up till eleven years
of age. Thus the Almighty has given the parent
an advantage over any competitors in influence
during these years. Neither things nor animals
nor undeveloped children can take away the child
from the molding influence of the parent. There
are tied up in this law unmeasured possibilities
for the good of the future generation.

The Creative Imagination: the Romancing
Period. — We adults are learning that we do not
live under the intellectual dominion purely of the
world of objective fact. The mind is constructive.
Its ultimate construction is limited by the mate-
rial that comes to it from without; but the form
in which it builds and the arrangement of the men-
tal product is by no means identical with the ob-
jective material. We are idealists, to whom the
objective world furnishes the bricks and mortar
that we are using in building our castles, which
are the true home of the soul.

It is not wonderful, then, that it is quite easy
for the child to be estranged from the literal facts
of sensation and perception. By himself he will

PERIODS OF DEVELOPMENT 129

construct a world for himself, and others can
greatly aid him. The elements of this imagina-
tive world are supplied by ears and eyes. The
mind never imagines anything the elements of
which it has not experienced. But the use he
makes of these elements is not the same that a
mirror makes of the objects supplied it. With an
old hat on his head, a glove on one hand, and a
basket loaded with a few toys, he will make a
journey to the farthest limits of his habitable orb
without ever going out the door. What an op-
portunity does this activity afford the guardian
spirit of his life to direct in his world-building by
supplying ideal and beautiful material out of
which a soul-enlarging world may be constructed !
What an opportunity it affords to careless or mis-
chievous minds to furnish material for a world
of terror and vice ! Charles Lamb recalls the time
"when through the ignorant officiousness of his
old nurse, whose disciplinary methods were worse
than the faults she sought to correct, as well as
the terror-starting illustrations of his father's
Stackhouse Bible, night time, solitude, and the
dark were his hell; for from his fourth to his
eighth year he never laid his head upon his pillow
without an assurance, which realized its own
prophecy, of seeing some frightful specter."
Goblins and ghosts are more accessible instru-
ments of torture, and by no means less effective,
than the rod with irresponsible, conscienceless,
and thoughtless parents and others. The applica-
9

13P MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

tion of the rod might have been beneficial, even
if cruel and needless, its hurt would have been
temporary ; but the goblins and ghosts will never
let up their stings and starts while life shall last.
Burns catalogues his infant tormentors as "dev-
ils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, warlocks, spunkies,
kelpies, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, appari-
tions, cantraips, giants, enchanted towers, drag-
ons, and other trumpery." One wonders what
else could be outside of this list. He said: "It
had so strange an effect upon my imagination
that to this hour, in my nocturnal rambles, I some-
times keep a sharp lookout on suspicious places;
and though nobody can be more skeptical than I
am in such matters, yet it often takes an effort
of philosophy to shake off these idle terrors."

"Wordsworth evidently had a similar experi-
ence; for he speaks of

" Huge and mighty forms, that do not live
Like living men, moved slowly through the mind
By day, and were a trouble to my dreams."

Barring accidents, children will not be more
afraid of the dark than the daylight. It is prob-
able that because people have pictured the dark-
ness as inhabited by the strange and mysterious
powers, against which the child can not protect
itself when suggested, that they often show ex-
ception to this statement. In so far as accidental
suggestions are likely to occur should we be on
our guard against imparting fears of this kind.
The "spooks" and the apparitions should be exor-

PEEIODS OF DEVELOPMENT 131

cised from childhood land by a generation of care-
ful and truthful teaching — a teaching which must
not leave the darkness uninhabited to be peopled
by any mischance with the "bogey" spirits; but
which will instill the quiet confidence that "God
dwelleth in the darkness as in the light," and His
child may abide without fear or danger.

The romancing tendency of the child should
be carefully discriminated in its moral character.
It does not have the moral character of lying, al-
though at times it may have that appearance.
The child makes an imaginary world out of words
as well as out of actions. It is not exceptional
that this imaginative falsification may come forth
in answer to questions, and the child seem in an
effort to deceive. It may be paradoxical that
there is such a normal activity as this in the child
whose nature receives a dreadful shock at dis-
honesty in others. The key to the solution is that
the two elements run side by side and are not to
him consciously opposed to each other. The
make-believe world is not a violation to truth in
his own feeling. If parents will carefully make
the distinction, it need not be so regarded by us,
even when that made-up world has such a vivid
possession of the mind that it is difficult to dis-
entangle the fact. Our romance to children need
not violate their nature; but a distinct misstate-
ment of fact to them will destroy our influence
over them. Sir Oliver Lodge holds that children
' ' should be told the exact truth when they ask

132 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

a serious question." A little boy put this con-
tradiction of truth and romance in form one day,
when he said, i i What my mother says is so, even
when it ain't so." I leave to others the solution
of the Santa Claus problem, with this incident:
A little fellow said at the recent Christmas, "I
have found out about this Santa Claus business,
and now I am going to find out about this Jesus
business." Sydney Smith said that "he would
a thousand times prefer that his child should
die in the bloom of youth rather than it should
live and learn to disbelieve."

Mrs. Lamoreaux calls attention to one of the
dangers of misunderstanding this activity of the
mind. She says : * ' This world of make-believe is
as real to him as the world which is seen through
his eyes, and often he can not distinguish between
the two. Many a little heart has quivered over
the punishment inflicted for 'lying,' when willful
misrepresentation was not in his thoughts. How-
ever, harsh treatment of a vivid imagination may
result in real deception later on; for the child
can not help * seeing things' too wonderful to be
enjoyed alone, and then, perforce, there must be
deliberate planning to escape the punishment.

"This harshness also begins to raise an in-
visible barrier between the child and the parent.
It was felt by a little maiden of rare fancy, who
said in a whisper at the conclusion of one of these
marvelous tales, 'But don't tell mamma.' The
impassable wall between many a mother and

PERIODS OF DEVELOPMENT 133

daughter in later years, once consisted of but a
scattered stone here and there." ("The Unfold-
ing Life," 66, 67.) This activity should be culti-
vated by an active sympathy. It is one of the
rich powers of the being. The constructive imag-
inative power will be needed in any vocation of
life. To see things that are not yet is the essen-
tial element of the statesman, the merchant, the
doctor, the preacher, the reformer, as well as the
poet and the painter. That person is a more
helpful parent or teacher who can become a child
again and enter again into the world of make-
believe with the child. The literature of stories
and heroes that assist this faculty is not only com-
mendable, but essential to normal development
a.t this time. Blessed the child who has a grand-
mother or grandfather who has passed out of the
hard facts ''that are seen" and has come again
to the land of vision and will tell him the won-
derful excursions made by fancy in that delight-
ful world where all things are as we please to
have them.

SECTION IV. LATER CHILDHOOD.

In a very real sense each period prepares for
the succeeding one. The problems connected with
any period are partly solved by the good or bad
foundation laid in the preceding one. The diffi-
culties of Later Childhood, which extends from
the seventh to the twelfth year, in any case

134 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

great, are more easily mastered if wisdom has
already guided the hand of the parent up to this
point. We are always reaping what we have al-
ready sown. So emphatic is this truth that if a
child's character-direction is now to be under-
taken for the first time, it would be a bold prophet
that would announce the probability of success.
We will assume that there is simply to be the
continuance of good work already begun. In this
case there will be no sharp corner to be turned.
The changes to be noted will not transpire some
bright morning, making that day's task greatly
different from what it was the day before. Never-
theless the changes are real, and one must be
prepared for them and be able to discern at last
when they have arrived, even though they have
approached by imperceptible increments.

Former lines of activity still continue; some
to be intensified; some to dimmish gradually;
others are introduced that are more or less new.
Physically this is a period of slow growth, but
the health is good and the vigor strong, except-
ing that at thei age of eight or nine the child is
easily fatigued. There is great increase in man-
ual dexterity, and corresponding to it the sense
of utility has grown. "What can you do with
it!" "What 's it good for?" are frequent ques-
tions. There is an increase in objectivity of atti-
tude as distinguished from the imaginativeness
of the earlier period. Fact has more charm than
fiction now. The child insists on reality. He will

PERIODS OF DEVELOPMENT 135

like a story better if in answer to his question
we can insist that it is true. ' ' The wise teacher
will discard imaginative illustrations and use
those drawn from history, biography, science, and
his own experience." Doing rather than dream-
ing is his ideal.

Now, if not before, he spends much time out
of doors. This tends to independence and spon-
taneity of movement as compared with the former
imitativeness. This is attributable partly to the
accidents of parental direction rather than to the
disappearance of the tendency to imitate. There
is plenty of action still, but it is not now the
mere release of nervous energy ; it is guided more
by purpose and aim. The brain now attains its
full human size, which may well suggest the en-
trance upon a new stage of life. Yet it is a pe-
riod comparatively uninteresting to investigators
and perhaps to people generally. Less is written
about it than concerning Early Childhood on the
one hand, and Adolescence on the other. The
naivete and "innocence" of childhood have
passed; the earnestness of Adolescence has not
arrived. The child from seven to twelve must for
a time be content to be rather uninteresting and
sit in the shadows little observed. This is prob-
ably less trying than at some other periods; for
he does not readily express himself publicly. He
is observing rather than being observed ; often he
prefers to do this from some seclusion where his
presence is not noticed. An effort to make him

136 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

express himself before others must likely be based
on an appeal to his vanity and may be an injury
rather than a benefit. He is now allowing im-
pressions to sink down deep into his nature ; after
a while they will come to expression. Selfishness
now asserts itself very strongly. Acquisitiveness
is very active. These qualities make the use of
rewards and punishments very effective, and for
that very reason they may be misused unduly to
accentuate these natural tendencies. It will take
great tact to direct them toward good develop-
ments. Honor rolls, badges, buttons, grades, and
rank are very influential. The feeling of justice
is very strong ; playing fair is a standard of great
potency. Curiosity, heretofore a strong passion,
is now regnant. It is now the time when a boy
will shut himself up for half a day and take a
clock to pieces to see how it is made. This passion
for knowledge should be regarded as God's thirst
implanted in the soul to be satisfied to the fullest,
possible extent. It would be abortive to crush it ;
it is soul-growth to strengthen it. However, it
may lead in any moral or immoral direction ; the
work of the good guide is to direct it in the in-
terests of the higher and eternal life. Authority
is now naturally acknowledged. Previously he
may have followed inclination without any recog-
nition of its contradiction to the will of another;
now he recognizes the two wills and, if rightly
directed, learns to submit his own without wrench
or strain to his nature. The sense of right and

PERIODS OF DEVELOPMENT 137

wrong is stronger than it was formerly, but yet
does not often prove a determinative power of
decision. He still leans on the moral conscious-
ness of others. This fact aids rather than hinders
in rendering obedience to others.

The social instinct is now greatly strength-
ened. Its direction raises one of the most difficult
problems yet encountered. He is still appreci-
ative of companionship in general; but compan-
ionship of the same sex and age becomes impera-
tive. The "gang" spirit now arises with all its
indifference to every other question except com-
panionship. This is a law of nature unrepealable ;
how shall it be dealt with? We assume that every
natural law may be used in the higher develop-
ment of the child. Some parents respond to this
demand with no thought of directing it to the
higher nature, and let the impulse have its wild
way. The boy at least is turned loose to find his
own * * gang, ' ' and the problem of character is sur-
rendered. The unresisting response to this wild
demand is no more rational than it would have
been to give way before the wild striving of any
other natural impulse. The impulse means com-
panionship. The problem is to provide such as
will be helpful and not ruinous. Parents them-
selves may unbend and become children with their
children, supplying at once the yearning of the
child and gaining a stronger hold upon them. It
is also the opportunity of re-enforcing the re-
sources of the home from the best of the outside

138 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

world. Such, companions as would help in the
character problem may be invited into the home.
The companionship of life through literature is
suggested by the need. Inquiry will open up a
field of influence from this source that is almost
compelling. As a matter of fact there is no child
so difficult as the one that is seclusive, individual,
unsocial. One can not steer a ship that is stand-
ing still. One can not guide a life that moves not.
This social impulse is the great danger and the
great opportunity. It is the period of hero-wor-
ship. This element may enable one to hold in
check and direct other activities not so directly
noble or easily controlled.

This is the period when the child starts to
school. This event renders the problem very com-
plex. Of our public school system we are justly
proud as being, all things considered, the highest
mark of our civilization. Otir public school teach-
ers rank far above the average of our people in
intelligence and morals. To mention school life
as intensifying the difficulties of child-culture
above any one factor yet encountered, is not to
speak slightingly of these. But the school neu-
tralizes the distinctive features of the home to a
considerable degree. It is a leveler. Into it go
the influences of all the homes of the community,
and some of them are careless and indifferent to
a degree that renders the children from them a
moral infection. These homes have none of the
ideals for which we are pleading; crime and filth

PERIODS OF DEVELOPMENT 139

and moral shame have no opposition, but are
yielded to under the slightest occasion. The chil-
dren from such homes array their authority and
influence against all the rules and standards of
the homes that seek in the wisest way to develop
virtue and high character. Your little seven-year-
old is to be submitted to this moral blast when
you are not there to protect or to neutralize.
Surely that presents conditions of an uncertain
issue if not of an unfair struggle. It would lead
us wide afield to discuss it, but the only means
of combating that influence, apart from aiding the
school teacher, is to join with others in the effort
to uplift that degraded home. Its existence is a
menace to your child as well as to the destiny
of the child that comes from it. Under certain
circumstances it might be duty to refuse to send
your own child to the school if the danger were
imminent and too great for a child to meet with-
out almost certain destruction. The State has
no more right to harbor a moral infection in the
school than it has a physical one.

During this period, if ever, the church-going
habit must be established. Differences of view
might be encountered, and some reasonable, if not
compelling, objections given for its neglect
hitherto. But all subterfuges should now be swept
aside. Those who believe that the Church has a
mission, which can be accomplished only for those
who attend its services, must now endeavor to es-
tablish a love for and a habit of Church attend-

140 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

ance. Neglect up to this hour may have been a
mistake ; further neglect is fatal. The child that
neglects church attendance up till twelve years
of age, barring spiritual accidents, will join that
large crowd from our Christian homes who never
become Christians. The feeling of need of the
Church is a childhood growth ; if then suppressed,
there is no natural period for its development.

There is no development of this period more
burdened with destiny than that of the memory.
Memory was an early activity, but it was not re-
tentive. It was sufficient for the personality-
formation of that passing time; but it did not
bridge the years of childhood and maturity. The
bonds of association in an infant's memory are
like ropes of sand ; unless continually rebuilt, they
fall away. But our present period is the ' l Golden
Memory Period." "The physical side of mem-
ory is most interesting. On the covering of the
brain, each in its own place, the images or im-
pression brought in by the senses and the activ-
ity are registered. So sensitive and so suscep-
tible are the brain cells during childhood that
these impressions are received as clay receives
the touch of the sculptor's finger, and under right
conditions they are ineffaceable. When the soul
acts upon these images they live again, and we
say, 'We remember.' (Mrs. Lamoreaux: "The
Unfolding Life," 69.)

So to speak, the brain cells are not preoccupied
now, and they may receive impressions which

PERIODS OF DEVELOPMENT 141

shall have right of way for all future life. It is
the ideal time to store the mind with all kinds of
mental wealth in literature — poetry, the Bible,
hymns containing the best truths of life and spirit.
And then, how important to store the memory
from the life itself with impressions that will be
mental wealth when recalled. Memory has to do
with that strange something or nothing which we
call time. It is a very elusive thing. We some-
times call it a stream ; and yet future time is non-
existent; past time is non-existent; present time
as soon as it exists becomes past time, and hence
vanishes. Yet with this vanishing nothingness
we build the most precious things of consciousness
or destiny. The bridge that spans the present
and the future from this end is called Life ; from
that end is called Memory. As life, it is short;
as memory, it is long. Its pleasure as memory
can only be determined by its character as life.
Now we can arrange it for our child to be either
pleasure or pain; then, it must be what it has
been. The pleasures of memory depend not upon
itself, but upon the nature of past deeds. It is
impartial ; it brings back all of the past, whether
of joy or misery. The wealth of all after-years,
through the channel of memory, is potentially in
the hands of parents now. Cares will come after
a while; sorrows will sink their pangs deep into
the nature. What an opportunity now to sow
deep the sunshine of life, that, come what will,
can not be entirely effaced!

142 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

SECTION V. IN THE YEAES THAT FOLLOW.

We have now followed the child as far as our
purpose requires. There yet remains the period
of Adolescence; but it belongs rather to youth
than to childhood. It has received much attention
from investigators, and literature upon it is abun-
dant. It presents opportunities for revolution of
character, while we have traced only normal evo-
lution.

If the proper attention has thus far been given
to the child, he is now well prepared for entrance
upon this peculiar "storm and stress" period.
He will have unusual crises — physical, mental,
and spiritual — through which he must pass, which
will require the greatest attention and care from
his spirit-guardians. But with a good foundation
laid, there is every ground of expectation that
these years will be safely passed, and the youth
emerge into mature life with an equipment that
is a guarantee of moral success.

The child, as we have followed him, is equipped
at twelve years of age with a strong body, which
is now about to enter upon a period of growth
more rapid than he has ever before known. He
has developed a moral sense which is a capable
guide in situations where he must act alone and
without consultation, as they become necessary.
He has learned respect for and obedience to his
earthly parents, and they have made themselves
a symbol of the Heavenly Father, whom he has

PERIODS OF DEVELOPMENT 143

come to know through this means and the ever-
present and ever-active influence of the Holy
Spirit, who uses these symbols and teachings of
earthly guardian-spirits to make known the in-
visible God and His purposes for men. We have
no sure ground of confidence that the Holy Spirit
performs this office in the absence of this human
teaching. The spirit of obedience toward the par-
ents has in it the elements and essential nature of
yielding to the Higher Spirit, provided those par-
ents have recognized their true office and relation
to God and the child. The tastes of the character
have been formed on a high plane and will not
respond to appeals from lower levels. The feel-
ings of the nature have been trained to be active
in lines of sympathy and kindness. The control
of the nature, both of the animal and rational, has
been long disciplined and is now comparatively
able. Virtuous habits have been formed which
will steady him in trying hours when the spon-
taneous moral energy of the moment would not
be sufficient. The child enters a world that is not
"a friend to grace" indeed, where temptations
are strong, and streams of social influence are
against the ideals that have been implanted. But
that world has no dominant ally within, although
it will always seek an alliance with his animal
nature. That physical nature, however, has also
learned how to obey. It has been subjected to a
strong control and to habits the bonds of which
it can not of itself break. It can overcome only

144 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

by some subjugation of the tastes and feelings,
some tumultuous momentary onslaught, which
may, indeed, secure a momentary victory; but
even then through shame and contrition the usual
and normal moral status may be re-established.
Character has an inertia such that it does not
radically and permanently change in a moment.
This law is an impediment to sudden reforma-
tion; but it is also the bulwark of the virtuous
against deformation.

That strange and unscientific factor called
freedom of choice has not been nullified, and we
therefore are unable to predict invariably what
a soul will do. Some allowances have always to
be made for this unpredictable element. Never-
theless there are laws of spirit-formation which
we may investigate and whose working we may
observe; on the outcome of these we may rely in
the general results of life. The parent who has
wisely obeyed these laws may confidently depend
upon expected results, and in case of any tem-
porary disappointment may with good conscience
ask the special assistance of society and the Holy
Spirit of God to confer unusual grace for what
seems an unusual and humanly unavoidable re-
sult.

CHAPTEE IX

THE MORAL SENSE

I THINK we must say that the religious nature of
the child is neutral until the dawning of the sense
of ought, or of the sense of right and wrong.
Even then it is premature to think of him as a
complete spiritual being. The time of the dawn-
ing of this moral sense is of very great interest
and importance. Our reproaches and punish-
ments must be adjusted to it. Stanley Hall says :
"For children all offenses are simply forbidden
things, and the distinction between what is wrong
or forbidden and what is criminal, and the per-
spective that differentiates between different
crimes, comes late, but moral comes even later
than intellectual maturity." (" Adolescence," I,
403.)

I know a little fellow who is sometimes caught
doing what he has been forbidden to do. He is
seventeen months old. When thus detected he will
be found with his hands behind him, a picture of
innocence. This presents a curious problem. Has
he a conscience which he is disobeying? If not,
why does he hide his action? I am inclined to
answer: He has as yet no sense of right and
wrong. His action, which seems so much like
depravity, has in it no moral quality. The effort

10 145

146 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

to hide his action grows out of the knowledge that
it has been forbidden, and the doing of forbidden
things is associated with punishment. Professor
Major in his observation of his own child noted
that the little fellow had many devices for getting
away his little brother 's playthings from him. It
looked much like selfishness, but probably was
not; for he was quite willing to let his brother
have his own playthings. It was action which
his opening powers suggested, that was not yet
inhibited by the higher element, as yet undevel-
oped, of unselfish or altruistic action. His own
testimony concerning the child at this age is, "I
have never seen a single trait which even the ' un-
embarrassed scientist' would call vicious." Some
day there must come from within a feeling that
it is wrong to do wrong. At about the age of
six or seven years the child acquires the sense of
the conventional, which is the idea of the proper
or a social standard. This looks very much like
the beginnings of the sense of ought as controlled
by others, so far as we can trace it to outward
influence. The conventional may easily pass into
the obligatory. ''With the beginnings of this con-
sciousness the symbolic bent of the mind begins
to yield a place to the higher and more conscious
form of intellectual and moral activity." (W. T.
Harris.) As to the nature and origin of con-
science there is much difference of opinion among
thoughtful writers. When one accepts the point
of view of Divine Immanence, it is not so easy
to distinguish the innate from the extra-personal.

THE MORAL SENSE 147

But speaking as a religionist, we love to think
of it as God's voice and man's voice — God's voice
in man's voice, and adopt the language of Kant.
He says : ' ' There are two things that fill my mind,
the oftener and longer I dwell upon them, with
ever-fresh and ever-growing admiration and awe :
the starry heavens above me and the moral law
within me. Neither is veiled in mystery or lost
in immensity so that I need to seek them beyond
the sphere of vision and merely surmise that they
are there. I see them before me and link them
immediately with the consciousness of my exist-
ence. . . . The second begins from my invisible
self, my personality, and exhibits me in a world
which has true infinity, but which is traceable only
by the understanding." (Eucken: "Problem of
Human Life," 445.) Goethe must have had a
similar faculty in mind when he speaks of that
sentiment " which none brings with him into the
world, but on which it entirely depends whether
or not a man shall be in all respects a man — the
sentiment of reverence." (do., 474.) But, how-
ever mysterious its origin or inexplicable its na-
ture, the conscience never speaks more authori-
tatively than in the first years after its manifes-
tation. W. E. Gladstone has told a beautiful story
of it when it spoke to him as a stranger whom
he did not recognize. It was when he was a lit-
tle boy in his fourth year. He lifted a stick to
kill a tortoise. ' ' But all at once, ' ' he says, * ' some-
thing checked my arm, and at once a voice within
me said, clear and loud, 'It is wrong.' I held

148 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

my uplifted stick in wonder at the new emotion —
the consciousness of an involuntary but inward
restraint upon my actions — till the tortoise van-
ished from my sight. I hastened home and told
the tale to my mother, and asked what it was
that told me it was wrong. She wiped a tear
from her eye with her apron and, taking me up
in her arms, said: 'Some men call it conscience,
but I prefer to call it the voice of God in the soul
of man. If you listen and obey it, then it will
speak clearer and clearer, and always guide you
right ; but if you turn a deaf ear or disobey, then
it will fade out little by little and leave you all
in the dark without a guide. Your life depends
upon this voice.' Then she went her way about
her affairs, but no event of my life made a more
deep and lasting impression upon me." This
voice of God may at first speak only the things
that are permitted; it may associate itself with
the things that cause no pain; there may be pri-
marily and even permanently some confusion, but
its imperative is unmistakable; something in it
will be heard above the din and clamor of earthly
voices. Macbeth is not untrue to life when he
asks:

Whence is that knocking?

How is 't with me when every noise appalls me?

What hands are here? Ha ! they pluck out my eyes.

Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood

Clean from my hands? No ; this my hand will rather

The multitudinous seas incarnadine,

Making the green one red. (Macbeth, act ii, sc. 2.)

THE MORAL SENSE 149

It is thought by some that this moral faculty
is an imitative function and has its origination
in obedience. The child first feels the compulsion
of command from his parents and from that gains
the idea of obedience. This becomes a well-fixed
attitude in his relation to them. But he will after
awhile observe that they too are obedient. They
sometimes say that they must do things or must
not do things which they do not want to do or do
want to do. In the parents the child notes — rather
confusedly, of course, though more clearly when
oft repeated — that the parents are obeying some
unseen source of obligation. They say: We must;
we must not. We ought ; we ought not. An un-
seen authority is felt by them whom they obey.
These instances of obligation come to be reduced
to rule or principle, and after years the child has
been impressed with a law of obligation that is
different from the authority of his parents. It is
very probable that this sense of moral obligation
would be very seriously impaired where the par-
ents act capriciously, always as they pleased, and
were not themselves obedient to a Power not them-
selves.

Another root of this same origination is thus
stated by Baldwin : ' * Suppose a boy who has once
obeyed a command to let an apple alone, coming
to confront the apple again when there is no one
present to make him obey. There is his private,
greedy, habitual self, eying the apple; there is
also the spontaneously suggestible, accommodat-

150 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

ing, imitating self over against it, mildly prompt-
ing him to do as his father said and let the apple
alone ; and there is — or would be, if the obedience
had taught him no new thought of self — the quick
victory of the former. But now a lesson has been
learned. There arises a thought of one who
obeys, who has no struggle in carrying out the
behest of the father. This may be vague; his
habit may be yet weak in the absence of persons
and penalties, but it is there, however weak. And
it is no longer the faint imitation of an obedient
self which he does not understand. It carries
within it, it is true, all the struggle of the first
obedience, all the painful protests of the private
greedy self, all the smoke of the earlier battle-
field. But while he hesitates it is not now merely
the balance of the old forces that makes him
hesitate; it is the sense of the new, better, obe-
dient self hovering before him. A few such
fights, and he begins to grow accustomed to the
presence of something in him which represents
his father, mother, or in general the law giving
personality." ("Social and Ethical Interpreta-
tions," 54.) The remaining step to be taken is to
eject this representative of authority into all
others of the family and all others generally.

This view of the origin of conscience may
shock those who have regarded it as a purely
extra-natural production. But it need not disturb
our view that it is God's voice, however unsettling
it may be to its sometimes supposed infallibility.

THE MORAL SENSE 151

We are apt to credit the doing of those things to
God, the method of doing of which is hidden from
our view. Then some day, when we look through
a little glass and discover God in the doing of it,
our first exclamation is, 0, it was not God, after
all, who did it; it was somebody or something
else! But this second thought is our blunder.
God does it just the same when He puts a parent
at the heart of the task, and through them accom-
plishes His purpose. May it exalt our view of
parenthood when we see that they are vitally con-
nected with this problem, and in their absence it
is never well done ; nor is it well done when they,
careless of their task, do not recognize that they
are in the place of God to their child.

What particular actions are wrong will be de-
termined by the commandments from his parents
until the time when he may have an understand-
ing of the Higher Parent. Then His command-
ments will also be regarded as the content of
moral conduct.*

The dawning of this spiritual sense is com-
paratively early, though no fixed age can be
named that will hold for all children. Some chil-
dren have it as early as four years ; others as late
as seven; others possibly later. If we should

* "Poor soul, here for so little, cast among so many hardships, filled with desires
so incommensurate, and so inconsistent, savagely surrounded, savagely descended, ir-
redeemably condemned to prey upon his fellows' lives; who should have blamed him
had he been of a piece with his destiny? To touch the heart of his mystery, we find in
him one thought strange to the point of lunacy; the thought of duty; the thought of
something owing to himself, to his neighbor, to his God; an ideal of decency to which he
would rise, if it were possible; a limit of shame, below which if it were possible he will
not stoop." — (R. L. Stevenson; "Pulvis et Umbra," quoted by TylerO

152 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

name six years, we would find it accompanied with
marked physiological changes : it is the period of
the second dentition; the brain has achieved its
adult size and weight ; now is the time of reduced
growth, and increased activity and power to re-
sist both disease and fatigue. (Hall: "Adoles-
cence," II, 451.) There is no other such marked
year between the third year and puberty.

J. E. Street, of Clark University, conducted
an examination of one hundred and eighty-three
persons, from which he drew the conclusion:
"There was nothing to show that conscience
played any great factor in life before the age of
nine, and very little mention was made of it be-
fore thirteen. The cases, however, are altogether
too few to make any generalized conclusion con-
cerning the age at which conscience becomes a
potent element in the individual. Yet it may be
premised that it does not reveal its existence at
as early an age as many would believe. The
writer knows a child in whom it was abnormally
developed at the age of three. Impulse governs
most of the activities of early childhood." (A.
MacDonald: "Experimental Child Study," 1339.)

When we reflect that brain cells are not suffi-
ciently formed for purposes of intellectuality un-
til about the sixth year, and that conscience should
follow reflection, we must not expect conscience
to be a factor before that age, and then only in
its germinal form. As to what things a child's

THE MORAL SENSE 153

conscience shall say, we must know what has been
taught by its parents and teachers.

MacDonald calls attention to another impor-
tant point when he says: " Moral training is not
the establishment of mere moral habits, as the
ethical people advocate, but is the unfolding and
widening of the deeper instincts, particularly the
emotions, and has its roots in the religious senti-
ments that so early pervade child-life. . . . The
parent stands in such relation to the child as to
enable him to seize upon the deed germ and so
to nourish it that it will produce the beautiful
plant of a pure, noble character."

This conception of the conscience assumes (1)
a primal instinct that may be unfolded in child-
hood. This is not a moral endowment, implying
merit or demerit, but an endowment of the nature,
which when exercised opens in moral character.
(2) The control of the action of the child directs
the unfolding instinct or emotional power to the
good or the evil character. The conscience fac-
ulty may have no content, but it does have a cer-
tain texture which forms a basis of moral re-
action from the influences which shall come upon
it after a while.

The important point is: not that we should
adopt some time for the application of a religious
formula and judgment concerning its spiritual
relation to God, but that we should regard the
moral awakening, whenever it comes, as a phe-

154 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

nomenon realized and treat the child accordingly.
Just as we observe the awakening of self-con-
sciousness and the faculty of reasoning, so we
should observe the awakening of the moral fac-
ulty and seek at that point to have it choose right-
eousness as such. That choice for the child is
tantamount to the choosing of God. It has all the
significance for the spiritual relation to God for
the child that conversion has in riper years for
the adult. I do not mean to say that a child can
at that time make a choice that carries it un-
changingly into the future, as the adult may. The
child's nature requires that this choice be con-
firmed by every succeeding choice. But the choice
for the moment contains the child's religious re-
lation for the moment. If that choice is confirmed
ever afterwards, the child is an acceptable child
of God ; if a contrary choice is subsequently made,
it will need to seek forgiveness, just as the adult
does when he falls from grace. This moral con-
dition has the childish element of instability; but
it has no taint of sin upon it. The instability
suggests the child's moral dependence upon par-
ents and teachers. It can not live its moral life
alone any more than it can live its physical life
alone. The parent is the child's moral supple-
ment

CHAPTER X

THE SCIENTIFIC EKA OF RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION

THERE are other elements than the dawn of the
moral sense that enter into the question, When
is the ideal time for religious instruction? The
period for the formation of habits is from the
third to the seventh year. Character, from one
point of view, is the by-product of actions, and
habitual actions thus are of most intense impor-
tance. Perhaps it was from some such knowledge
as this that caused that student of this question,
the most profound yet produced in America, Hor-
ace Bushnell, to say that more could be done to
make or mar the eternal destiny of a child be-
fore three years of age than could be done after-
wards. Eemembering, then, the importance of
these early years, and then from six years on to
thirteen or fourteen, we have the period of op-
portunity for parent or teacher to lead a soul to
Christ. After sixteen we may compare their res-
cue to that of the passengers wrecked in the ocean,
clinging to planks and timbers. Some of them
will be picked up ; but it all seems accidental, and
no rule can be named as to how it may be accom-
plished. There probably always has been in the

155

156 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

Roman Catholic Church a scientific basis for the
teaching of religion. Our objection to that
Church can not be so much because of their meth-.
ods of instruction as to the subject matter of their
teaching. In method they are able to teach us
very much. Their adherents, even without the
strong religious passion that a personal yielding
to Christ gives, are very tenacious to the faith
and practices of their Church.

The evangelistic method can not be called
scientific ; nor can it be called ideal. It is greatly
to be commended as a method to be used with
adults who have lost their opportunity of scientific
instruction. But its continuance under present
conditions is losing to the Protestant Church two-
thirds of its children, and presents the most
alarming and discouraging view of Christianity
in the world. The greatest discouragement that
we face is not in China, with its unknown num-
ber of millions to be evangelized, indoctrinated,
and converted; but rather the fact that here in
America from our Christian homes and Sunday
schools sixty per cent of our children never be-
come Christian. When we look at the means nec-
essary to hold them, the neglect that we observe
is as significant as the result which we deplore.
They are not receiving the instruction, during this
ideal period when they might be won, which is in
any degree sufficient to insure that they will be-
come Christians. They are allowed first to be
lost, and then, when character's choice has been

THE RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION

made, a belated and necessarily ineffectual effort
is made to win them back.

Says Dr. David G. Downey : ' ' The child holds
the future, and the only way to save the future
is to save the child. We can not save the child
by allowing him to go to the devil in his youth-
hood, and then attempt by special and spectacu-
lar methods to win him back to God in his man-
hood. Our method of approach to the child-heart
and mind must be in harmony with the well-estab-
lished laws and principles that govern the child's
growth. Religious development must be made
not a matter of miracle and magic, but a part
of the child's normal development, just as nat-
ural and normal as his development physically or
mentally. God has ordained a right time and a
right way for developing a child's physical life.
It is not a matter of chance, caprice, or magic.
It is a matter of care, feeding, exercise, and en-
vironment. Every parent understands, and up
to the measure of his understanding co-operates
with the divine law. God also has ordained a
right time and a right way for developing the
child's mental life. It is not a matter of chance,
caprice, or magic. It is simply a matter of in-
struction, guidance, and teaching at the right
time. Every parent and every teacher under-
stands, and as far as possible co-operates with
the divine law. . . . Let that time pass unim-
proved, and the child is intellectually lost. . . .
Has God ordained a right time and a right way

158 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

for developing the child's physical life? for de-
veloping the child's mental life? and has left his
spiritual life without plan or care — a matter of
chance, caprice, magic, miracle, or whim? As-
suredly not. Here as elsewhere, nay, more, just
here especially God has a right time and a right
way. ' '

It is probably not sufficiently realized that
youth is the great crime-producing period. The
County Court of Kings, New York, for the year
1908 passed sentence on 950 persons convicted of
crime. Of these 491 were under twenty years of
age and 283 were between twenty-one and thirty,
and only 176 were above thirty years of age. In
New York State in one year the superintendent
of instruction reported 179,000 arrests of children
under fifteen years of age. In France it is noted
that during recent years juvenile depravity and
criminality have greatly increased. They have
passed a law that recognizes that every criminal
under eighteen is still a child, and as such unfit
for prison. Houses of correction are established,
the distinguishing feature of which is, as far as
possible to keep those convicted in touch with the
home, recognizing it as containing the only suffi-
cient elements for character formation. " Pos-
sessing as they do the ear, the heart, and the sym-
pathy of the child, parents have it within their
power to develop the child into almost whatever
they may wish. Hence if they would get back to
the Hebrew conception of the family, and would

THE RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION 159

devote themselves as diligently to the nurture of
their children as they do now to the ways of
fashionable and business life or, better still, with
all the solicitousness that they exercise in the
rearing of their horses and dogs, the problem of
the moral regeneration of the race would be most
thoroughly solved." (MacDonald, 1342.)

A religious curriculum, embracing morning
and evening prayer, attendance upon Sunday
school and Church, and daily instruction in the
religious life, would not be too much to withstand
the tides of opposition to Christianity flowing all
about them in our land. It is probable that mod-
ern times present many more allurements away
from the Christian life than did several centuries
ago. Yet we are far from equaling some of the
Christians of those more simple times. The spir-
itual descendants of John Huss showed a care-
fulness and zeal which is not found in modern
Church customs. The important connection be-
tween the Church and the home was thoroughly
recognized. The membership of the congregation
was divided into three sections : the beginners, the
advanced, and the perfected. The first section
was the children, who received separate instruc-
tion in the Bible. The instruction received in the
Church was supplementary to and a review of
that which was carried on in the home. Officers
of the Church visited the homes regularly to see
that the plan of home instruction was carried out,
and reported the conditions to the pastor. * i This

160 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

home training consisted in a personal examina-
tion of the children by the father, usually during
or after the midday meal, to discover what they
remembered, and how much they understood of
the religious teaching they had received, either
at school or any of the many services of the week.
From very few of the Church services were the
children excused. . . . Morning and evening
family devotions were also conscientiously kept
up." Several services were held during the Sab-
bath ; one of them might overrun an hour, but the
afternoon and evening services were scrupulously
held to thirty minutes. During special seasons
of the year the lessons suggested by them were
carefully and impressively taught. During the
year the whole Bible was gone over in outline.
The parochial schools, which were held during the
week, also made the teaching of the religious and
moral life of great prominence. In view of this
careful training of the children we are better able
to understand the profound impressions that the
Moravians have made upon the world.

Moreover, an indispensable condition is that
children should not be associated with vice during
these early years. No cost is too great that they
may be shielded during those years when nature
formed them to imitate what they see. It must
be frankly admitted that this world is ill-adapted
for the moral or even the mental education of the
child. What are the sights that meet his eye as
he goes to and from school? The great posters

THE RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION 161

on the walls and the billboards, portray a world
that he is not fitted to enter. Evil persons of
adult years will try to engage his attention and
his interest in their evil world. Children of his
own years from the homes and slums of vice en-
act a life on the street that is very suggestive to
his open mind. What comes to him from the
newspaper that enters every home? Certainly
very little that is fitted for his eyes and thought-
pictures and stories of crime and sin. The comic
supplement to the Sunday newspaper is his espe-
cial enemy. It is gotten up to catch his eye and
engage his attention, but under the guidance of
no moral purpose. One writer has recently said
of it: "It glorifies the smart child, proficient
in monkey tricks; the cheeky, disrespectful, and
irreverent child, who * guys' his elders and bet-
ters; the libertine child, of silly, humoring
parents." From the moral and religious point
of view our modern world is very unfriendly
to the child. He has no defenses in himself.
He knows not his danger. Ofttimes parents do
not comprehend that they are purposed to be his
defense against moral invasion as really as they
are against the invasion of physical danger and
want. Many who pride themselves on the physical
provision which they make for their children,
allow them to suffer the merciless moral treatment
of all the sin-traps of the street and public life
that surges around our homes, seeking for en-
trance. In how many instances are tender chil-
li

162 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

dren turned into the street to be the easy victims
of its vice unavoidably visible ! How many homes
provide the instruction that we have noted as the
minimum of necessity? Certainly the percentage
of cases where these conditions are found is not
as large as the percentage of children who be-
come Christian. Many a child in a nominally
Christian home has never heard his father's or
his mother's voice in prayer. One of the most
precious memories and most potent influences on
life is thus lost. God is better to us than our
plans and work. Those homes which carefully
train their children with this daily and painstak-
ing instruction secure the Christian character of
their children ; but those which depend upon their
conversion through the agency of evangelistic
methods are losing them in large masses.

CHAPTEB XI

CHILDREN 'g BAPTISM

CHURCH history hardly affords a more striking
illustration of the conflict between an instinctive
spiritual tendency and the barriers erected by
groping theologians than the manner in which the
baptism of children has been treated by the Chris-
tian world, The New Testament is silent con-
cerning it, and yet the teaching of Jesus has been
arrayed on both sides of the conflict. The state-
ment of John 3:5, " Except one be born of water
and the Spirit, he can not see the Kingdom of
God,'* seemed to shut children out of the King-
dom, their original sinfulness having been as-
sumed. On the other hand, the statement, "of
such is the Kingdom of heaven," was in direct op-
position to this. Its plain meaning could not be
evaded; but it could be neglected by those who
could not make it harmonize with their belief.
For the most part the Church has accepted both
statements and emphasized both in the most in-
harmonious fashion. The custom of children's
baptism probably had its roots in Jewish tradi-
tions and practices, and the fear that unbaptized
persons would be excluded from the Kingdom for-

163

164 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

ever, in harmony with the well-nigh unchallenged
phrase, extra ecclesiam nulla solus. It grew early
and extensively in the early Church, and at times
has held an almost universal sway.

It has always been met, however, by two or
more beliefs that seemed to make it untenable.
The first was that baptism is for the "remission
of sins." If this sin was original sin, of course
it was logical for the child to be baptized as early
as possible; but if it were for the sins actually
committed by us, then it was best to defer bap-
tism to a period as late in life as possible. Or
if it were for both original and actual sins, as
many held, the latter position is inevitable. This
latter course was recommended by many and was
the one pursued by Constantino the Great. More-
over, it was regarded peculiarly sacrilegious for
a baptized person to commit sin, while an un-
baptized person was privileged in sin. Augustin
quotes the current saying, "Let him alone, let
him do as he likes, for he is yet unbaptized. ' '
("Confessions," I, xi.) The other belief was
that baptism was a sign of admission into the
Kingdom, which could be entered by those only
who personally by faith accepted Jesus Christ.
As this faith is impossible to children, they could
not enter, and logic would require that they should
be refused baptism, the initiatory rite. This atti-
tude toward the subject has played a much larger
role than the other, and is a very prevalent ob-
stacle to the custom even to this day. It has been

CHILDREN'S BAPTISM 165

met in the history of the subject by the assertion
of a sort of vicarious faith, or of unconscious
faith on the part of the child. On the one hand,
those who were sponsors for the child, parents
or god-parents, were supposed to be able to ex-
ercise a faith that was available for him. On
the other hand, some supposed that a sort of un-
conscious faith was exercised by the child. Thus
Calvin taught, " Infants may have infused into
them a kind of faith and knowledge, though not
ours." This, however, as has been pointed out
by Harnack, was an abandonment of the Protes-
tant view of faith, and has not exercised so very
great influence on the practice.

The High Church idea of baptism, which may
be called baptismal regeneration, has had a very
great part in the defense of this custom. It is
in the realm of the mystical, if not the magical,
the mysterious, approaching the superstitious, if
it does not actually reach it. It tries to escape
the charge of mechanism in spiritual things, that
the sheer application of water in itself works the
regeneration of the spiritual being. I will not
attempt to state the form of this disclaimer, for
to me it has no validity. To its defenders the
modus operandi becomes a matter of great im-
portance. It must be the application of water,
and not some other liquid, as milk or wine. Great
care must be exercised that it be not repeated.
If in doubt about this, one must preface the ad-
ministration by the phrase, "If thou hast not

166 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

been baptized." As the ordinance works of it-
self, it is valid even though it may have been per-
formed by a heretic, etc., etc. Innocent III held
that, as sin came to infants without their con-
sciousness, so they could be freed from it by the
power of the sacrament. In accordance with this
line of reasoning, he thought that baptism would
be effective upon men asleep or mad, if they had
previously expressed a purpose of receiving it.
(Vid. Hastings: "Encyc. of Religion and Ethics,"
II, 398.)

The Council of Trent, building its doctrine
upon the tenet of Original Sin, made one distinc-
tion of value; though this distinction, so far as
I know, has never been developed into a clearer
expression of the normal human condition in
morals. Its teaching is thus represented: "The
guilt of original sin is removed in baptism, and
the regenerate are no longer sinful in the eyes of
God, though there remains in them a root of con-
cupiscence, which is left for them to struggle
against. This concupiscence must not be called
* sin ' if by the term it is implied that there is any-
thing in the regenerate which can properly be
called sin. It is sin only in so far as it comes
from sin and leads to sin." (do., 399.) This
point, that sin remained after baptism, which was
supposed to remove it, had caused much trouble.
Some were bold enough logicians to simply re-
ject the fact. Augustin held that baptism "means
the breaking down of the sinful habit, the be-

CHILDREN'S BAPTISM 167

stowal of a special grace of resistance, but not
the entire removal of the enemy." Hillary had
to warn his readers against supposing that bap-
tism would restore them to the innocence of child-
hood. Baptism in the second century was re-
garded as a peculiarly strong form of exorcism.
"Just as the Ked Sea drowned Pharaoh, so bap-
tism drowns the devil out of a man.'*

In general all these teachers and Churches,
which taught infant baptism, regarded confirma-
tion, or some other step to be taken when the
child came to years of responsibility, as a neces-
sity, which in effect is a substitute for believers'
baptism.

It is little wonder that a custom that has been
defended by an appeal to such absurdities and
unfounded necessities, by such conflicting argu-
ments and disregard of personal history, should
fail of general acceptance and understanding, and
be assailed with such sarcasm as this custom has
met. And yet Christianity would be of little
value if these attacks upon the custom were in-
vincible.. If Christianity is not for the child, then
one-half of the human race are cut off from its
benefits at a stroke: for one-half never grow up
to be adults. But this is not the worst aspect of
this opposition ; it will have only a disputed value
for the other half. If Christianity is not for the
child, it is hardly adjustable to normal humanity,
and will ever remain a little ' ' lean-to ' ' to life, the
worth-while-ness of which will be dubious. If

168 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

Christianity is normal to human life, it must cover
the whole of it, and especially that part in which
character is formed. If the child can come to a
normal human spiritual stature without the help
of the Church, the acceptance of Christ by the
adult is emphatically superfluous. But to admit
that the child may receive the benefits of Chris-
tianity, and yet refuse it the ministry of this rite,
universally regarded as initiatory, is an indefen-
sible position. How can it run the course, if it
never enters upon it? We would place the bap-
tism of children in a central position, and at the
same time divorce it from the mystical, irrational,
unrealizable ministrations that have been claimed
for it. Its benefits in plain sight are sufficient to
bind it upon us with indissoluble bands. With
the cancellation of the doctrine of hereditary sin
we at a stroke get rid of a mass of contradictions
and absurdities. However the phrase, "for the
remission of sins," may be interpreted, it creates
more difficulties than it dissolves to say it is either
for the sins which we inherit from Adam or, so
far as it is a physical act, that it has the least
effect in washing away actual sins. Biblical in-
terpretation is never justified in creating more
difficulties than it finds. If Biblical phrase is so
mysterious that we can not penetrate its meaning,
let it remain a mystery; but let there be no obli-
gation created by the exegete that compels a be-
liever to accept what he knows can not be true
without the destruction of fundamental principles

CHILDREN'S BAPTISM 169

in morals, and intellectual dishonesty or suicide.
There are certain conceptions of infant bap-
tism that appear to us as little better than gross
superstition on the one hand, or based on imag-
inary necessities on the other. They dwell in the
region of mystical relations and imaginary bene-
fits. It is impossible to trace the moral benefit to
children, as supposed, in their actual life. The
announcement of these views has doubtless done
much to discredit the true benefits of baptism.
Some speak of the good children derive from it
as coming to them under the influence of a cov-
enant. For myself, I can not see that the idea,
which seems to bind some formal obligation on
to God, adds much to the notion of His universal
love for all His creatures. Furthermore, omitting
the idea of their inherent sinfulness, and there
seems to be no barrier to be overcome by a com-
pact to the full display of His love and fellowship.
But to those who seem to see some force in it
I would quote the words of F. D. Maurice. "I am
deeply persuaded, ' ' he says, * l that a covenant pre-
supposes an actual relation; and therefore object
wholly to those phrases which speak of the rela-
tion as if it were constituted by the covenant."
("Life," I, 209.)

The Anabaptists of the sixteenth century ' ' in-
stead of infant baptism had a ceremony in which
children were consecrated to God." (Lindsay:
"Reformation," II, 435.) This seems to us to
secure the central idea quite effectively, while it

170 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

betrays a needless reservation of the ordinance,
as if it had some ulterior benefits. Baptism of
infants can mean only two things : First, a, recog-
nition on the part of others of the right of the
child in the Church. No spiritual benefit can come
to it directly from the physical act of applying
water, whether in this form or that. The custom
of baptizing a child which is about to die is com-
parable to the heathen idea of salvation by some
utterly non-moral influence. But so long a,s bap-
tism is regarded as a rite of entrance into the
Church it should not be denied to children. From
the beginning they are in the invisible Church,
and the visible Church is making good her claims
to a vital work in the world when she undertakes
with all zeal to have all whom Christ receives
enter by some visible ordinance into her fold.

But in the second place, there are some bene-
fits to the child of a more dynamic character.
They are none the less because they are indirect.
The baptism of the child is an act of the parents
by which they acknowledge the divine relation of
the child to God already established, the divine
origin of the child, the divine ownership of the
child, and the obligation laid upon them of se-
curing to him a divine destiny. The benefits that
come to him are from the vividness and vitality
of these impressions upon the minds of the par-
ents. Should they be lacking entirely, and bap-
tism be given through the influence of some ficti-

CHILDREN'S BAPTISM 171

tious ecclesiastical valuation, the benefit will be
nothing. But if these convictions are present in
active form, then the child will each day receive
the benefit of that consecration which gave it back
to God and which abides in the ever-working vi-
sion that this is a holy child and may not be dealt
with as if it were in the sole power of the parents
to do with as pleasure or caprice or unholy am-
bition dictate. Where this consecration is lacking,
the ordinance is an empty and meaningless form;
its only effect is to work a delusion.

Children's baptism, then, demands certain con-
ditions, without which it is only an empty super-
stition. If the parents understand its nature and
its limitations ; if they will undertake to carry out
its implications ; if they comprehend that its spir-
itual working is vicarious, coming to the child
through them, then its observance will be fraught
with the largest possible blessing and spiritual
fruitage. It is but the first act of a program of
spiritual education and influence that, through a
wonderful and divine arrangement, enables the
parents to be in very deed the father and the
mother of the spiritual form of the child, and not
merely the cause of its physical structure. This
assumes a previous instruction and preparation
that probably are not usually given, but without
which it will be as profitless and mocking as it
is sacrilegious. Could this be adequately under-
stood we would enter upon a period which would

172 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

not, as now, lose to us seventy-five per cent of our
boys and a large per cent of our girls into the
non-religious life. According to our use of it will
this practice be the most effective or the most
useless religious instrument of all the ordinances
of the Church.

CHAPTER XH

HOW CAN A CHILD BE SAVED ?

SOME years ago the writer was attending a preach-
ers ' meeting in a Western city. The popular pas-
tor of the largest Church in the city came into
the room just as some brother was announcing
with great confidence the opinion that no one
could get into the Kingdom of God, or get to
heaven, without being converted. Our friend
heard the statement, and as he swung into his
seat, called out, "That 's my sentiment." The
discussion drifted on for half an hour, and then
this pastor arose, very subdued, and said with
much feeling that he had lost two children some
years before, and he always thought that they
had gone to heaven. "But if what is said here
to-day be true, then I do not know where they
have gone." This seemed to put a new face on
the matter. If conversion is the only door that
admits people to heaven, then only those who
can exercise personal faith in Jesus Christ can be
saved. The question is not so serious in regard
to those who live to mature years and have the
chance of complying with the conditions admitting
to conversion. But it was formerly said that one-

173

174 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHII^D

half the human race die before they attain seven
years, and these are by their situation shut out
from heaven forever, unless a future probation is
provided for them, which last supposition is gen-
erally unacceptable to those who stand for the
doctrine of conversion. Some try to relieve the
situation to a degree by indicating that children
may be converted when very young, suggesting
cases of conversion even at four years of age.
The Eev. E. P. Hammond, recently translated,
gives a number of instances of children converted
when four years of age, and one at the extremely
early age of two and a half. If these cases could
be multiplied manifold there would still remain a
great question in our minds concerning those not
thus reached.

Many inquiries arise in our minds concerning
this question of child-conversion. They have such
life-interest to us all that no one will feel like
speaking lightly of the solution that another may
present. Psychologists have serious misgivings
concerning the procedure of these early conver-
sions. They seem to violate the very nature of
the child-mind. How can there be the conscious-
ness of sin which is involved in the process?
That the sense of sorrow may be brought about
by suggestion and sympathy is well known. May
there not be something artificial about the whole
procedure? That many children thus begin their
religious life is undoubted. One is tempted to
say, Better this method, even if involved in mis-

HOW CAN A CHILD BE SAVED? 175

taken suppositions, than the inattention to their
religious life which widely prevails. But while
we refrain from denunciation of what may be a
mistake, may we not inquire, Is there not a better
way, based upon truer psychology and purer
doctrine?

That better way for the child that lives to
grow up, we will consider when we come to speak
of the " Birth from Above." But what shall we
say concerning those who do not live to grow up!

One of the answers is, Baptize them : this will
cure the sin of their nature and admit them into
heaven. We have already paid our respects to
that teaching. It is a belated doctrine proceeding
out of the night of superstition. We need add
no more.*

Another answer is : God cuts short the work in
righteousness ; sanctifies them, and takes them to
heaven. We confess ourselves unable to put any
meaning into these words. Can it mean that
God accelerates the mental and moral develop-

* The following is from a sermon preached apparently only thirteen years ago,
published in the Homiletic Review. I will not name the preacher, but it will show that
I have not misstated the position that was held by orthodox preachers no longer ago
than that. To my ear it sounds from very far away. I do not remember to have heard
anything like it recently.

"By nature they (children) are in Adam, and not in Christ; they are the children
of the world, and not of God. It is a divine transaction (by which they are made par-
takers of life) — a new life is given in holy baptism. That which is born of the flesh must
be 'born again of water and the Spirit.' What has been promised to parents and their
seed by the Holy Ghost shall be actually conferred. It is called the 'washing of regen-
eration." With this infants have no more to do than with their natural generation.
That is an act of God in His own appointed way, and the life thus commenced underlies
and precedes all consciousness, all thought, faith, hope, and charity. Children may
regain in Jesus Christ all they lost in Adam. Those who are baptized into Christ have put
on Christ, and if afterwards they change their relation to God it must be by departing
from Him."

176 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

ment of these children, so that they can enter
upon conditions of faith and acceptance of Christ,
and that, this being accomplished, their nature is
regenerated and they are taken into heaven?
These seem to he the necessities of the case on
the assumption of inherited sinfulness. We un-
dertake to say that even God can not do that.
Moral character is a personal achievement, and
can not be thus cut short, nor any short cuts taken
in its attainment. Moreover, the whole repre-
sentation is the promulgation of a theory in dire
distress. It is much easier to disbelieve the whole
theory, to start with, than to stretch our credulity
to such limits. Reject the doctrine of original
sin, and it serves no useful purpose.

The answer that these children are sent to
perdition, having never done evil, requires noth-
ing but a reference to it. There was a day when
it required argument ; but the sun of that day will
never rise again. It passes our comprehension
that such an article of faith ever could have had an
hour's lodgment in human belief. That man could
ever have thought so vilely of God is a mystery
which can never be fully explained. That belief
has been driven forth, not so much by argument
or presentation of proof texts as by direct insight.
Whatever else is true, that can not be true. We
may forever despair of an answer to our ques-
tion; but this answer is forever barred.

The only other answer that can be presented
on the assumption of hereditary sin is the answer

HOW CAN A CHILD BE SAVED? 177

of a Future Probation. The argument runs
something like this: None can be saved except
those who personally accept Jesus Christ as their
Savior. Children and some others can not accept
Jesus Christ here; therefore an opportunity will
be presented for them to accept Him in a future
world. They will remain in the Intermediate
State until they have passed through the moral
conditions which are denied to them here.

This doctrine, on the assumption of original
sin, always seemed to me, since I first came in
contact with it, exceedingly reasonable. I never
was a convert to it, because I concluded that, while
it seemed unobjectionable from its relation to
children, yet there is not enough data to pro-
nounce it proven. But from our point of view it
is not a necessary solution.

Our own solution of the problem may be pre-
sented in a few words: Children are in an ac-
ceptable relation to God when they come into the
world. That relation they can not annul until they
come to years of moral accountability and rebel
against Him. In the meantime, if He should take
them to Himself, we have only the problem of
their development in righteousness under an en-
vironment more favorable than here. That prob-
lem lies outside our investigation; we need not
enter upon its discussion.

12

CHAPTER XIII

THE BIRTH FROM ABOVE

WE have no doubt of the spiritual birth that comes
in a moment of time. We have no word of dis-
couragement for those who are seeking to secure
the instantaneous conversion of adults from sin
to holiness. Let that problem be considered and
advanced as much as possible by those who have
responsibility for it. All we need to say just now
is that the workings of the Holy Spirit are not
confined to it, and that manifestly it does not ap-
ply to infants and children. The unconscious
birth from above as experienced by children is
scarcely in need of defense; it has been experi-
enced by so many eminent Christians. G. Camp-
bell Morgan "can not recall any definite time of
his conversion. He believes that the gift of grace
may be unconsciously received, especially by chil-
dren who have been taught from earliest years
that they belong to Christ." Another writer, a
profound student of this question, says : " To one
who has handled the material of these psycho-
logical studies it becomes very clear that at the
conclusion of the adolescent period, or shortly
after, no important difference can be discovered

178

THE BIRTH FROM ABOVE 179

between the persons who experienced a conscious
conversion and those who have simply kept up
their religious growth. More than that, it is cer-
tain that the process of growth is in many cases
simply a gradual way of going through the same
change that conies to others in what is called con-
version, and there does not appear to be any
special disadvantage in the gradual process as
compared with the process of rapid upheaval."
(Geo. A. Coe.)

On the other hand, we can not go with those
who represent conversion as a mere adolescent ex-
perience. If it were so, all youth would pass
through it, and it would eventuate in the Chris-
tian life. It is capable of demonstration that
of many of those who are converted the experi-
ence occurs in adolescent years; but a majority
of adolescent experiences do not result in con-
version. The larger number of youth do not take
the road at that time which is described by con-
version, but turn from it into the rejection of the
religious life. To criticise the methods of reli-
gious workers by which they seek to secure the
consent of youth to live the religious life, by as-
suming that they were unnecessary, and that these
youth would have arrived there by the adolescent
route, is to fly in the face of abundant facts. The
assumption that nature would bring about the
goal is far from being warranted.

We are of those who believe that the birth from
above is not the mere naturalistic development

180 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

of something in the personality of the child ; but
we also believe that the ideal work of the Holy
Spirit is done for the human spirit in normal de-
velopment of the spirit of the child ; that children
may from birth be the children of the Heavenly
Father. Our present task is to inquire into the
manner and methods of the Holy Spirit in such a
case, that by co-operation with that Spirit we may
learn to promote in increasing measure that much-
to-be-desired end.

Our conception is well described by the phrase
" birth from above." The manner of it is not
that of an instantaneous moral change, which evi-
dently does not fit the childhood condition, but
rather a spiritual incoming from a pressure as
continuous as that of the atmosphere about us.
The birth of the human spirit we have already
pictured as occurring during the years when the
child is coming to human manifestation. Even
though to some that picture may be unacceptable
as to the birth of the human spirit, it may stand
as our illustration of the incoming of the Divine
Spirit. We hold that the Holy Spirit is an ever-
present, ever-active influence upon the child-
nature. It must be admitted that divine methods
in general are from germinal beginnings through
unobservable increments to fullness of life. That
it should be so in this spiritual birth from above
should create no surprise. We can conceive a
great deal being done for the child before there
is a volitional response from it. Psychologists

THE BIRTH FROM ABOVE 181

recognize the change in consciousness when there
is no consciousness of change. Along with the de-
velopment of the mental and conscious life there
may be a development of the moral nature giving
a very decidedly different spiritual condition in
the child before there has been anything like a
choice based on the knowledge of right and wrong.

Says Mrs. Lamoreaux : ' ' The nurture of these
years is as silent as that of the dewdrop upon the
blade of grass, but it is as real. God's voice is
the still small voice that ever speaks in quietness.
The stillness of the moment at the mother's knee,
the prayer repeated in the reverent, low tone of
the mother's voice, the earnest prayer offered for
him in His presence, the Christlike living in the
home, all carry their holy influence to his soul.
He feels God without knowing Him." ("The Un-
folding Life," 40.)

The first moral relation of the child that is es-
tablished is a relation with the parent. The child
is obedient or disobedient to the parent long be-
fore he knows his moral relation to the Heavenly
Parent. Right training will put into this relation
with the parent the germ up from which will grow
the moral nature in his relation to all other beings.
Thus the parents in the beginning are in the re-
lation of God to the child, and through relation
to them the moral nature is to have its first exer-
cise and training. We would then say, hoping not
to be understood as saying more than we do say —
more than should be claimed at this stage of the

182 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

child's life— that the child that is obedient to his
parents, thus fulfilling the highest that he can at
that time know, is born from above, is a child of
God. This yielding to God by proxy is all that
can be expected of him until he has learned about
God and His relations. I do not mean by that
merely until he has learned to repeat by rote cer-
tain definitions from the catechism or elsewhere —
which teaching I most earnestly commend; but
which for the time may be to him but little more
than so many words — but until that time when his
comprehension is intelligent and real. Doing the
right and seeking the good is tantamount in his
stage of development to yielding himself to God
and seeking Him. ,

Accepting God for him must be as the dawning
day ; as gradually as the conception is formed, so
gradually must be its response. We can not defi-
nitely fix the first moment of the first ray, and it
would not be of supreme significance if we could ;
for the increment of light received the succeeding
moment is of as much relative importance as the
first dawn. Each succeeding increment of God-
consciousness also has its importance. "And if
one says, But there must be a time of distinct
choice between God and the world, the answer
would be that at best this only fixes the beginning
of self-consciousness in religion, and not the be-
ginning of religion itself. And indeed, self-con-
sciousness can rarely be thus accurately dated;
but religion in the properly trained Christian

THE BIRTH FROM ABOVE 183

child has complex and untraceable beginnings in
the spirit and atmosphere of the home, in child-
hood prayers, in participation in religious rites
and customs, in imitations of those about him, in
wise parental instruction and discipline, and in the
hidden influence of the Holy Spirit. These
things can not be dated." (Bowne: "Studies in
Christianity," 269.) A very remarkable case of
this in the concrete is that of Phillips Brooks.
He had felt the call to preach and went to talk
to his pastor about the preliminaries. His pastor
remarked that it was usual to be converted be-
fore beginning to preach. Brooks replied that
he knew nothing about conversion. ("Life and
Letters," I, 142.)

We are assuming that all this time the child
is in a relation such as is technically defined as
the justified relation to God. This relation may
be broken in his case, as it is in the case of the
adult by disobedience to its standard of right.
That broken relation may be re-established by
contrition, as also in the case of the adult. Here,
again, the parent fulfills his function by teaching
the child the place of repentance. These missteps
and restorations have in them more of the nature
of the sorrow and restoration as experienced by
the adult Christian than of the breaking off of the
wicked life by the adult sinner in conversion.

The means of developing this God-conscious-
ness is of importance to note. In his early years
the child is a creature of imitation and subject to

authority. He forms habits which at first are
without moral content, but which become in later
years the very means of selfhood. Hence the
child should now be taught the habit of prayer.
It is a great opportunity now to teach him a cer-
tain formula of words, the deep moral meaning
of which he can not immediately comprehend;
but as their meaning grows in his understanding,
their moral force comes home to his life. He can
now form the habit of Church attendance, which
by its very inertia may carry him subsequently
through many an hour of indifference. The habit-
forming period will not return again.

Some people, not comprehending the nature of
the child, and reasoning from the nature of an
adult, are fearful that harm is being done him by
having to go through actions and word-formulas
which he does not mean, because he does not com-
prehend them. This is an idle fear. Educators
assure us that use or action always goes before
the comprehension of the reasons for them. "In
its application to moral education this law means
that the habit of good conduct should precede
ethical reasoning, that the child's activities, in
harmony with the best, should be developed before
he can understand ethical principles." (Griggs:
"Moral Education," 75.) A child should pray
before he can understand the relation of God to
man. All the religious activities may precede the
comprehension of the reason for them. It is desir-
able that the Church service should become fa-

THE BIRTH FROM ABOVE 185

miliar to the child before he can comprehend the
Biblical history from which the principles of wor-
ship proceed. The child is incapable of hypocrisy
for the very reason that he can not comprehend;
e. g., teaching a child the Apostles' Creed. He
can not know the meaning of those statements of
belief; is he, therefore, consciously lying in re-
peating them? By no manner of means. This is
a mere formula of sounds; but those sounds will
be imbedded in memory and will say themselves
back to him as the years go by. As the meaning
of the words gradually dawn they will be ac-
cepted or rejected in the light of all other Chris-
tian teaching. Below the moral consciousness im-
pressions and habits are being formed that will
deeply grip the spirit in the coming years. Our
own convictions of the truth of our teaching is our
warrant for it. He who is without deep convic-
tions will have no foundation to impress these
truths on the consciousness of his child.

Our conception of the work of the Holy Spirit
is that of the near rather than the far; of the
normal rather than the abnormal and unusual;
of the gradual and developing pari passu with the
physical and mental nature rather than the instan-
taneous and the revolutionary. It fortifies the na-
ture before habits of sin have had the first and
best chance. It makes religion a thing of life
rather than a preparation for death. If it were
not a possibility, we would surely conclude that
the religion of the Bible were an after-thought,

186 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

and not entirely adjusted to human problems and
human nature. The child is God's own from the
foundation of the world; it is hard to believe
that he could be God's only by some strange work-
ing against his nature, and subsequent to childish
development, and at the best God could only have
a mere remnant of his life.

Believing earnestly, as we do, in the normality
of childlike religion, we nevertheless believe that
the growing youth is to have some crises in his
development. He may proceed gradually on the
upgrade of life, when suddenly a new vision, a
wider horizon, opens upon him, with greater op-
portunities, new privileges, and heavier responsi-
bilities than those before known. Will he enter
upon this larger day? The decision is not the
question of conversion from a life of sin; but it
is a question of the further progress or retrogres-
sion of life. ' ' We have failed to make the proper
distinction between conversion and the coming
into clearness of spiritual consciousness. This
latter is necessary in the case of every person, but
conversion is necessary only in the case of those
who have fallen away from God through volun-
tary sin. Failing to make this distinction, we have
fallen into the error of regarding certain expe-
riences which come naturally to children in their
moral and spiritual development as conversion,
where in reality it is only what may be called * the
spiritual awakening/ that is a necessary incident
to the spiritual life, when that which lies latent
and undefined in the mind becomes active and

THE BIETH FROM ABOVE 187

definite. This corresponds in the spiritual life to
what occurs ordinarily in the mental life. The de-
velopment of the mind in any large way requires
a mental awakening when the mind becomes eager
and questioning and hungry; when its eyes are
opened and it begins to look out upon the world
of things with interest and strong desire for
knowledge. To the soul also must come a time
when it awakens from vague into distinct con-
sciousness of God, when its spiritual cravings take
definite direction, when in fact the soul becomes
conscious of itself and its moral power. Such an
awakening should be expected in the history of
every child, but it may have nothing in common
with what we know as conversion or regeneration
in an adult." (Dr. McFarland: "Preservation
versus The Rescue of the Child," 21.) Even to
the Christian child the adolescent period is likely
to precipitate such a crisis, and its decision is
fraught with grave consequences. A quotation
from Campbell Morgan will cover this point and
much that we have already contended for. " It is
a great mistake to think of man as made, and then
put in some position, where he may rise or fall,
according to the capacity of his own personality.
It is rather to be remembered that he was cre-
' ated in the image of God, and then put in the pro-
bationary position, through which he has to pass
to some larger form of existence, if his life were
lived in union with God who created him."
("Crises of the Christ," 28.)

We are presenting no recent or strange doc-

188 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

trine in holding to the acceptable relation of chil-
dren to God. As good a theologian as Dr. W. F.
Warren, as fraternal delegate from the General
Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church to
the British Conference in 1882, in ringing words
presented the following ideal: "What, then, is the
type higher and better? . . . It is the type which
does not demand . . . that the first years of
every life shall be given to the service of sin and
Satan; it is the type which comes of making the
resources of divine grace equal to all the necessi-
ties of childhood; it is the type which conies to
light in the Christian household when the child of
many prayers and of intelligent Christian nurture
yields to the drawings of the Holy Spirit so early
and so sweetly as never in later life to know when
it began to love God and to lead a life prayerful
and Christian and of ever-growing beauty and
strength. . . . Bare as its actualization may be,
it is the type which God by His Holy Spirit is
evermore trying to actualize in every Christian
home. ... If the Methodism of the future is to
be equal to her providential call and mission in
this respect, she must not permit the exponents
of a catastrophic piety to hide her loftier and bet-
ter ideal. . . . She must acknowledge those
whom God acknowledges, and, like her Lord, re- '
buking all interdiction, she must take these little
ones in her arms and bless them, saying, 'Of such
is the Kingdom of heaven. ' ... In our concep-
tion there is perfect purity for the vilest sinner.

THE BIRTH FROM ABOVE 189

But if for the vilest sinner, how much more for
the artless spirit of the little child, who, under the
influences of a Christian nurture at the very dawn
of the spiritual consciousness, trustfully yields
himself up to the Spirit's purifying touch."
(The Christian Advocate, N. Y., Aug. 10, 1882.)

Dr. Arthur H. Goodenough says: "To make
the child a Christian is not our business. Our
work is to see that it never ceases to be a Chris-
tian. The thing needed for the child is not con-
version, but atmosphere, example, nurture, en-
couragement. The child is in the Kingdom. It is
the Father's own, whom Jesus loved and blessed.
The Master pointed to the child as the pattern of
what we ought to be ; and yet some of our brothers
still insist that the children of their flocks must
go to the altar, and in the one way, their way, the
narrow way, the only way, tell God what great
sinners they have been. To keep a child out of
Church membership because this is not done is
unwarranted and wicked ; and yet this very thing
is occurring all the time. The children, sweet and
beautiful, are being driven away from the Church
home and shelter and help just because their
parents will not consent to their going through
the same forms of confession and repentance that
are expected of hardened sinners. The parents
are right, the Churches are wrong. Such conduct
is cruel to the children and must be displeasing to
the Master." (Zion's Herald, Nov. 11, 1903.)

Dr. Curtis, of Drew Theological Seminary,

190 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

says : * ' The child is in a spiritual condition which
is the equivalent of the regenerated state."
("The Christian Faith," 437.)

Stanley Hall says : * ' The Lutheran children do
not look forward to conversion. If they have been
baptized in infancy and daily nurtured, they must
not be assumed to be unregenerate but as already
in a state of grace. The germs of a spiritual life
were early planted and have grown with their
growth, and they need no violent change or drastic
religious experience. Religion is a growth, not a
conquest; but adolescence is the critical season of
development, during which special care is need-
ful. ' ' The above practice, it may be conceded, has
not produced satisfactory results, and the spir-
itual condition of the Lutheran Church in Ger-
many is one of the most discouraging facts in the
world. To assign the reason we do not think it
necessary to assume the doctrine of original sin
in infants; but rather call attention to the fact
that the spiritual tests are all perfunctory and
mechanical. They should be spiritual and vital.
The theory that we maintain is by no means a
lazy theory of religion ; a theory that assumes that
all is well, and that, therefore, we need give our-
selves no trouble, or that we may be satisfied with
a few formal observances. It is just the contrary.
It assumes the necessity of immediate and con-
tinuous religious instruction and care. This on
the basis that the child is already in the Kingdom
of God and needs Christian culture all the way to

THE BIRTH FROM ABOVE 191

manhood. It shrinks from no test that is now
applied to Christian people, unless the test be
purely formal. Having done its work for the
child, having brought it through the period when
character is formed, it now challenges any tests
that may demonstrate the presence of the Christ-
life within. If now it is demonstrated that it is
devoid of that life, we would join with others in
what are accounted revival lines and seek to se-
cure the conversion of the soul to God. Our prac-
tical objection to the exclusive revivalistic method
is that logically it would neglect the child through
formative years, and then seek to bring him into
the Kingdom by conquest, by revolution. This
method we would commend only as a last resort.
We can not nullify absolutely the perils of
freedom. After we have done all that human and
even divine wisdom can suggest, there is ever a
tribunal to which we must submit the results of
our work. It is the august tribunal of the human
soul itself. Man and God Himself must stand
aside while this judge that never abdicates the
throne renders the verdict. And yet religion is
so reasonable, and sin is so suicidal and indefen-
sible that the human soul, endowed with reason,
should render such a verdict as we desire. We
may do our work with a strong expectation of
success, if we do it faithfully and well. Dr. S. P.
Cadman has well expressed this confidence. He
says: "The plane occupied at birth and during
the earliest years should not be deserted, but main-

192 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

tained. The spontaneous faith, the free and un-
mediated approach of the soul to its Creator, the
faculties as yet uncrippled by the blows of sin, the
warm and fragrant affection, the touching depend-
ence on superior strength, all are hallmarks which
are visible in the first years of this pilgrimage.
And none can achieve a better fate than to turn
back at eventide to the radiance that escorted his
spirit into consciousness. How, then, do we deal
with these morning flowers when they display
their sweets, their gay and silken leaves unfold?
Their spiritual experiences do not need the instill-
ing of adult beliefs so much as the fostering of
infant intuition. For these experiences precede
statements of religious truth. They live in heaven
before they conceive of heaven.

So glorious is their nature, so august
Man's inborn uninstructed impulses,
His naked spirit so majestical.

. . . There is no powerful resistance in him
which piety must overcome to obtain a lodgment.
. . . James Martineau says that ' if we place be-
fore our children the clear objects of faith, of truth
in its beauty, and God in His holiness, they will
respond. When we speak to them of the high
deeds and splendid characters of the past, of the
universe in which God lives and rules, of Jesus
and His words and works, we may be assured the
fruit will appear in due season. . . . Fasten his
alert attention on the love and justice that per-
meate the universal frame and fill the activities

THE BIETH FROM ABOVE 193

of earth and boundless recesses of heaven; then
leave these instructions to ripen in his susceptible
and impressionable being, and fear not for the
results.' " (Brooklyn Eagle.)

This view of the relation of the child to God
seems to have been older than Christianity. The
practices of the Jews would indicate that they
held their children to be members of the holy
nation, and that their religious rights should be
strictly observed. Dr. Charles S. Eobinson gives
the following account of the care of Jewish chil-
dren: "Counsels without number are given with
reference to all the younger members of the fam-
ily. They were to be solemnly dedicated under
a prescribed ordinance. They were to be trained
in all the matters of the ceremonial law. Histor-
ical and commemorative festivals were to be ex-
plained to their understanding, so as to be fixed
in their intelligent recollection. They were not
allowed to come under the contaminating influ-
ences which nurses of a different religion might
possibly exert. As soon as they could speak they
were taught to repeat sentences from the Scrip-
tures. In the schools the law of Moses formed
one of their common text-books. A sort of degree
was to be taken at thirteen years old, and they
received thereafter the name 'Sons of the Com-
mandment.' And the settled rule in the Jewish
nation was that as soon as they were able to walk
up Mt. Moriah by holding on to their father's
hands, they were to go up to Jerusalem to keep

13

194 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

their first Passover. All along their growing
years until they were mature they were held under
strictest guardianship ; and at last, when one had
passed out of boyhood, he was brought officially
before ten of the picked men and by solemn act
was thrown on his own responsibility, his parents
on that occasion soberly laying off the charge of
their covenant and thanking God that they had
been spared to complete his education, and now
offer him to God and the nation." (Sunday
School Times.')

CHAPTER XIV

WHICH BO AD?

THERE are two roads in which children may be
guided: the road of animal development and the
road which uses physical powers but subordinates
them to higher uses — the road of spiritual over-
development.

The history of our subject shows that there
have always been two roads between which choice
was made ; but they have not always been distin-
guished as we would have them. The road of the
spirit has been interpreted by the Puritanic
thinker as one in which the flesh was regarded as
in itself evil, and hence there was nothing to be
done with it but to disregard it and deny its tend-
encies. This road has been broadly interpreted as
asceticism. Of course, it never was a logical road,
or one that was possible to vigorous men. The
consequence has been that there was ever a re-
bellion against its standard by normal people and
a self-depreciation by those who, accepting the
standard as right and divinely imposed, never
could live up to it.

Our own day is seeing the opposite extreme.
The study of nature is largely a study of phys-
ical nature. Its impulses and tendencies are be-

195

ing set forth so as to be well understood. It is
not this positive work which we wish to question.
The point of danger is that the physical nature is
not being studied sufficiently in the light of its
purpose or intended service. If it be regarded as
ultimate, then we have as the object of human life
the activities of the animal or physical nature.
Johnson the pugilist would represent civilization 's
climax. This is the point at which the roads may
divide. Against the culture and perfection of the
physical nature we have no word of objection;
but now we ask, What next? There are two dis-
tinct goals from this point. One is the physical
only; the other is the perfected physical as the
efficient instrument of the spiritual. Upon the
choice of the goal to be aimed at will depend the
choice and direction of future activities. One
course is : having found out what the physical de-
mands, supply the child with that, without further
solicitude or program. The other says: Having
given reasonable attention to physical develop-
ment, what now are the demands of the spiritual
nature which represents the ultimate self? The
answer to this question must be determinative of
the course taken. It is not demonstrable that the
physical being requires all the resources of a nor-
mal life. It is rather true that the physical itself
has a better development when it is used as a
means, an instrument, a servant of the higher life.
That is a better body which is under the control
of a moral purpose than that which has no life in

WHICH BO AD? 197

view beyond its own. The man with a spiritual
purpose may have better health and live longer
than the man who lives only to cultivate the phys-
ical. Thus we believe that the dominance and
the subordination of the physical may be thor-
oughly harmonized as a method of normal life
for both.

So we plead for the reinstatement of the spir-
itual as a program of life. We plead for the guid-
ance of parent and teacher, following their convic-
tion as to what is good for the young life rather
than the control of the non-moral and uninstructed
inclinations of boys and girls as to what should
be the discipline of their life. The pendulum of
control has swung too far toward the impulses of
nature. In doing so it has missed its way and will
never reach the goal of life. Inclination, as ex-
pressed in youthful life, is not always the same as
nature's course. What children clamor for is
not always and, after its course has been followed
for a time, is seldom the demand of nature for
their true development. Parents should know the
laws of the child-nature and act accordingly; but
in so doing they must not mistake the requests of
the child as being the statement of those laws.
Children may know what they want; but their
wants are seldom under the control of a broad
life-program. Parents are better able to arrange
that. To allow mere clamor to change their course
from the known good to the known evil is inexcus-
able weakness, however insistent the commotion,

198 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

and the fruitage for parent and child will be as
bitter as if the course had been adopted from
sheer evil purpose. When the request is based
in a natural demand of nature it should be ac-
ceeded to, but not always in the form which the
child has urged it. Young people need social life.
They should have it. The gratification of this
need has in it the weal or the woe of the child.
The easy way of providing for it is to turn chil-
dren out into the street. In the case of boys this
is the course in many cases. In the unwillingness
of parents to pay the price of a better way lies
more danger to our future than there is in all the
battleships of all our possible national enemies.
The other way is the creation of social life in the
home, where it may be guided to high ends. This
is costly. It wears out the carpets and mars the
furniture. But there is more reward, greater divi-
dends in saving boys and girls than in saving car-
pets.

A mother sometimes says : " I did not believe
my boy ought to go out this evening; but he
pleaded so hard that I let him go." That is an
illustration oft repeated in families in which spir-
itual guidance loses its grip and lawless inclina-
tion takes the reins. This course is assumed as
defensible by many people under the pressure of
present-day tendencies — the tendency of finding
what the animal wants, and giving it that. If this
is correct theory, then the assumption that human
beings are moral and that moral control is the

WHICH KOAD? 199

highest expression of life, is unfounded. The rec-
ognition of the demands and laws of the physical
life is one thing; the abdication of moral control
is quite another. To observe natural obligations
and conform to them by no means requires that
the direction of the personality should be turned
over to passions which are too blind even to seek
their own good, to say nothing of the good of a
spiritual nature to which is given the insight and
the responsibility for the present and eternal
guidance of the whole being. The expansive
power of steam turns the propeller and drives the
ship through the sea. Disregard of its power
would lead to an explosion ; failure to conserve it
would allow it to dissipate in the air, and the ship
without pushing power would be pounded to pieces
by the merciless action of the waves. But it would
be just as fatal to start the engine and leave it
run with its mighty propulsion without a pilot to
guide it. It would surely find the rocks and de-
stroy all. So the passions of our nature make us
go; but the reason, as a pilot, must steer the
course, avoiding the rocks and finding the harbor.
In making this plea for the over-guidance of
the spiritual, however, we express no sympathy
whatever for that inattention to the whole nature
of the child which is so often displayed. Let us
remember that ' ' that is not first which is spiritual,
but that which is natural; and afterwards that
which is spiritual. ' ' Every life must root itself in
the physical. No life can be normal which ignores

200 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

the animal nature, the physical basis, and spreads
its tiny tendrils in the pure air of spirituality.
We may not be able to fathom the divine reason
for the complexity of our nature ; but we may rec-
ognize it as a fact invincible, and believe that it
represents a plan of God and can not be success-
fully annulled or obstructed. We start with the
physical. The problem is, how to direct the total
personality up into the spiritual, as representing
the final expression of our being. The physical is
first, but it should not be last. The moral problem
of life is to achieve such a mastery of the phys-
ical, such a subordination of the physical, such a
crucifixion of the physical, when it presents an
unyielding obstacle, and withal such a ministration
of the physical as shall make life in its outcome
a total spiritual victor, and the physical shall drop
away at last, bearing our kindliest memories, hav-
ing accomplished its temporary purpose. Sur-
passingly happy is the man who, as he bids it fare-
well, can thank God for the gift and realize that
its impulses and passions have not engulfed his
real and final self, but have had a distinct and
essential part in his final completeness.

A mother, a father, should know the nature of
their child through and through. They should
know boy-life. If they try to build a spiritual life
without regard to all the realities that are in the
problem; if they talk only of spiritual things,
frowning upon the intrusion of the natural and
passionate; if they seek only a certain high ex-

WHICH KOAD? 201

pression of the spiritual nature ; if they ignore the
fact of social inclination, physical activity, or even
sexual impulses, the danger is that their child will
develop, so far as their knowledge goes, a crust
of artificiality to which the real life within may
be unrelated. Know your children. Do not be
content with knowing only what you would like
them to be. Encourage them to open to you their
desires, their inclinations, their temptations, their
conflicts. Work from the vantage point of that
knowledge, however heartbreaking may be its rev-
elations. You can do more when you see than
when you do not. You can accomplish more when
using knowledge than when you are operating only
with ignorance as an instrument. How many
cases we have known where a continually pious
conversation of parents with their children caused
them to cultivate a suavity of manner, a guarded-
ness of expression, a piety of apparent belief and
life because they had learned that nothing else
was received without reproof or distaste! Such
children learn to be secretive, to live a life they
never reveal to their parents ; a life in which real
confidences are not given ; a veneer life ; an unreal
life the reason for which is not seated in convic-
tion nor anchored in resolution. This is a road
which many religious parents are tempted to
travel. The revelation of the reality underneath
after a while is a painful tragedy.

In morals as in biology there is a law of the
' ' Survival of the Fittest, ' ' It does not mean that

202 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

the best will survive ; it means that that survives
which best fits into the environment. Hence it
often indicates degeneration as well as, under
other circumstances, progress. We control the
survival of the best by our control of the environ-
ment. ' ' Nature never gives a final verdict in favor
of good or bad, but only and always in favor of
the fit. Let the conditions change, so that rapacity
fits them better than righteousness, . . . and
the thing we call high will go before the thing we
call low. . . . These laws enthroned and de-
throned the civilization of the past : they have en-
throned and may dethrone us. But this end is not
inevitable, since man — and this is his great char-
acter— not merely reacts on his environment, as
all creatures must, but can create and re-create it.
The business of eugenics or race-culture is to cre-
ate an environment such that the human charac-
ters of which the human spirit approves shall in it
outweigh those of which we disapprove. Make it
fittest to be best, and the best will win — not be-
cause it is the best, but because it is the fittest:
had the worst been the fittest it would have won. "
(Saleeby: "Parenthood and Race Culture," 53.)
In the struggle of the different elements in
human nature we may arrange for the mastery
(survival) of the higher or the lower, according as
we create surroundings in which the higher or the
lower will be brought most into exercise. In an
atmosphere of physical ideals we may expect phys-
ical activities to grow large and strong, and spir-

WHICH EOAD? 203

itual activities to dwindle and slink out of sight,
because they are uncalled for and unappreciated.
The atmosphere is created by the conversation in
the family circle, the books on the shelves, the
papers on the table, the visitors in the home, the
invited companions of the children, the home ex-
tended in school and Church, and the undercur-
rents of ambitions and ideals which dominate and
spontaneously come to expression in all the off-
guard moments of life. Keep thy home with all
diligence; for out of it are the character issues of
thy children — is a good modern version of one of
the profoundest sayings in literature. One author
makes the sweeping statement that "all of the
environmental conditions of the growing youth
are faulty, save — in the case of the fortunate ones
—the moral atmosphere of a proper home, the
great inhibitor of all moral evils." (Lydston:
"Diseases of Society," 403.)

CHAPTER XV

SUMMAEY

LET us connect our chain into three well-defined
links. 1. The genesis of the child is not from an
act inherently sinful. It is necessary to call dis-
tinct attention to the importance of this fact, be-
cause logically it is the source of the doctrine of
the inherent sinfulness of human nature. That
the child is a product of sinful passion has been
the assumption of Christian thinkers at least since
the time of Augustin, who had so much to do with
the formation of Christian doctrine. We are the
more surprised at the age-long dominance of this
assumption when we remember that the first posi-
tive command in the Bible was to multiply and re-
plenish the earth. We remember also that in this
act God takes man into partnership in the intro-
duction of human beings into what we believe is
the beginning of an eternal career of communion
with Himself. It is surprising that we should re-
gard God's part in this act as more worthy of Him
than the speaking into existence of a material
world, and at the same time should regard man 's
part as inherently and invincibly evil. God has
nowhere bestowed upon man greater dignity than

204

SUMMABY § 205

when He permits him to open the gate of life to
an eternal spirit. It but manifests the immeasur-
able destructiveness of sin when by misuse of this
privilege man turns the gate of life into the gate
of death. We must awaken more and more to
a consideration of the ruin of society which is
being wrought by the violations of sex relations.
By it innocent and unsuspecting brides are subject
to irremediable disease and measureless pain ; un-
born children are consigned to degeneracy and
human infamy, and civilization itself is endan-
gered. But to find that the misuse of the highest
human function leads to the greatest enormities of
misery and shame, is to find as ever in nature that
the worst is but the corruption of the best and is
no argument against the spiritual normality of
the origin of human life.

We are surprised, again, that a divinely im-
planted passion, for the existence of which none
but God is responsible, should in its operation be
regarded as always in opposition to the divine
will, and that the ideal condition of human nature
should ever have been considered as that in which
this passion is forever negatived and destroyed.
To allow this assumption to continue its domi-
nance in religious circles is to carry on a continu-
ous warfare against the scientific world, which
knows, if it knows anything, that the reproduction
of individuals of the race is a biologic virtue. We
deplore this belief again because of its degrada-
tion of the marital life. Marriage is usually

206 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

treated as a matter for jokes and never-ending
suggestive allusion. Courtship is surrounded with
an atmosphere of dissipation and frivolity, instead
of being the apotheosis of human relationship, as
it should be. The biggest show of the season in
many a town is a mock-trial in a breach-of-promise
case promoted by a national fun-maker. If mar-
riage be lifted up to its divine ideal, and the mar-
ital act be regarded as a response to a divine call,
then we have the genesis of a human being lifted
to a plane where sin has no normal place, and the
whole doctrine of human depravity is left without
any foundation except the abuse of God-given
powers and the misuse of normal human function.
2. We have by no means eliminated moral hu-
man struggle. It remains just as strenuous and
as fateful as ever. The struggle is still a struggle
against sin; but sin is differently apprehended.
It has been considered as an inbred something,
something that could never be eradicated until the
God-given body was laid aside. Whatever mas-
tery over self one acquired, whatever profession
of victory one might make, the movement of fleshly
impulse still existed, and this "movemenf" was
believed to be essentially sinful. The doctrine of
Christian perfection, under such an apprehension
of sin, was an absurd claim, and the wail of all
ages for personal holiness must forever continue
until the earth history is concluded— there is no
escape while we live in the body. If our view is
correct, victory over sin is not only a possibility,

SUMMAEY 207

but its non-attainment is a disgrace to every child
of God. That victory may be attained while the
flesh is exerting its everlasting impulsion toward
gratification. "The fruit of the Spirit is self-
control, ' ' says Paul. The demand for this control
is ever insistent, and, thank God! its possibility
is within our reach !

3. The third link in our chain is the vitality
of the family-life. We would, if power sufficient
is given us, leave the impression upon every par-
ent that infancy and childhood are as full of des-
tiny to the child spiritually as the prenatal con-
dition is physically. There are certain laws which
the parent may use, as vital in sustaining and di-
recting the moral quality of the life, as the laws
of food and clothing are in directing and sus-
taining the physical life. Two of these factors
are known as Imitation and Authority. The
child is so made that he will imitate us ; thus God
has put him within the absolute control of ex-
ample. He can not help imitating us, and he has
no action of the will during his early years which
he may direct against this law of his nature.
But as he does, so he is. To start with, he is an
empty vessel, intellectually and morally. Every
time he acts he is dropping a little grain of self-
hood down into this vessel, and this all before he
has come to the place of moral choice.

In the years a little later, and on up to thir-
teen and fourteen years of age, he is so made
that direction by another is to him normal. He

208 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD

is fitted to receive command without interruption
or disturbance of his proper development. This
authoritative direction should be supplied to him
just as food is supplied to his body, as unswerv-
ingly as the planets in their course. So, if we will
give him proper direction, we will secure from
him proper action. And still, as he acts so he is.
The vessel is not yet full. Every time he acts
aright he is still dropping a grain of selfhood
down into his character, against the day when
he must take up moral self -direction for himself.
On authority as a fundamental law of being,
Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst has the following
thoughtful words: "Parents do well to foster in
their children a liberty-loving spirit; but liberty
is a positive matter, and not a negative, and con-
sists not in what we renounce but in what we
espouse. We emancipate ourselves, not in what
we tear ourselves lose from, but in what we tie
ourselves up to ; and the only liberty fit to be set
up in the home, or anywhere else, as an object of
admiration and an end to be attained, is the lib-
erty that fulfills itself in zealous adherence to ex-
ternal authority, not in its rejection. Liberty is
a genius for obeying, and consists not in our
successful escape from ordinance, but in the
graceful facility with which we are able to exe-
cute it. It is the liberty to do consciously what
the flower does unconsciously when, without con-
straint and without revolt, it accomplishes the

SUMMARY 209

vegetable destiny decreed for it; what the star
does unconsciously when, unhasting and unrest-
ing, it beamingly runs the road laid down for it."

To grasp control of the will of the child was
one of Susannah Wesley's earliest tasks, "be-
cause," she continues, "this is the only strong
and rational foundation of a religious education,
without which both precept and example will be
ineffectual. But when this is thoroughly done,
then a child is capable of being governed by the
reason and piety of its parents, till its own under-
standing comes to maturity and the principles of
religion have taken root in the mind. " (Stevens :
' ' Hist, of Methodism, ' ' I, 55. ) This subjection of
the will of the child is often criticised as if it
were breaking the will of the child. It is no more
breaking the will than is the staking up of a vine
the breaking of the vine. It is rather giving di-
rection to the will, governing it in harmony with
the laws of its own nature, so that when it comes
to its own independent expression it will not
break against the unyielding forces of nature and
society about it.

It is only necessary further to remark that
these two laws, imitation and authority, which are
to be used by parents, may also be used by others.
So that there is a negative or defensive duty
which we owe the child. We must keep him from
those sights and those directing and suggesting
influences which are evil and will produce the evil

14

action. If this in its completeness is an impossi-
bility, it at least is an ideal, and its violation is
a peril to the extent to which it may proceed.
This empty vessel can be filled with vice as in-
evitably as it can be filled with virtue by the oper-
ation of the same laws.

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