HEREDITY AND THE FIGHT FOR CHARACTER.

White Ribbon, Volume 39, Issue 458, 18 October 1933, Page 4

HEREDITY AND THE FIGHT FOR CHARACTER.

By tht Kev. Dower Black, Auckland A young man in Dunedm «nce went to see Dr. Waddell when he was Minister of St. Andrew’s. He was in the grip of the craving for drink, and in a mood of dark despair. After they huu talked togethei for a little while the young fellow said: “1 have just been out to the cemetery. 1 have l»een at the graves of my father and mother. They explain me. They both were heavy drinkers. So it is in my blood. 1 am doomed and 1 am damned. What wax a vice in them has become a disease in me.”

And that young fellow is just one of thousands who are in such a case. And tens of thousands more are having their hopes blighted and the smews of their energy cut by this conception oi the power of the past upon them—the stranglehold of the past. Heredity has been descril>ed as the link which binds one generation to another. In popular phrase the truth has been enshrined for ages. "Blood will tell,” men say, suggesting tiiat the present is inevitably determined by the past. And you know how Ins father's friends like to say of a boy that ‘ He's a chip of the old block." As a scientific problem it raises questions innumerable and it touches man in every depaitment of his being, physical, intellectual and spiritual alike. With the scientific problem as such we are only indirectly concerned here, but always we must face facts, and tinbroad fact of heredity remains a thing that has to la* reckoned with. Just as we have the features of our line, so we derive from those who near and far have given us birth, the inward features and qualities of the soul ’'’heir habits passions, temperaments, tendencies, press in upon us; their moral history and behaviour, what they were on the inward side -all these thing, beset us, their children, either for good or for evil

Many men believe that a fateful taint is in their hlood —that evil is bred in their bones and that it is perfectly hopeless to struggle against the mighty forces of inherited tendency. In any case there is a real problem. One of our most cherished ideas is that every man has the right to a fair opportunity, untrammelled by what others have done; and we feel it to be unjust that any man’s destiny should be determined by things for which lie has no manner of responsibility. We believe that on the Christian theory life ultimately i: fair, and that no one is to I** called to account for influences beyond his control. That is what we should all likto think. But the immediate point i: how to square that with the obvious facts of heredity. 1. if we would flud a working snlu tm>n of this great problem, one of tinbest ways t*i begin is just by reminding ourselves that heredity is only a i>art

of the larger fact of human solidarity. We are all members of one Inaly. We are all bound up together, rich and poor, learned and ignorant, sick and well, good and bad- all liouiid up in one bundle of lift*. In all our breathing, thinking, speaking and doing, no om of us liveth unto himself alone. Whether we will or no, for good or for evil, we are always influencing and being influenced. Even more than ever, perhaps, in the. v e modern days, we are living, as it were, in the mass. Life lias become a big tenement, with one common stairway. And it is possible for a whole community to Ikthrown out of gear, because some disgruntled member breaks a window in lilt* basement. If the people oil on** floor are continually fighting with the people on another floor, then life is made an upsetting and unhappy thing for the people on all the other floors. Every man is knit to the community as closely as the corpuscles of his hlood are knit to the structure of his body. 2. But this truth of the oneness, the unity, the solidarity of mankind, has two sides, and this is an obvious truth which yet we often overlook. From much that is said and written it might lie inferred that heredity operates only for evil. Whereas we are hopelessly off the Rack unless we keep plainly liefore us the truth that the smooth goes with the rough, the good with the bad. and the light with the darkness. Over against the cry of tluyoung man who said that he wax doomed because of the sin of his parents, we have such a confession as Kingsley’s, who said that he owed all his wonderful equipment of body and of mind to his father and mother. So you see it works lioth ways. Before we quarrel with heredity we need to understand clearly what it is that we are challenging. It simply brings us l»ack to the old question “(’an we receive good, without the liability to .eceive evil?" (’an we have experiences of joy, without having within as the possibility of experiencing pain? What right have we to sound the depths of iniquity with regard to heredity, and leave unsealed the heights of goodness? What right have you to dilate on the horrors, unless you point out the goodness and beauty as well? We benefit every day by the solidarity of the race, by the continuity of the generations storing up past gain; and we accept as of course all the good things whicn come through the medium of inheritance. Why, then, should we complain when we are called upon to suffer because our life is l>ound up intrinsically with the lives of others? Can you imagine a collection of human icings who were influence-proof, without pow’er to affect each other at all? That would certainly relieve us of any moral problem, but it would do so at the cost of relieving us of humanity altog* flier. in any intelligible sense. Von cannot shut yourself off from any inheritance of possible evil, without at

the same time .shutting yourself ofT from anv inheritance of possible good.

Don't you see then that the law of heredity is only evil when it falls into evil hands; just as wealth is evil when it falls into the hands of an evil man, and just as power when it is in the hands of an evil man. God has given mankind these things as gifts, but w< can use them for good or for evil, for life or for death so solemn is the truth of personal responsibility.

3. But to that man who was lighting for character and felt that he was • loomed by the evil hand of the past. I**rhaps the greatest and most heartening practical truth is this, that heredity does not fix u man’s fate, il only fixes his trial. Our fathers and forefathers do not indeed fix our destiny or seal our doom. What they have largely settled for each one of us is what kind of trial we mast meet in life, what kind of enemy we must fight. We are born, as it were, with a history coiled up within us, but that history cannot repeat itself within us unless w'e give our consent. It may require a conflict fierce and long to deny our consent and keep on denying it. But then it was once said by One Who well knew what He was saying: "If any man would follow Me, h * must deny himself and take up his cross." The good fight of faith is never a mock battle.

There is no getting away from the fact that, in a manner of speaking, we are under the tyranny of a dead hand. Our parents, all our ancestors, when they gave us their form and feature, gave us also something of their mind and temperament and will. We are born with a certain bias that is the truth that lay behind the old terribl • doctrine of depravity and original sin —that a child does not come into the world as a sheet of white paper, with the option of remaining white. We arc lK»rn with a certain bias, a certain weakness perhaps, or instability, a certain tendency to develop this way or that.

And yet I want to make this affirmation clear and definite the terms the good fight of faith remain precisely what they always were. Our hearts are neither hell nor heaven, but a battlefield whose issues hang in the imlance. It ought to be perfectly clear that we are not accountable for what we inherit. It is not what we inherit, but what we do with what we inherit, that is the morally significant thing. Keep this clear at any rate, that heredity, no matter how evil the stream may be. never fixes a man’s doom, it only decides w r hat kind of enemy he shull have to fight.

You may blame Nature f»>r the weeds in your garden—and indeed it is true that if you leave your garden alone, it will very quickly grow weeds. Nature does it, somehow. And yet isn’t it true that it is in your power to clear out the weeds and grow roses? Your predecessor may have been a careless and untidy

individual, who left you a wretched inheritance of weeds and pest*. But though that inheritance max hinder you, it need never bind you. You can still turn that wilderness of weeds Into a garden of fragrance and glory; and the very forces of Nature, which seemed to huve made the wilderness, will work with you now in the making of your garden. Whatever heredity ma> mean, the terms of the good fight of faith remain unchanged. It is our attitude to the fight that is the determining factor. Tin* point is, not the particular enemy, but whether we are willing to fight and keep on fighting. Not how we receive our inheritance, but how we leave it — whether wa* *have degraded it or improved it. Our destiny depends, not on our parents’ victory or defeat, but on onr own fighting, reinforced by the grace and the power of God. It is convenient for a boy to take refuge in his father’s unbelief or impurity. But whatever hereditary influence there may be by blood or by example, the son who thinks he must l*e weak where his father was weak, is missing the whole meaning of the battle of life, and is missing also the sweeping character of the change that comes when "If a man In* in Christ he is a new creature. It is true that on every side and in our own blood there are influences ready to drag us down, but it is equally true that there are other and stronger forces ready to help us if we really mean fighting. There are ultimate mysteries in life which you can only explain in terms of themselves, and this is one of them, that God in Christ is available for every man and woman in the good fight of faith. That is the truth and that is the heart of the Gospel. His power is equal to any task you can put on it. So that weak and sinful men in tens of thousands have ble to madler the situation, to ci \ with t) • Apost!** of old: "If God be for us, who can be against us?"