THE LAW OF HEREDITY.

Waikato Argus, Volume III, Issue 159, 20 July 1897, Page 3

THE LAW OF HEREDITY.

Dk. Hosking 'has., kindly furnished us with the following digest of his address oc the above subject, delivered by him in the Wesleyan Church, Hamilton. Wc have much pleasure in publishing it, as we feel sure that it will be read with interest :

" Our fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge " (Jeremiah xxxi, 29). This was the quaint and expressive way in which the Hebrew presented one of the most mysterious and yet significant facts in life. The old doctrine that man at birth is like a white sheet of paper is false. He is like a sheet written upon with invisible ink. Every human life is like a seed which has in itself the effects of a long line of active aucestors.

I. Heredity is a physical fact that has not yet been explained fully. Medical science shows that diseases arc transmitted through successive generations. Blindness and insanity run in families. P. Lucas speaks of a blind beggar being the father of rive blind children. Physical peculiarities pass on. Giro us mentions the case of father, children and grand children being all left-handed. There U a wonderful resemblance often between the band writing of son and sire. Cook, of Boston, shows seven modes of heredity : (1) Direct heredity, the child resembling its parents ; (2) reversional heredity, the child resembling its grandparents ; (3) collateral heredity, the child resembling its uncle or aunt; (4) co-equal heredity, the members of both sexes being on an average about equal ; (5) pre marital heredity, the child of a second or third marriage resembling a former husband ; (u") paranatal heredity, the child's disposition and character being largely affected by influences which have powerfully affected its mother prior to birth ; (7) initial heredity, the child being affected by the temporary mood of parents at particular times.

The human race is bound by the ties of physical relationship and social independence. Humanity is one organic whole, of which each man is a member. Society is constructed on the give and take principle. 11. Heredity is a very essential factor in our public morals. A child inherits the natural constitution, the mental peculiarities, and often the moral idiosyncracies of its parents. Children inherit also the social status of their parents, or remote ancestors ; and wc are the offspring of past generations. We are all, more or less, the victims of the intellectual absurdities, the religious formalities, the social rottenness, the political folly and injustice of the past. Our judgments are bewildered, reasons stultified and consciences crushed, in many eases, by sacerdotal notions of religion, conventional standards of social intercourse, customs of classic paganism, quasi-Christian dogmas and pernicious politics of the past. Our ancestors have bequeathed to us their follies and sins. Some are born with inflamed passions and marvellous bias in vicious directions. In judging we are to take the whole circumstances into consideration. Man is a composite result of multitudinous forces. Some have a bias to lying,others to thieving, others to drinking, but all, except maniacs, imbeciles and idiots, have power of will by which they can shape their course, and certainly none are mere ciphers or as straws at the mercy of the \\ hid. 111. Heredity has a most important bearing on our religious life. We merely notice nine phases out of many. 1. It 16 a form or method of divine and natural punishment. "Sins of fathers arc visited upon the children." Transgressors of law must be punished. All have sinned. All must suffer. Whether we are punished directly or indirectly through our aucestors we have no right to complain. Lave modifies suffering, cools its fires on the nerves and lessens its pressure on the heart. Filial affection helps us to endure the suffering received through our parents. 2. Good or evil received from our ancestors are not to be compared with what we produce ourselves. Transmitted evils bear no remorse They are calamities. We bear up under them because there are alleviating circumstances attending them. The good we receive from the past is not to be compared with what we produce ourselves. A man who works his way up from a crushing penurious position to a princely pedestal of honour enjoys the whole with a zest that those who inherit princely fortunes know nothing about. 3. Whilst we groan under the evils passed down to us we must not forget thegoodwc have received. We owe a great deal to the past. Take our lan guage. Is not this a treasure to us ? Take our AnnloSuxon constitution. We did not elaborate it, yet it is, with all its faults, the best safeguard of personal liberty, social order and human progress under heaven. We ought not to forget tho sacrifices, struggles, sorrows and sufferings of our sires. Look at the. land we live in, with its broad acres, hidden wealth, roads, railways, public asylums, literary institutions, and public libraries furnished with the choicest productions of gonitis. We ought not to forget our early pioneers. So with religion and the Bible.

4. Heredity tends to check vice and to foster virtue. Parents desire the good of their offspring, and are undoubtedly checked in the performances of actions that would entail evil to their children.

5. Heredity gives one man the right to protest against the sin of another. It destroys the fallacy '•* My sin is no concern of yours." As we are all links in one vast chain every individual sin concerns every member of the race. G. It shows the awful responsibility of parenthood. We live, act and reign in the unborn. Our actions will vibrate through the nerves of posterity. 7. Give your children a sound physical training, and as they grow up they will not transmit deformities and diseases. Give them a sound mind in a sound body. Inspire them with love of truth ; teach them habits of vigorous thought, then they will not transmit the stupid inanities and fettering dogmas of past ages. Teach them the lessons of reverence, generosity, self-sacrifice and Christian ethics, and they are not likely to pass on the profanity of atheism, the selfishness and cupidity of the world and the cantiug hypocrisy of narrow-minded bigotry. 8. Heredity shows that a degeneration of human nature is a palpible and philosophic principle not peculiar to religion, but pressed upon us by every page of public morality. " Original sin is not original nonsense," but an incontrovertible fact of which every student of life is conscious.

9. Heredity shows the wisdom of the incarnation. Christ came to destroy sin ; not by theories, books, speeches, super. seuuous manifestations and seraphic flames ot living light; but he became the Son of .Man, bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh. As sin is transmitted through our common humanity, He who would destroy sin must become a liuk in the vast chain, identify Himself with the human race. Thus Christ destroys sin in the llesh by entering our race as the leave.ii the woman puts into the meal until the whole is assimilated, and He becomes the head of a new family which will spread from shore to shore and from pole to pole. Mr Meachcm sang " Calvary " during the service, and it is needless to say that the rendition was much appreciated by the congregation.