"
"That seems to me strange doctrine," said Arctura, with tremulous
objection.
"If you do not like it, do not believe it. We inherit from our
ancestors vices no more than virtues, but tendencies to both. Vice
in my great-great-grandfather may in me be an impulse."
"How horrible!" cried Arctura.
"To say that we inherit sin from Adam, horrifies nobody: the source
is so far back from us, that we let the stream fill our cisterns
unheeded; but to say we inherit it from this or that nearer
ancestor, causes the fact to assume its definite and individual
reality, and make a correspondent impression."
"Then you allow that it is horrible to think oneself under the
influence of the vices of certain wicked people, through whom we
come where we are?"
"I would allow it, were it not that God is nearer to us than any
vices, even were they our own; he is between us and those vices. But
in us they are not vices--only possibilities, which become vices
when they are yielded to. Then there are at the same time all sorts
of counteracting and redeeming influences. It may be that wherein a
certain ancestor was most wicked, his wife was especially lovely. He
may have been cruel, and she tender as the hen that gathers her
chickens under her wing. The main danger is perhaps, of being caught
in some sudden gust of unsuspected impulse, and carried away of the
one tendency before the other has time to assert and the will to
rouse itself.
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