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 Hence the necessity of losing our own life for the Lord's sake—the necessity of being born again or born from above, before we can enter the kingdom of heaven. The transmission, by hereditary descent, of certain physical qualities,—certain natural diseases or tendencies to disease, is a fact well established, and universally admitted among scientific men. Yet this is not more certain than the transmission from parents to children of certain mental qualities—certain dispositions or moral proclivities—certain tendencies to good or to evil, and to particular kinds of good or of evil. This being admitted, how is it, then, some will ask, that all who die in infancy and childhood can go to heaven? Do not the evil tendencies and corrupt inclinations belonging to their nature, go with them into the other world? And if so, what finally becomes of these tendencies and inclinations? How are they to be overcome or got rid of?

It is quite true that children do carry with them into the other world all the perverse tendencies of their nature—all the hereditary dispositions to evil, having their origin in a supreme love of self, with which they are born. But these dispositions are not there called into activity; they are kept in a state of quiescence through the powerful and controlling sphere of angelic love. Therefore their hereditary evils are never appropriated; that is, they never become sins—never become their own by actual life, or through their voluntary and deliberate ultimation of them. And by not being uitimated, their perverse tendencies