The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1902-12-08
The .HEREDlTY OF JESUS
ARGUMENT OF REV. T.. A. CANTRELL
BEFORE PEOPLES CHURCH.
Christ No More Than Human, He Says,
but Training i'm Purity Reached
Back 1000 Years.

'Heredity,' says DR.. ]. S. Kingsley. is
a term applied to that law of living things
whereby the offspring resembles the parent,
the characteristics of one generation being
repeated in the next When the word is
used one is apt to recall only those
striking instances of inheritance of genius,
like the musical ability in the Bach fam
lily: or of physical peculiarities. like the
repetition of the Bourbon nose in sue
cessive generations of the former royal
family of France. 1t includes not only the
fact that six-toed cats are apt to have six
toed kittens. but the really more wonder
full fact that cats have kittens rather than
some other form of animal life. In other
words, 1t is through the action of heredity
that all the structural features of the
parent are repeated in the offspring and
that in the development of the individual
these are outlined and matured in certain
fixed and definite ways.
THAT Jesus was subject to the universal
laws Of life, it seems superfiuous in these
days to argue. The Son of Man from
his parents inherited humanity, the parts
organs and feelings of man. Hath he
not eyes? Hath he not hands, organs. d.
mensons, sense, affection, passions fed
with the same food, hurt with the same
weapons, warmed and cooled by the same
winter and summer, as you or anyone else
in the world? All this, the common, hui
man heritage of Jew and gentle, Greek
and barbarian alike Jesus had.
SHARED HUMAN LIFE.
mot only this, but in coming UP through
the gates of birth there was in Him, as iii
all men, the embryonic recapitulation of
lower forms He not only shared human
he Of ~ ht,f haa nf
that He shared the subhuman life up
through which humanity has climbed. Be-
cause His ancestors for many generations
had been human, because they had main
tanned themselves at the standard of the
human He was human. Descended for
countless ages from man and woman, man
born of woman Jesus surely was.
1--WE may take another step. Jesus in
herited not only the structural peculiarities
and mental characteristics of a common
humanity. but the racial traits of His
immediate parentage. He was a Jew-not
a negro nor a monaghan He inherited the
blood of the Jew and the qualities of the
Jew-the qualities seen in a Moses, and an
Isaiah. and an Ezekiel, and Hillel-those
splendid qualities that made the Hebrew
people to be what has been called the
miracle of history
1.-The question has very often come, Was
Jesus then no more than ourselves? l say
yes and no. With all due regard to our
good fathers and mothers, 1 daresay that
very few of us here to-day are the result
of preparation and forethought. There was
back OF US little of the expectancy of a
divine ideal. Ii is reported of Oliver Wen
dell Holmes that when he was asked when
child's training should begin he said ii
should begin two hundred years before 1t is
TRAINING OF JESUS
1.-The training of Jesus began nearly two
thousand years before He was born. II
began back with the Abrahamic ideal OF
what we call in theological terms the Abra-
hamic covenant Then there were the
national idea of purity and the Messianio
hope with their centuries of influence or
motherhood. together with the prenatal in.
fuences suggested by the gospels, all oil
which gave Jesus an advantage that none
of us can claim. There was back of Hin
the propulsion of the ideal that pushed Hin
toward the Messianic height.
+" But Jesus was more than good man.
| We are often told. More than a goot
man? What limits shall we place for tn,
/ soul? No limits There are no limits?' Yer,
| well. Carry the soul to goodness and how
/ far short of the Messianic life will IL fall
! If Ii be that I'm God / live and move ant
/ have my being. IL IL be that God is owe
all and through all and In ALL If 1t be- al
/ Emerson says. that i am part and particle
| has within himself the personalities o
! the 'anointed life? The life i'm man is on,
/ with the life in God. The difference is no
/ one of kind, but of degree. And Their
| Is a sense In which we say that God Il
no more than good man, because on
| Idea of God is our idea OF man projecte.
| to infinitude."