A Sermon Preached in Union Church on Sunday Morning, January 8, 1928 by the Rey. E. F. Horst-Smith "What ehall we then say to the ese things?" Romane VIII: v. 91.
Everyone enters life with a certain legacy. The rival claims of heredity and environment may decided by those who are ccmpetent to judge these things; but however much the share of heredity may be reduced, the final decision is likely to be that there is at least something in it. But even if some of the influences that used to be attributed to heredity belong really to early environment, which is now regarded as of immense iris portance, it remains true that these are a part of the legacy we receive, for we did nothing to create or choose that environment. We were placed in it without our consent. It is not only true that "we brought nothing into this world;" for it is also true that for quite a long tim after our entrance into the world we acquired nothing on our own initiative, tier. They are people with a grievance, It is from people of thi kind, whose souls have been bruised with' adversity, that agitators are bred. What is now called in modern jargon the "inferiority complex' is responsible for much, if not most, of the unrest that is evident to-day. And although that sense of inferiority may disguise itself \by high sounding words and modern dress and other trappings of superfotity, it is the inferiority complex. none the less. And any of us who. have been more highly favoured ought not to judge these peopl harshly, without an attempt to ur derstand them. They are to a large extent what circumstances have made them; they are the vict-of "fortune's sharp adversity. AMI enlightened social reformers know that the only satisfactory to bring about betterment is to deal The Legacy We Receive Now in that legacy there is often much that is good and desirable. Tt may include ® sound constitution, 8 good home and healthy training Some can say with the ancient Psalmist: "The lines have fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea 1 have goodly heritage." But there are other things in the legacy of many people that are not 0. desirable. Some people are horn with a weal constitution, with a tendency to disease, and into an atmosphere of depression where illness is taken for granted, A still. larger number are born in conditions. of poverty where even the necessities of Tite, not to speak of its luxuries, are Jacking. "And. this disadvantage carries with it other handicaps such fas lack of equipment for the work of life. "Many a man has it in him to do a good dea! more than he will ever do, for Inck of early advantages. Moreover, many: people have found that, by the accident of their age, they have missed opportunities that might have been theirs if they had been a fow years older younger; opportunities that some of their friends have had and used, Dut which have just escaped them.
And just as some are born at the wrong time, others are born at the wrong place. It is one thing to be om at a university centre with every facility at hand and quite another thing to be born in a erowdto find one's home in fa charming English village and another to find-it in x remote and Un. healthy part of some mission feld In various ways most people are the victims of circumstances. over which they have no control. They have shackles not of their own aking, handicaps for which they" are way responsible. By the time people arrive at what may be called the age of discretion they find themselves in possession of a legacy Which they did nothing to create They were not "asked when and where they would like to be born, 'They had mo share in the choice of their parents or grandparents. It wa not left for them' to decide whether their condition should be ich or poor, whether their physical constitution should trong or; weak, Now in so far as that legacy is desirable we purpose saying more about it, for it appears to pre-Sent no problem, or perhaps Wwe should say it presents problems of a different kind. Let us concen-rot only with effects but also with causes. Our study of Russia for example should not begin with the 1917, but. should go back far enough to indicate the corruption id injustices of the Tsarist regime, This fs by the way, and not to ju tity the spirit of point out the necessity of under standing its causes. Well, that is the first attitude, that of complaint, The Bowed Head LI. Then secondly there are some who submit. Now that is seeming-
'y a very much superior attitude to {shat of a complaint. There is an clement of piety second attitude that is lacking in the first. The first is the attitude of Bfilton's Satan who defies the Power against which ho is helpless. The second is the attitude of the discipline Thomas, who fears worst, but is willing to submit to it, The first might might be symholized by the shaken fist, the second by the bowed head. From this point of view, any murmurings complaints are sinful.
In this attitude there is aot only oan element of piety, but more than a dash of fatalism. The submissive person seeks to be resigned to the position in which Providence has placed him—hardly questioning that that position is determined and permanent, In days gone by he would have sung with no feeling of ineon-
The rich maw in hie caste, The aer man ut his pate out nede"theve high and ind "ordered their estate, something like that has been the attitude of the great yeomen population of China. The same used to he true of the peasantry in our Jhomelands. The charge is often mace against organized rel that it is usually in favour of the established order, that it supports things as they are, or perhaps, things as they were; that averse to change; and that it [cates the temper of passive sivaness, that it produces the slave spirit. And no one will deny that there is an clement of truth in the charge, as there is a certain amount of justification for the attitude,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.