Eugenics or the Word? by O. B. Kuhn

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 15, 1914

Eugenics or the Word?

By O. B. Kuhn

O. B. Kuhn

The theories and facts of eugenics, the science of improving offspring by bequeathing them better hereditary tendencies and placing them in a favorable environment, present practical suggestions to Christians; but as advanced by worldly philosophers, this science is deceiving some professed Christians and many moralists.

These philosophers teach that the laws of heredity and the influence of environment are absolute in the making of good or bad characters. The life and teachings of the great Instructor and divine Saviour show that the deductions of these scientists are incorrect.

For four thousand years the race had been decreasing in physical strength, mental power, and moral worth when Christ took upon himself the infirmities of degenerate humanity. He took humanity, with all its liabilities. He took the nature of man, with the possibility of yielding to temptation. Some of his ancestors were murderers, drunkards, adulterers, and liars. They were guilty of every crime. He was reared in a city so evil that its inhabitants were proverbial for their wickedness. "Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?"

"Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me." He "was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin." While he was in the world, he was not of the world. He was a mighty conqueror over the flesh, the world, and the devil. He resisted the temptation to indulge appetite, to love display and the world.

Go back ten centuries and every one of us has two thousand ancestors living contemporaneously in one generation. These, converging through their posterity down through the ages, shape up in us. For six thousand years the race has been degenerating physically, mentally, and morally. Inherited and cultivated evil tendencies and immoral surroundings are intensified.

Left alone, we are indeed helpless in the grasp of hereditary laws, hopeless in the strength of evil tendencies, and resistless to the influence of environment. "Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ."

When one experiences the new birth, he becomes the temple of the Holy Spirit. Christ dwells within, an all-sufficient helper, the hope of glory, able to deliver. He is not bound by his own laws. By his word he caused the sun to stand still, and to turn back, and congealed the waters of the Red Sea. He healed the sick and opened the eyes of the blind. He raised the dead. By his word he loosens the grasp of hereditary laws and inherited evil tendencies and strengthens the will to resist the influences of evil surroundings.

Through the power of the Word dwelling in the life, the appetites and passions are held in subjection to the will of God. Evil imaginations are cast down, and every thought is brought into captivity to Christ. "Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee." "By the word of thy lips I have kept me from the paths of the destroyer." "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom."

In this last generation bodies prepared by centuries of ancestral wickedness, subject to hereditary laws, and molded by environment, become the temple of the Spirit of God; Christ imputes and imparts his righteousness; his word overcomes sin and weakness; a godlike character is developed, fitted for translation. The redeemed will be prepared for heaven, not by eugenics, but by the power of the Word.