Section LXXVIII. The Inner Revelation and the Conscience. (Concl'd) · SECTION CXLVIII.

The family is a unitary vital whole also in relation to its moral property; it is not a mere sum of simply isolated persons of like name, but a body and a soul—a moral person with a common moral honor and a possession of its own, in which all the single members participate.

The family has as a living unity, also one spirit, a common moral life-purpose and a common moral peculiarity; the common life-purpose consists in the mutual promotion of the moral life in one God-inspired spirit; the common peculiarity is, spiritually, the moral honor of the family, and, outwardly, its temporal possessions. The moral acquirements of one family member, especially of the head, pass over to the whole family, and the deserts of the parents bear, in virtue of the divine order of the world, fruits of blessing for the children, and are rewarded upon them [Gen. xxvi. 4, 5, 24; xlix, 10, 26; Exod. xx, 6; Deut. v, 10; vii, 9; 2 Sam. ix, 7; xxi, 7; 1 Kings xi, 34; Psa. xxv, 13; xxxvii, 25 sqq.; cxii, 2, 3; Prov. xiv, 26; xvii, 6; xx, 7; Jer. xxxii, 18; comp. 1 Cor. vii, 14; Rom. xi, 16]; and the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children, and are for them a shame and a misfortune [Gen. ix, 25; xx, 7, 17 sqq.; xlix, 7; Exod. xx, 5; xxxiv, 7; Lev. xxvi. 39; Num. xiv, 18; Deut. v, 9; vii, 9; 1 Kings xi, 39; 2 Kings v, 27; Job v, 4; xxi, 19; xxvii, 14; Psa. xxxvii, 28; cix, 9, 10; Prov. xi, 21; xvi, 5; Isa. xiv, 21; Jer. xviii, 21; xxxii, 18; Lam. v, 7; Hos. iv, 6; comp. Matt. xxvii, 25], and the sins of the children upon the fathers, as their disgrace [Lev. xxi, 9; Prov. x, 1; xvii, 25; xxviii, 7; comp. Deut. xxii 13 sqq.],—whereof we shall speak elsewhere more fully. The consciousness, deeply rooted in all cultivated nations, of a transmission of deserts; of a moral nobility of family-lines, has a profoundly moral basis; but this moral solidarity of the family is conceived even by the Old Testament more clearly and more distinctly than was ever done in any nation. This is morally a very weighty thought. Man is made to feel that he does not live and act as a merely isolated individual, but, on the contrary, every-where and always as a member of a moral whole,—that the fruits of his actions, be they good or evil, pass over to those who belong to him and with whom he is morally connected, and hence that in sinning he commits an injustice not merely against himself, but also against all whom he calls his own. So the family is a divine , so is the solidarity of moral deserts and guilts such also; this is not injustice but sacred justice, for the simple reason that man is never a merely isolated individual. That which is true of the spiritually-moral property of the family is true also of the material property, and upon this rests the principle of inheritance.

(b) MORAL SOCIETY.