The same food will feed us all alike. The
same cholera will kill us all alike. And we can give the cholera to
each other; we can give each other the infection, not merely by our
touch and breath, for diseased beasts can do that, but by housing our
families and our tenants badly, feeding them badly, draining the land
around them badly. This is the secret of the innocent suffering for
the guilty, in pestilences, and famines, and disorders, which are
handed down from father to child, that we are all of the same blood.
This is the reason why Adam's sin infected our whole race. Adam
died, and through him all his children have received a certain
property of sinfulness and of dying, just as one bee transmits to all
his children and future generations the property of making honey, or
a lion transmits to all its future generations the property of being
a beast of prey. For by sinning and cutting himself off from God
Adam gave way to the lower part of him, his flesh, his animal nature,
and therefore he died as other animals do. And we his children, who
all of us give way to our flesh, to our animal nature, every hour,
alas! we die too. And in proportion as we give way to our animal
natures we are liable to die; and the less we give way to our animal
natures, the less we are liable to die.
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