786.
[page number] -8- [end page number]
so that only the best reproduce and thus the race is kept strong. We have supplanted nature's way by making it possible for the weak - in body and mind - to live and reproduce and thus hand down their misery to generations still unborn.
You were inspired by the story Dr. Smith told us last Sunday evening of the marvelous medical work he is doing in Africa. Doubtless many of you were impressed by the vitality of the people who went through such ordeals as did some of them he described and still lived. After the service I heard one of you ask him how he accounted for this wonderful vitality. He said: "Oh, that is easy. It is generally accepted that of babies born in West Africa where I am stationed three out of four die in infancy, so that only the sturdy stock survives. Them, it is almost impossible to kill." There you have nature's way of insuring to posterity a strong race. We have done away with this natural selection and have put nothing in its place.
2. Consider this further fact which the eugenists point out to us who are Christians. Our whole Christian program of charity tends to undermine heredity. This is not pleasant to our ears but it is good for our souls. Rightly we insist that in God's sight every soul is of inestimable value, whether that soul be in a weak body or a strong one; whether the soul be an intellectual giant, a moron, or an imbecile. Here we are right. But we run the graver danger by making it possible for these types, which we all concede are undesirable, not alone to live but to reproduce their kind. This is having its effect, not alone in the lowering of physical and mental powers generally but in the number of defectives.