Thus all the tendencies to sin that have appeared or that are in me came to me from Adam, and all that are in you came from Adam, and all that are in the other man came from Adam. So all the tendencies to sin that are in the human race came from Adam. But Jesus Christ felt in these temptations; He was tempted upon all these points in the flesh which he derived from David, from Abraham, and from Adam. In his genealogy are a number of characters set forth as they were lived in the men, and they were not righteous. Manasseh is there, who did worse than any other king ever in Judah and caused Judah to do worse than the heathen. Solomon is there with the description of his character in the Bible just as it is. David is there. Rahab is there. Judah is there. Jacob is there. All are there just as they were. Now Jesus came according to the flesh at the end of that line of mankind. And there is such a thing as heredity. You and I have traits of character or cut of feature that have come to us from away back--perhaps not from our own father, perhaps not from a grandfather, but from a great-grandfather away back in the years. And this is referred to in the law of God: "Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments."

That "like produces like" is a good law, a righteous law. It is a law of God, and though the law be transgressed, it still does the same. Transgression of the law does not change the law, whether it be moral or physical. The law works when it is transgressed, through the evil that is incurred, just as it would have worked in righteousness always if no evil had ever been incurred. If man had remained righteous always, as God made him, his descent would have been in the right line. When the law was transgressed, the descent followed on the wrong line, and the law worked in the crooked way, by its being perverted.

It is a good law which says that everything shall have a tendency to go toward the center of the earth. We could not get along in the world without that law. It is that which holds us upon the earth and enables us to walk and move about upon it. And yet if there be a break between us and the earth, if our feet slip out from under us or if we be on a high station, a pinnacle, and it breaks and the straight connection with the earth is broken between us and it, why, the law works and it brings us down with a terrible jolt, you know. Well, the same law that enables us to live and move and walk around upon the earth as comfortably as we do, which works so beneficially while we act in harmony with it, that law continues to work when we get out of harmony with it and it works as directly as before—but it hurts.

Now that is simply an illustration of this law of human nature. If man had remained where God put him and as He put him, the law would have worked directly and easily; since man has got out of harmony with it, it still works directly, but it hurts. Now that law of heredity reached from Adam to the flesh of Jesus Christ as certainly as it reaches from Adam to the flesh of any of the rest of us, for He was one of us. In Him there were things that reached Him from Adam; in Him there were things that reached Him from David, from Manasseh, from the genealogy away back from the beginning until His birth.