Ezekiel attacks this popular theory of retribution at what must have been regarded as its strongest point—the relation between the father and son. “Why should the son _not_ bear the iniquity of his father?” the people asked in astonishment (ver. 19). “It is good traditional theology, and it has been confirmed by our own experience.” Now Ezekiel would probably not have admitted that in any circumstances a son suffers because his father has sinned. With that notion he appears to have absolutely broken. He did not deny that the Exile was the punishment for all the sins of the past as well as for those of the present; but that was because the nation was treated as a moral unity, and not because of any law of heredity which bound up the fate of the child with that of the father. It was essential to his purpose to show that the principle of social guilt or collective retribution came to an end with the fall of the state; whereas in the form in which the people held to it, it could never come to an end so long as there are parents to sin and children to suffer. But the important point in the prophet’s teaching is that whether in one form or in another the principle of solidarity is now superseded. God will no longer deal with men in the mass, but as individuals; and facts which gave plausibility and a relative justification to cynical views of God’s providence shall no more occur. There will be no more occasion to use that objectionable proverb in Israel. On the contrary, it will be manifest in the case of each separate individual that God’s righteousness is discriminating, and that each man’s destiny corresponds with his own character. And the new principle is embodied in words which may be called the charter of the individual soul—words whose significance is fully revealed only in Christianity: “All souls are Mine.... The soul that sinneth, it shall die.”