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Now, dear classmates, conscious that I am alone and personally responsible to God for my religious belief, I do not want to embrace an error. Therefore I will be very thankful to be shown wherein my opinions are unsound, or my reasoning inconclusive. Just consider my views, not as those of a theologian, but as one who is searching for truth on the same common plane with yourselves; and I ask you to give my opinions no more credence than you think truth entitles them to as you view it. For it is the common sense of common men and common women that I so much covet as my tribunal of judgment, rather than learned commentators, or popular theologians, or venerable doctors of divinity.

"TOTAL DEPRAVITY."

It is the authority of creeds, echoed by the theologians and ministers of the Presbyterian pulpit, not excepting our own pastor, that human nature is necessarily a sinful nature.

Now, I ask the privilege of presenting to our class this question "If human, nature is necessarily a sinful nature, how could Christ take upon himself human nature, and know no sin?" This question was referred to their pastor for an answer. Mr. Packard gave it as his opinion that a "Holy God might make a holy human nature for Christ, and a sinful nature for the rest of the human family." Upon this, one of the class inquired, "Can a holy God make sin?"

These questions troubled both our teacher, Deacon Smith, and their pastor. They could not answer them satisfactorily to themselves or the class; and it was to extricate themselves from this unpleasant dilemma that they at once agreed that this question was the result of a diseased brain, from whence it had emanated, and therefore it was unworthy of their consideration! Thus their reputation for intelligence and ability was placed beyond question, and the infallibility of their creed remained inviolate! And their "poor afflicted Christian sister" must be kindly cared for within the massive walls of a prison, lest her diseased brain communicate its contagion to other brains, and then what will become of our creed! for we cannot afford to follow the example of this "Man of God," and sacrifice our wives and mothers to save our creed!

SPARE THE CREED!

Though the mother's heart do bleed,
Spare! O, spare our trembling creed!
Though her tender infants cry,
Though they pine, and droop, and die,
Though her daily care they need,
Spare! O, spare our trembling creed!

Force the mother from her home!
That once pure and peaceful dome;
Bind her fast with maniacs, where
None will heed her yearning prayer;
Let cold bars and bolts and keys
Fetter mothers such as these!
Iron manacles we need
To protect our darling creed.

What are homes or children's claims?
What a doting mother's aims?
What were life, love, liberty,
If our creed imperilled be!
Nothing in this world we heed,
Like our dear endangered creed.
Thus State power august hath wrought
Fetters for too daring thought!
Souls thus bold Asylums need,
To protect our precious creed.

-- Mrs. S. N. B. O.

This was the pivot on which my reputation for sanity was suspended; for I could not be made to confess that God made a bad or sinful article when He made human nature; but on the contrary, I claimed that all which God made was "good" -- that is, was just as He intended it to be; and I furthermore argued, that to be natural was to be just as God had made me to be-that to be unnatural, was to be wrong or sinful. I claimed that God's work, as He made it, was perfect -- it needed no regeneration to make it right -- that regeneration was necessary only when we had become unnatural or different from what God had made us.

I willingly acknowledged that our natures in their present state were perverted or depraved, in many instances to a painful degree; but that none are entirely lost to all traces of the divine image. For example, the drunkard is depraved in his appetite for drink, and the regeneration he needs is not a new appetite, but a restoration of it to its natural, original, unperverted state. Then he would have only a natural appetite for food and drink, which is in itself no sin; but the sin consists in his abuse of a natural instinct, not in the natural use of it. So that the natural exercise of our faculties, as God has made them, is not wrong, but only the unnatural or abusive use of them is wrong or sinful.

THE UNLIMITED ATONEMENT.

The professedly orthodox pulpit says, that "God intended all mankind for a life of purity, virtue and happiness." Now I wish to ask if God's intentions can be thwarted? If they cannot be thwarted, and God intended all mankind for happiness, will not all men be saved? If God intended it, and does not accomplish it, is He omnipotent? I believe God is omnipotent -- that He intends nothing but good -- and He will carry out all his intentions. I believe the devil is not omnipotent -- that he intends nothing but evil -- and he will ultimately fail in all his intentions.