If you feel determined to maintain and inculcate the idea of God's punishing his rational offspring eternally without mercy, love, or pity towards them, I entreat you, as a father, to consider whether you can invent any idea which, applied to God, would make his character appear more contrary to the spirit of him who loved his enemies and died for them. I entreat you to examine carefully and see if it be possible to reconcile the doctrine of endless misery with the benevolent desires of the true spiritual children of God; and consider seriously whether it be proper to pray for the salvation of all men, and then condemn the belief of it as a heresy. I entreat you, as a father, to call into serious consideration the real cause of all the persecutions and abominable cruelties which have been practiced in Christendom, on account of religion, and see if you can find a foundation for these things except in the blasphemous notion that God is unmerciful towards the impenitent. Endeavour, sir, to satisfy yourself how the foolish prejudices of ignorant zealots could ever have succeeded in establishing so many middle walls of partition, and in making so many pernicious distinctions in the Christian world, if the blasphemous notion of partiality in God had not been the rage of an apostatised church. Find out, if you can, I entreat you, sir, the cause of all the madness and folly, which appear in the habitual coldness and bitterness exercised by the clergy, of different denominations towards each other, if it be not the blasphemous notion that their foolish prejudices are sanctioned by God! Adieu, I write no more. I feel that I have done my duty. I have entreated you as a father in love and faithfuness. I leave the effects with God; humbly praying and joyfully believing, that when we are purged from our hay, wood and stubble, with the spirit of judgment and the spirit of burning, we shall see eye to eye and be admitted to a humble seat at the feet of our blessed Saviour, for whose sake I remain, sir, your most obedient and very humble servant. HOSEA BALLOU Rev. JOSEPH WALTON.