“In publicly meeting such an amount of talent, learning, and influence as seems now to be arrayed against me, I deem that it in no way implies a presumptuous or self‐confident spirit. I concede that many of those I thus meet are my equals or superiors in natural abilities, and certainly all are so in learning. I believe also they are men of conscientious integrity, and that, probably, most of them, would go to the stake rather than knowingly to sacrifice their allegiance to truth, duty, and God. And I believe that if I have any special mission in this matter, it is to illustrate the truth that _common sense_, without any unusual talents or learning, united to a sincere desire to learn and to obey the truth, are sufficient for all men and all women, in all important decisions for this life, and as much so for the life to come. “Nor do I regard this as a resort to old and _unpractical_ meta‐ physical abstrusities. It rather involves that great _practical_ question of life, before which all others fade into nothingness—that question which meets every parent and every teacher for every child—which meets every human being, as in sorrow, or disappointment, or sickness, or death, the soul asks from its Creator help and guidance for the dread and eternal future. Instead of leading to metaphysical and theological abstrusities, my hope is to entice from their dark and sorrowful mazes to the plain and cheerful path of common sense. “The great question involved is, have _the people_ a reliable revelation from the Creator in the Bible, and are they qualified to decide what are its true teachings on that great question of life, ‘What must we do to be saved?’ “And at the same time, the great practical question for my sex is no less at issue, ‘How are we best to train the mind of childhood to virtue and eternal happiness?’ These questions surely are capable of being, and should be, discussed in the language of the common people, and not in those scholastic and metaphysical terms which they can not, and will not seek to comprehend. “In these circumstances I endeavor first to meet the charge of my friends of the Independent, that I have misrepresented the views of that class of theologians with whom they fraternize, and with whom I claim to agree. “I offer the following as the exact words in which I have heard the New Haven divines express their opinions, and which, on my application, were sent to me as a correct statement of their views, as taught for more than a quarter of a century, in the New Haven School of Theology.