The comments of editors, also, on this subject, were usually respectful, candid, and in many cases very able and discriminating. The result has been, that inasmuch as the religious press circulates chiefly among “the church” and the secular press among “the world,” the gospel has been preached to sinners far more by secular than by religious editors. And it may be assumed as a fact, that the secular editors of this nation have far more power and influence in guiding the religious opinions and moral conduct of “the world” than either the clergy or the religious press, and probably more than both combined. In this state of the case, all the interests of the religious press are opposed to free investigation and discussion, and all the interests of the secular press are as powerfully interested to promote it. In appealing, therefore, from the theological world to “the people,” it is the editors of the secular press—the true “_Tribunes_ of the people”—who will render the verdict, and this verdict is awaited with very little doubt or apprehension in regard to its nature. The questions submitted for decision are not so comprehensive as those of the volume referred to in which theologians chiefly were invoked, and which they have as yet declined to answer. The questions submitted to _the people_ are briefly these: Does common sense, or does the Bible teach that every human being possesses such a depraved nature as never to perform any truly virtuous act until this nature is re‐created by God? and are the churches organized on the assumption that its members are diverse from the world, in that they, as regenerated persons, perform virtuous acts as no unregenerated person ever does, sanctioned by common sense or by the Bible? CHAPTER LIII. WHAT THE PEOPLE WILL DO? It has been shown that the Augustinian dogma of a depraved nature is the foundation of all the large sectarian organizations in this country, and of the contentions, evil passions and waste of property resulting from such divisions among Christians. It has been shown that the leading theologians have ceased to defend this dogma, that the pastors of churches are practically evading it, that the educators of the young are throwing it aside, and that the people in all directions are rejecting it.