“It amazes me to imagine how thoughtful and benevolent men, believing that doctrine, can endure the sight of the present world and the history of the past. To behold successive, innumerable crowds carried on in the mighty impulse of a depraved nature, which they are impotent to reverse, and to which it is not the will of God, in his sovereignty, to apply the only adequate power, the withholding of which consigns them inevitably to their doom; to see them passing through a short term of moral existence (absurdly sometimes denominated a _probation_) under all the world’s pernicious influences, with the addition of the malign and deadly one of the great tempter and destroyer, to confirm and augment the inherent depravity, on their speedy passage to everlasting woe;—I repeat, I am, without pretending to any extraordinary depth of feeling, amazed to conceive what they contrive to do with their sensibility, and in what manner they maintain a firm assurance of the divine goodness and justice.” The following is the experience of the author of the Conflict of Ages: Dr. Edward Beecher. “If any one would know the full worth of the privilege of living under, worshiping, loving and adoring a God of honor, righteousness and love, let him, after years of joyful Christian experience and soul‐satisfying communion with God, at last come to a point where his lovely character, for a time, vanishes from his eyes, and nothing can be rationally seen but a God selfish, dishonorable, unfeeling. No such person can ever believe that God _is_ such; but he may be so situated as to be unable _rationally_ to see him in any other light. All the common modes of defending the doctrine of native depravity may have been examined and pronounced insufficient, and the question may urgently press itself upon the mind, Is not the present system a _malevolent_ one? and of it no defense may appear.