I wish now to exhibit the influence of one doctrine (which I claim to be that of reason as truly as of revelation) on a mind like mine. I have stated something of that hopeful, elastic, and happy temperament that seemed to make sorrow so indispensable to the development of my noblest powers. But the earthly sorrow, time and new interests would have remedied ere youth had passed. But that awful doctrine of THE ETERNAL, IRREMEDIABLE LOSS OF THE SOUL, so ground into my spirit by years of effort, of which this was the mainspring, has been the grand motive power of my whole life ever since. If I could in any way have satisfied myself that a time would come, however distant, when all sufferers would be repaid by eternal ages of bliss, and all the guilty, however long their period of purgation, would at last be pure and happy _forever_, I should have returned to life and its enjoyments with fresh zest after such a period of privation. But I could not gain any such assurance without the Bible, but rather the reverse; while all the life and teachings of Christ and the Apostles seemed entirely based on the assumption that our whole race were in awful danger, that some were to be saved and some were to be _lost_ _forever_, and that the great end for which Christ lived, and for which his followers are to live, is to SAVE AS MANY AS POSSIBLE from this awful doom. Indeed, I could not see how any one could feel any respect for the teachings of Christ when such terrible things were uttered by him, if there was no just reason thus to terrify and alarm mankind. Times without number, I went over the New Testament to see if I could find any _honest_ way of escaping that doctrine, and always ending with a deeper and more awful conviction of its reality. The result was, that while, for the first year, I was driven to such mental effort and suffering to save myself, as soon as the least hope dawned that I was safe, all that was kindly and sympathizing in my nature led me to renewed efforts to save others.