That is to say, though each of the unborn millions descended from Adam was innocent of the crime, in order to be just, God "imputes" it to each, and, as a penalty, ruins each in its organization, when He has full power to make perfect minds. Another class assume that the Creator established such a constitution of things that the nature of one mind is transmitted to all its myriad descendants, by the same law as the nature of a plant is included in one seed and is transmitted to all of its future kind. The first parents of our race, receiving perfect minds from their Creator, ruined them by one act of disobedience. Then, by the above law, instituted by their Maker, they transmitted this depraved constitution of mind to all their descendants. This mode of evading responsibility is about as honorable as if a teacher should so construct springs and traps for his pupils that one little fellow, when forbidden to do it, should touch a spring that should cut off his own hand, and thus move other springs that would maim all the rest of the school, while the master lays all the blame on the child that disobeyed. Another class teach that the first man and woman of the race were made with perfect minds, and then such a constitution of things was instituted by God that every mind of the human race was so existing with or in them, that when Adam and Eve _voluntarily_ disobeyed the Creator's first law, every one of their descendants _voluntarily_ did the same thing; and then, as a penalty for the deed, the parent and every one of the embryo descendants became "totally depraved." This theory, which makes every human being guilty of a crime thousands of years before we were born, and for which we are suffering the most awful of all penalties, has nearly passed away to the puerilities of the old schoolmen, and yet there are some of the most popular professors in our largest and most respectable theological seminaries who are publicly advocating it at this very time. Another method promulgated is the assumption that all the race were originally created perfect, and then, while in the possession of every possible advantage for virtue and happiness, they ruined themselves in a previous state of existence. This is the only theory which really meets the difficulty, and relieves the character of the Creator from being the guilty author of depraved minds. But this theory, even if it could be established by revelation, does not remedy the strong argument of reason and experience against the wisdom and benevolence of the Creator, on the assumption of a depraved constitution of mind. The man denying a revelation, who is called upon to receive one, can say, Here is a race, every one of whom is ruined, and, so far as I can see, in the making of his mind by the Creator. Therefore this Creator, by his works, is shown to be a being of infinite folly and malignity, from whom no _reliable_ revelation is possible.