And yet, to the writer, it seems that this very doctrine, so plain and awful in Holy Writ, could be so drawn forth by the light of reason alone as to furnish a power of motive now almost unwielded. It seems as if the terrible exhibitions of this volume in the chapters on _Habit_, and on the _Wrong Action of Mind in a Future State_, might be wrought out by a man of talent and eloquence so as to draw such audiences as once thronged around Whitfield, and with equal results. What, then, could be done with the added power of revelation, dissevered from obstructing theories? When the writer looks back on her own mental history for the last thirty years, and feels how every step of her life, during the whole of that period, has been regulated by the overmastering pressure of this tremendous subject, and when she is sure that a conviction that no such awful dangers beset our race would bring her life on to just that level where so many Christians complain that they find themselves, the query will often arise whether ministers who _say_ so little about the matter, and those professed Christians who _act_ so little in consistence with it, _really do believe it_? And yet, when her own difficulties in expressing all that has been thought and felt are recalled, it is understood how others too may have been equally embarrassed and restrained. In regard to the main topics of this work, is not every minister called to decide, _practically_, between these two theories? The first is, that the great and leading aim of all Christian organization should be _to train new-born minds aright_, and that it is the special office of the ministry to influence the _educators_ of the race to the right performance of this, their chief duty. In doing this, it is to be assumed that the end for which we are made is "to glorify God" by obedience to those laws by which "the most happiness with the least evil" is to be secured to His vast eternal empire. That, at the _first birth_ of a child, it is "impossible, in the nature of things," for it to feel and act for the happiness of others till it has learned to know what gives pleasure and pain to _self_, and to understand that there are other beings who can thus enjoy and suffer; so that a child, by its very nature, is at first obliged to be _selfish_ in the _exercise_ of faculties which, _in reference to the great whole_, are perfect. That the "second birth" is the sudden or the gradual entrance into a life in which the will of the Creator is to control the self-will of the creature; while, under the influence of love and gratitude to Him, and guided by "faith" in his teachings, _living chiefly for the great commonwealth_ takes the place of _living chiefly for self_. For this, the supernatural aid of the Holy Spirit is promised to all who seek it; and, without this aid, success is hopeless. But the grand instrumentality is the _right training_ of parents and teachers.