5. There is reason to think that original sin is not anything more than original ignorance. The belief in natural depravity discourages all efforts of progress. The primal imperfection of human nature is only effaceable by knowledge and persistent endeavor. Even in things lawful to do, excess is sin, judged by human standards. There may be error without depravity. 6. Eternal perdition for conscientious belief, whether erroneous or not, is humanly incredible. The devisors of this doctrine must have been unaware that belief is an affair of ignorance, prejudice, custom, education, or evidence. The liability of the human race to eternal punishment is the foundation on which all Christianity (except Unitarianism) rests. This awful belief, if acted upon with the sincerity that Christianity declares it should be, would terminate all enjoyment, and all enterprise would cease in the world. None would ever marry. No persons, with any humanity in their hearts would take upon themselves the awful responsibility of increasing the number of the damned. The registrar of births would be the most fiendish clerk conceivable. He would be practically the secretary of hell. The theory that all the world was lost through a curious and enterprising lady, eating an apricot or an apple, and that three thousand or more years after, mankind had to be redeemed by the murder of an innocent Jew, is of a nature to make men afraid to believe in a deity accused of contriving so dreadful a scheme. Though this reasoning will seem to many an argument against the existence of God whereas it is merely against the attributes of deity, as ascribed to him by Christianity. If God be not moral, in the human sense of the term, he may as well be not moral at all. It is only he whose principles of justice, men can understand, that men can trust. Prof. T. H. Huxley, conspicuous for his clearness of view and dispassionateness of judgment, was of this opinion, and said: "The suggestion arises, if God is the cause of all things he is responsible for evil as well as for good, and it appears utterly irreconcilable with our notions of justice that he should punish another for that which he has in fact done himself." The poet concurs with the philosopher when he exclaims: "The loving worm within its clod, Were diviner than a loveless God Amid his worlds."* * Browning. Christianity indeed speaks of the _love_ of God in sending his son to die for the security of others. But not less is the heart of the intelligent and humane believer torn with fear, as he thinks what must be the character of that God who could only be thus appeased. The example of self-sacrifice is noble--but is it noble in any one who deliberately creates the necessity for it? The better side of Christianity seems overshadowed by the worse.