"For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate." "For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth." "Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth." (Romans, 8th and 9th Chapters.) "The wicked are estranged from the womb; they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies." (Psalm 58.) "Ye believe not because ye are not of my sheep." (John 10.) "Ye be reprobates." (II. Corinth. 13.) "Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated." (Romans 9.) He hardened their hearts, "That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand." (Mark 4.) "Hath not the potter power over the clay." &c. (Romans 9.) "He that believeth not shall be damned." This is benevolent (?) fatherhood, and the spirit of the _brotherhood of humanity_, with a vengance! We are distinctly told that God, "from the beginning," has deliberately fixed upon the ultimate misery and destruction of a portion of His hapless creatures; that He moulds them as clay in the hands of the potter; hardens their hearts and blinds their eyes, and then tells them He will damn them for not doing what He has prevented them from doing, and what He knows, beforehand, they cannot and will not do! This is what Mr. Wendling calls the "great central thought of Christianity--that 'every soul is worthy the Kingdom,'"--and he calls loudly upon "infidelity" to name an era or a school in which this doctrine was taught before the "Ideal Man" taught it. He is right! We cannot do it! We may search the philosophies and sacred writings of the Pagans in vain for so fiendish a doctrine. For pure, unadulterated malevolence, the Vedas, the Shaster, the Zend-Avesta, afford no parallel for this truly Christian doctrine. If, however, Mr. Wendling challenges us to name an era or school in which the _brotherhood of man_ (as we understand it) was taught before the time of the "Ideal Man," we unhesitatingly accept his challenge. It was taught by Buddha, Confucius, and numerous Pagan writers and philosophers long before the time of Jesus, for proof of which I refer the reader to Prof. Max Muller, Sir Wm. Jones, Lord, Amberly, &c, or to the writings themselves. Mr. Wendling desires us to "Tell me (him) why it is that all the creeds of Christendom and all the civilized nations unite in accepting the Ideal Man of Christianity despite the laws of climate and of race?"