This was Dr. Beecher's contention. How did he get over the difficulty? He believed in the pre-existence of human souls, and that in some other life before Adam there must have been an intelligent and fair choice, and that we here and now are only fighting out one stage of the results of that far-off decision. But, if you will stop to think of it a moment, you will see that this puts the difficulty only a little further back: it does not solve it. How does this first person, if it is so, countless millions of ages ago, happen to be endowed with intelligence and experience and ability enough to make such a momentous choice? And now just consider a moment. Is it conceivable that a sane person should intelligently choose evil, unless he had some inherited bias or tendency in that direction? For what does the choice of evil mean? It means sorrow, it means pain, it means death, it means everything horrible, everything undesirable, and means that a person deliberately and intelligently pits himself against an infinite and almighty power in what he knows must be an eternally losing battle. Can you conceive of a sane person making such a choice as that? If one of these first ancestors in the Garden of Eden, or no matter how far back, had a right to choose for himself, I deny his right to choose for me. What right had he to choose for you? What right had he to determine that you should be born with a perverted and corrupt nature, so that you would be certain to choose evil instead of good, helpless in the hands of a fate like this? Now you may look at this theory any way you please, place this probationary choice at the beginning of human history on this planet, or place it just as far back as you will, it is inconceivable, it is unfair, it is unjust, it is insane, it is everything that is foolish and wrong. And yet, note clearly one thing. So long as the world believes this, so long as the one end and aim of human life, as held up to people, is to be saved, think of the waste, think of the time, the anxiety, the enthusiasms, the prayers, the consecrations; think of the wealth, think of the intellectual faculties, think of the moral devotion, this whole power of the world expended on a false issue, turned into wrong channels!