If I had a son laboring under the conviction that the Bible is the source of such teachings, and he was to become disgusted and fall out with it on that account, I should be proud of his common-sense. Is the poor man mocked in that manner? If he dies in his sins, on account of his not being in possession of a good will, can his future reward be according to the deeds done by himself? No! He was never on trial—he had no ability to try. There is just as much sense in the idea that an ape is on trial. Adam, the first, ruined him; and Adam, the second, did not help him. Can a man be justly condemned because he was not what he never had the power to be? _Third._ The idea that the Lord would command men to _convert themselves_, knowing, at the same time, that they could not do it. He commands men to convert. He “commands all men everywhere to repent.” He knows, also, that they can do it; so Protestantism, to the contrary, is an everlasting disgrace to our religion. The original term translated by the word convert is in the _imperative active_ in many places. Our translators put it in the passive in the third chapter of Acts, where it is imperative active in the original. Why they did this no scholar can tell, unless it was to favor their Calvinistic ideas upon conversion. The term occurs forty-seven times in the New Testament, and it is translated thirty-eight times by the words _turn_ and _return_. Paul says he “showed to the people that THEY SHOULD TURN TO GOD, and do works meet for repentance.” This great thought harmonizes with all that is taught upon the subject of future rewards. A man _can turn_, and he is therefore accountable. To make man responsible, it must be shown that he is capable, or able. This is the one great fact that lies at the foundation of future rewards and punishment. Take this fact away and the justice of God is imperiled by the teachings of the Bible upon the subject of the future retribution. I know that men who are under the influence of the traditions of their fathers and mothers turn from the truth upon this question and say hard things against it; but I know, also, that those same men speak the same sentiment when they talk about the future judgment.