But does this atonement serve only to redeem the human family from the curse inflicted by Deity in Eden’s garden for Adam’s sin, or does it operate as satisfaction for all sin? If the salvation is from the punishment for Adam’s sin alone, and if belief and baptism are, as Jesus himself affirms, to be the conditions precedent to any saving efficacy in the much-lauded atonement by the son of God, then what becomes of a child that only lives a few hours, is never baptised, and never having any mind, consequently never has any belief? Or what becomes of one idiot-born who, throughout his dreary life, never has mental capacity for the acceptance or examination of, or credence in any religious dogmas whatever? Is the idiot saved who cannot believe? Is the infant saved who cannot believe? I, with some mental faculties tolerably developed, cannot believe. Must I be damned? If so, fortunate short-lived babe! lucky idiot! That the atonement should not be effective until the person to be saved has been baptised, that the sprinkling of a few drops of water should quench the flames of hell, is a remarkable feature in the Christian’s creed: “One can’t but think it somewhat droll, Pump−water thus should cleanse a soul.” How many fierce quarrels have raged on the formula of baptism amongst those loving brothers in Christ who believe he died for them! How strange an idea that, though God has been crucified to redeem mankind, it yet needs the font of water to wash away the lingering stain of Adam’s crime. One minister of the Church of England, occupying the presidential chair of a well-known training college for Church clergymen in the North of England, seriously declared, in the presence of a large auditory and of several church dignitaries, that the sin of Adam was so potent in its effect, that if a man _had never been born, he would yet have been damned for sin_. That is, he declared that man existed before birth, and that he committed sin before he was born; and if never born, would notwithstanding deserve to suffer eternal torment for that sin. It is almost impossible to discuss seriously a doctrine so monstrously absurd, and yet it is not one whit more ridiculous than the ordinary orthodox and terrible doctrine, that God the undying, in his infinite love, killed himself under the form of his son to appease the cruel vengeance of God, the just and merciful, who, without this, would have been ever vengeful, unjust, and merciless.