c
was assassinated in the cradle? We read that our first parents were
placed in a pleasant garden; that they were given the full run of the
place and only forbidden to meddle with the orchard; that they were
tempted as God knew they were to be tempted; that they fell as God knew
they would fall, and that for this fall, which He knew would happen
before He made them, He fixed the curse of original sin upon them, to
be continued to all their children. Why didn't He stop right there?
Why didn't He kill Adam and Eve and make another pair who didn't like
apples? Then when He brought His flood why did He rescue eight people
if their descendants were to be so totally depraved and wicked? Why
didn't He have His flood first, and then drown the devil? That would
have solved the problem, and He could then have tried experiments
unmolested.

The Presbyterian confession says this corruption was in all men. It was
born with them, it lived through their life, and after death survived
in the children. Well, can't man help himself? No, I'll show you,
God's got him. Listen to this. [Reads extracts.] So that a natural
man is not only dead in sin and unable to accomplish salvation, but he
is also incapable of preparing himself therefore. Absolutely incapable
of taking a trick. He is saved, if at all, completely by the mercy of
God. If that's the case, then why doesn't He convert us all? Oh, He
doesn't. He wishes to send the most of us to hell--to show His justice.
Elect infants dying in infancy are regenerate. So also are all persons
incapable of unbelief. That includes insane persons and idiots,
because an idiot is incapable of unbelief. Idiots are the only fellows
who've got the dead wood on God. Then according to this, the man who
has lived according to the light of nature, doing the best he knew how
to make this earth happy, will be damned by God because he never heard
of His son. Whose fault is it that an infinite God does not advertise?
Something wrong about that. I am inclined to think that the
Presbyterian church is wrong. I find here how utterly unpardonable sin
is. There is no sin so small but it is punished with hell, and away
you go straight to the deepest burning pit unless your heart has been
purified by this confession of faith--unless this snake has crawled in
there and made itself a nest. Why should we help religion? I would
like people to ask themselves that question. An infinite God, by
practicing a re