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Rh What now belongs to his second question or request, viz.: How with different children of different training and according to the measure of transgression, punishment is increased or lessened. I would very willingly and heartily explain this in all points to the friend but, since it covers a wide scope, I hardly know from its extent where I should begin or end. The reason is because the depraved condition of the young is apparent in so many things, and the provocations by which the young are influenced by those who are older, are manifold, and since God himself says, 1 Book Moses 8, 21. “For the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth,” so that out of this unclean source, if daily efforts are not made to keep down and overcome the evil, there appears little prospect for improvement. The depravity is so great, and so increases at this time daily in all ways, that I see very clearly there is no longer any hope through one's own strength to make things any better. Where the Lord does not help to build the house, those who build thereat will all work in vain. The slap with the hand, the hazel switch, and birch rod are all means to prevent the breaking forth of the evil, but they are no means to change the depraved heart, which since the fall, naturally holds us all in such control that we are more inclined to evil than to good, so long as it remains in this condition unchanged, and it is not cleansed through the spirit of God. Still though the seed from youth up in man is such that he is inclined to evil, it could not so mature in him if our old injury was recognized and felt. We would then earnestly work that it might be rooted out and destroyed not only in ourselves but in our fellow men and our youth. While this old injury and serpent's bite