Rousseau's Emile is naturally good. As the series progressed, Sherwood's views of religion changed (she became a universalist), causing her to place greater emphasis on childhood innocence in later volumes. Evangelicalism The strongest themes in Sherwood's early evangelical writings are the need to recognize one's innate "depravity" and the need to prepare for eternity. For Sherwood, her main themes emphasize "faith, resignation, and implicit obedience to the will of God". In her adaptation of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (1678), The Infant's Progress (1821), she represents original sin as a child named "In-bred Sin" who tempts the young pilgrims on their way to the Celestial City (Heaven). It is these battles with In-bred Sin that constitute the major conflict of the text. The allegory is complex and, as Demers admits, "tedious" for even the "willing reader". According to Demers, "some young readers may have found [In-bred Sin's] activities more interesting than the spiritual struggles of the little heroes, reading the book as an adventure story rather than as a guide to salvation". Such religious allegory, though not always so overt, continued to be a favourite literary device of Sherwood's. Sherwood infused her works with political and social messages dear to evangelicals in the 1810s and 1820s, such as the crucial role of missions, the value of charity, the evils of slavery, and the need for Sabbath observance. She wrote biblically-based introductions to astronomy and ancient history so that children would have Christian textbooks. As Cutt argues, "the intent of these (as indeed of all Evangelical texts) was to offset the deistic tendency to consider knowledge an end in itself". She revised classic children's books on religious grounds, such as Sarah Fielding's The Governess (1749). These efforts to make religion more palatable through children's fiction were not always seen favourably by the evangelical community; The Evangelical Magazine reviewed harshly her Stories Explanatory of the Church Catechism (1817), complaining it was overly reliant on exciting fictional tales to convey its religious message. The History of the Fairchild Family (1818–1847) As Cutt argues, "the great overriding metaphor of all [Sherwood's] work is the representation of divine order by the harmonious family relationship (inevitably set in its own pastoral Eden).... No writer made it clearer to her readers that the child who is dutiful within his family is blessed in the sight of God; or stressed more firmly that family bonds are but the earthly