Perhaps it may be well to give here a quotation which I came across years afterwards, as illustrating this process of reasoning from the assumed hypothesis of a divine and infallible revelation, that _must be taken_ as the starting point. It is from Dr. Albert Barnes, a distinguished Presbyterian minister of Philadelphia, about the middle of the last century. I quote him because of his high character and representative position; and his dilemma is substantially the same with practically all others with whom I have conversed on the subject. Here is what he says: "That the immortal mind should be allowed to jeopard its infinite welfare, and that trifles should be allowed to draw it away from God and virtue and heaven; that any should suffer forever,--lingering on in hopeless despair and rolling amidst infinite torments, without the possibility of alleviation and without end; that since God _can_ save men, and _will_ save a part, He has not purposed to save _all_; that, on the supposition that the atonement is ample, and that the blood of Christ can cleanse from all and every sin, it is not in fact applied to all; that, in a word, a God who claims to be worthy of the confidence of the universe, and to be a being of infinite benevolence, should make such a world as this, full of sinners and sufferers; and that, when an atonement had been made, He did not save _all_ the race, and put an end to sin and woe forever,--these, and kindred difficulties, meet the mind when we think on this great subject; and they meet us when we endeavor to urge our fellow-sinners to be reconciled to God, and to put confidence in him. On this ground they hesitate. These are _real_, not imaginary difficulties. They are probably felt by every mind that has ever reflected on the subject; and they are _unexplained, unmitigated, unremoved_. I confess, for one, that I feel them more sensibly and powerfully the more I look at them, and the longer I live. I do not understand these facts; and I make no advances towards understanding them. I do not know that I have a ray of light on the subject, which I had not when the subject first flashed across my soul. "I have read, to some extent, what wise and good men have written; I have looked at their theories and explanations; I have endeavored to weigh their arguments; for my whole soul pants for light and relief on these questions. But I get neither; and, in the distress and anguish of my own spirit, I confess that I see no light whatever, I see not one ray to disclose to me the _reason_ why sin came into the world, why the earth is strewed with the dying and the dead, and why man must suffer to all eternity.