He began now to learn a science that had not been taught him in college, and on which his divinity instructor had never lectured. He now for the first time in his life, had a practical demonstration of the solemn and humbling truth, that there is as much difference between the _profession_ and the _practice_ of piety, as there is between pedantry and real science; and that the priest and the Levite are the same now, as they were in the days of the good Samaritan. Christians left him to suffer without sympathy. Even the ministers of that holy religion which sends its votaries to the _sinner_ wherever he may be found--which espouses the cause of the _prisoner_--and which says to the _backsliding_, "Return;" treated him with as much severity as language can convey. One of these, who only a few months before had taken counsel with him, and walked to the house of God, addressed to him from the pulpit the very words I am going to record. "Thou hypocrite!" said he, "dressed in the specious semblance of piety, while thy heart was filled with all abominations, a just and righteous retribution has fallen on thy guilty head!" Awful words these for one poor sinful mortal to use to another. They are the flame of an angry soul, and ill become the servants of him who, even when he was reviled, reviled not again. But if this was the spirit of the _priest_, what might not have been expected of the _people_? Alas! "like _priest_ like people," for they too passed him in sullen silence, or with protruded lips. Is this religion? If it is, away with it from the earth; it is the infamy and curse of the human race. Away with it and its votaries. It is worse than the religion of DAGON. If this is religion, I pray God that infidelity may banish it from the universe, of which it is the fellest scourge. But this is _not_ the religion of the _Bible_, though it is that of too many who are proud to be called christians. Though the prophets of Baal be four hundred, there is, however, an Elijah and a seven thousand who have not knelt at the shrine of an idol; but they are known only to _God_ and his _suffering children_. The religion which they practice is compassion for the distressed; alms to the needy; charity for the wandering; and love to all men. Its walk is in stillness--its spirit is gentleness--and its home is the wayside, the hut of the poor, and the cell of the sufferer. This is religion, and none can tell better than the prisoner how much of this is on earth.