"I admit your data, but object to your inference, because uniform experience decides the fact that all men do not stand on the same level, nor are they treated alike; for we cannot look in any direction without seeing inequality. I am not going, Sir, to inquire into the causes of this inequality of rank, of personal and of social condition, which is so obviously apparent, as that would raise many questions which we should not have time to discuss, but simply to notice the fact of inequality, which your proposition virtually denies. Look, for example, at yon princely mansion, and then think of the cottage where we first met. Compare the athletic frame of its wealthy occupier and his hale appearance, with an emaciated human being, whose life is pining away under a prolonged disease. Are all treated alike, and do all stand on the same level, under his administrative providence? No, Sir, there are towering mountains, rich in golden ore, and desert wastes, where the mower filleth not his hand, nor he that bindeth sheaves his bosom. And if, Sir, he sympathizes with every man, in the sense which we attach to the term, it must be sentimental; facts prove that it is not practical--the mere sympathy of the humane judge for prisoners, when leaving the dock under the sentence of death, or that of the tender-hearted physician in a ward of incurables. Go into an hospital, a prison, a poor-house, or a cottage, where its inmate is dying under prolonged and acute disease; visit the habitation of a broken-down tradesman, whose children are crying for food, while he has none to give them; pass on to the field of battle, after the work of slaughter is over, and mingle amongst the wounded; or go on board the slave ship, and look into her hold, as she moves through the middle passage, between the land of freedom and the land of perpetual bondage; and what _practical_ proof will you find, in any of these retreats of suffering humanity, that GOD SYMPATHIZES WITH EVERY MAN? You talk of the discrepancies of the Bible, and argue that they are a proof that it comes not from God. But what a terribly perplexing and appalling discrepancy do you open up between his character as a benevolent being, and his administrative providence? Follow out your course of reasoning, and then, to act consistently, you must become an atheist, and compelled to admit into your creed not only improbabilities, but absolute impossibilities." "Well, I will admit that when we come into real, practical life, we are compelled to modify, if not to give up as indefensible, some of our speculative opinions. In fact, the issue of every inquiry, when fearlessly pursued, is uncertainty--painful, distracting uncertainty--and man becomes the sport, if not the victim, of his own speculations and investigations."