“To reform such men as _you_. You may think you are a Christian of the first water, but you know nothing about Christianity. The name of its Author is Love, and Christianity corresponds, letter and spirit, with that blessed word. But what do you know about _love_? and what does your fiery creed know about _love_? But you know what _hate_ means, and you would pursue all with fire and sword who do not kneel at your shrine. I pray God that you may be converted, that you may know the meaning of love, mercy, goodness, justice, know that they do not signify hatred, cruelty, vengeance, and that God is served when we obey the law of love, not when we hate and devour each other.” On board of a steamboat, on the Ohio river, I participated in the following conversation: “I am free to acknowledge, that I cannot reconcile endless misery with the goodness of God, and yet I have to believe in that doctrine.” “Others have admitted the same. The celebrated Dr. Samuel Johnson, the great moralist of the last century, admitted that God cannot be infinitely good to the victims of ceaseless woe--so Boswell tells us. We judge of a person’s character by his works. If his works are evil, we infer his character is evil; if his works are good, we infer that his character is good. We are safe in judging of God’s character by the same criterion. If he has built an everlasting hell, and will consign his own offspring to its dismal vaults, to be the victims of Almighty wrath, world without end, and all for the errors of a day, it is utterly impossible for Him to be _good_, much less, _infinitely_ good. Goodness seeks the _welfare_, not the _ruin_, of the subjects of its power.” “But your argument, if it is sound, proves, that God is not infinitely good, for the world is full of misery. All, the old and the young, the good and the bad, suffer.”