"No, no," chimed in another, immediately; "they may cant and prate about it: but, if their God existed, he would never permit us to suffer as we do!" "Well, I'm come seriously to the same conclusion," said one who had not spoken before, and was the palest and thinnest of the group: "I think all their talk about a Providence that disposes the lot of men differently here, 'for His Own great mysterious purposes,' as they phrase it, is mere mysterious humbug, to keep us quiet. What purpose could a being have, who, they say, is as infinitely good as he is infinitely powerful, in placing me where I must undergo insult and starvation, while He places that man,—the oppressor and grinder, who is riding past now, in his gig,—in plenty and abundance?" "Right, Benjamin," said George; "they can't get quit of their difficulty, quibble as they may: if they bedaub us with such nicknames as 'Atheistical Socialists,' we can defy them to make the riddle plainer by their own Jonathan Edwards, that they say good Robert Hall read over thirteen times, and pronounced 'irrefragable.'" "Just so," resumed Benjamin, "whether man be called a 'Creature of Circumstance,' or a 'Creature of Necessity,' it amounts to the same thing. And, then, none of the Arminian sects can make out a case: they only prove the same thing as the Calvinist and the Socialist, when their blundering argument is sifted to the bottom." "So that, if there be a Providence," continued George, "it has appointed, or permitted,—which they like, for it comes to the same,—that old——should fling the three dozen hose in your face last November, and that you should be out of work, and pine ever since; it appointed that I should get a few potatoes or a herring, by begging, or go without food altogether, some days since Christmas; and that each of us here, though we are willing to work, should have to starve; while it appointed that the mayor should live in a fine house, and swell his riches, by charging _whole_ frame-rents, month after month, to scores of poor starving stockingers that had from him but half week's work." "And, with all their talk about piety," rejoined Benjamin, "I think there is no piety at all in believing in the existence of such a Providence: and since, it appears, it can't be proved that Providence is of any other character, if there be One at all, I think it less impious to believe in None." John stood by while this conversation was going on; but he heard little of it,—for his heart was too heavy with concern for his child,—and, in a little time, he took his way, silently and slowly, towards other groups of unemployed and equally destitute men, who were standing on the wider space of ground, at the junction of several streets,—a locality known by the names of "the Coal-hill," and "the Hay-market," from the nature of the merchandise sold there, at different periods, in the open air. "Have you found the lad yet?" said one of John's acquaintances, when he reached the outermost group.