A Contest with Infidelity. 199 



he don't so order it, that all shall have an equal por- 

 tion of enjoyment in this world ? Now you know it 

 ain't so. Some are sick, and in pain all their lives. 

 Some are hungry and cold. Some go sorrowing all 

 their days ; all that they love are lost to them, and 

 they stand all alone in their desolation, like some tall 

 forest tree that has been riven by the lightning. 

 Honest men have been convicted of crime, and buried 

 in prison, or perished on the gallows.' In this way he 

 argued with me, and troubled me ; for, Squire, I kept 

 thinkin' and thinkin' on what he said, till, while I 

 I didn't exactly doubt, yet my mind became uneas}^ 

 But at last it came to me, that man at best is but a weak 

 and feeble creatur', and his ways ain't the ways of the 

 great Creator. That the mystery of all this belongs 

 to that portion of the great plan of the universe, which 

 is not revealed to man, and I remembered the words 

 of a preacher I heard once, who took the hand of a 

 weeping mother from the cold forehead of a child she 

 loved, and as he lifted it from the face of the little odg 

 that was dead, he pointed upwards, and said, ' He 

 ordereth all things well.' So I said to myself, when 

 the arguments of that infidel man rose up to trouble 

 me, ' He ordereth all things well ;' when I look upon 



