istered a stimulant. As he resumed
his seat, Levice continued:

"I was seated at a window overlooking Market Street. Below me surged a
black mass of crowding, jostling, hurrying beings, so far removed they
seemed like little dots, each as large and no larger than his fellows.
Above them stretched the same blue arch of heaven, they breathed the
same air, trod in each other's footsteps; and yet I knew they were all
so different,--ignorance walked with enlightenment, vice with virtue,
rich with poor, low with high,--but I felt, poised thus above them,
that they were creatures of the same God. Go once thus, and you will
understand the feeling. And so I judged these aliens. Which was greater;
which was less? This one, who from birth and inheritance is able
to stand the equal of any one, or this one, who through birth and
inheritance blinks blindly at the good and beautiful? Character and
circumstance are not altogether of our own making; they are, to a
great degree, results of inherited tendencies over which we have no
control,--accidents of birthplace, in the choosing of which we had no
voice. The high in the world do not shine altogether by their own light,
not do the lowly grovel altogether in their own debasement,--I felt the
excuse for humanity. I was overwhelmed with one feeling,--only God
can weigh such circumstantial evidence; we, in our little knowledge of
results, pronounce sentence, but final judgment is reserved for a higher
court, that sees the cross-purposes in which we are blindly caught.
So with everything. Below me prayed Christian and Jew, Mohammedan and
Brahmin, idolater and agnostic. Why was one man different in this way
from his fellows? Because he was born so, because his parents were so,
because he was bred so, because it seemed natural and convenient to
remain so,--custom and environment had made his religion. Because Jesus
Christ dared to attack their existing customs and beliefs, the Jews,
then powerful, first reviled, then feared, then slew him; because the
Jews could not honestly say, 'I believe this man to be a God,' they were
hurled from their eminence and dragged, living, for centuries in the
dust. And yet why? Because God withheld and still withholds from this
little band the power of believing in Christ as his son. Christians call
this a wilful weakness; Jews call it strength. After all, who is to
be praised or blamed for it? God. Then instead of beating the Jew, and
instead of sneering at th