"Well, Oro is every where. What now?"

"Then, if that be absolutely so, Oro is not merely a universal on-
looker, but occupies and fills all space; and no vacancy is left for
any being, or any thing but Oro. Hence, Oro is _in_ all things, and
himself _is_ all things--the time-old creed. But since evil abounds,
and Oro is all things, then he can not be perfectly good; wherefore,
Oro's omnipresence and moral perfection seem incompatible.
Furthermore, my lord those orthodox systems which ascribe to Oro
almighty and universal attributes every way, those systems, I say,
destroy all intellectual individualities but Oro, and resolve the
universe into him. But this is a heresy; wherefore, orthodoxy and
heresy are one. And thus is it, my lord, that upon these matters we
Mardians all agree and disagree together, and kill each other with
weapons that burst in our hands. Ah, my lord, with what mind must
blessed Oro look down upon this scene! Think you he discriminates
between the deist and atheist? Nay; for the Searcher of the cores of
all hearts well knoweth that atheists there are none. For in things
abstract, men but differ in the sounds that come from their mouths,
and not in the wordless thoughts lying at the bottom of their beings.
The universe is all of one mind. Though my twin-brother sware to me,
by the blazing sun in heaven at noon-day, that Oro is not; yet would
he belie the thing he intended to express. And who lives that
blasphemes? What jargon of human sounds so puissant as to insult the
unutterable majesty divine? Is Oro's honor in the keeping of Mardi?--
Oro's conscience in man's hands? Where our warrant, with Oro's sign-
manual, to justify the killing, burning, and destroying, or far worse,
the social persecutions we institute in his behalf? Ah! how shall
these self-assumed attorneys and vicegerents be astounded, when they
shall see all heaven peopled with heretics and heathens, and all hell