to her, and to say what I would: only that I must not read to her. Many a prayer I put up, many a tear I shed during the many days' exile from my beloved charge; and at times I almost wavered, so cruel it seemed. But the Lord gave me resolution to persevere; and what a blessing I reaped from it! One day, I received a message from Mary to come to her; to come directly, and to bring my Bible. I scarcely stayed to tie on my bonnet; and I flew, rather than walked the short distance. Pausing at the door of her room, for she now had a separate apartment, I held up my precious little bible; and with that mixture of laughter and weeping so often characteristic of her native skies and native race, Mary stretched out her arms towards me. A person must be as thoroughly Irish as she was, or as thoroughly Hibernicised as I am, to enter into the heart-warmth of that meeting: yet not a word did I speak, or permit her to speak, till I had read a good portion of the word of God; while her sparkling eyes, now buried under the bed-clothes, now peeping out upon me, like a joyous child, and her frequent short laugh of delight, bespoke the gladness of her inmost soul, in hearing once more the words of promise, and from my lips too.

I then began to chide her for all the pain that she had inflicted on herself and me, and asked how she had broken her chain. She told me, the Priest had been to see her, and to ascertain whether she had obeyed his mandate. She told him what had passed, and declared that such was her misery under the privation, that if he did not give his consent to her hearing the Scriptures, she would do so without it. She intimated that she had a very difficult part to sustain in the hot debate that followed; but she was resolute; and the priest rather than so bad an example of rebellion should be

set in his fold, called for a Bible, read a few words to her, and told her, that now, having heard it from him, it was lawful for her to have it from any one else. I could have reproved her for requiring his permission at all; but I said little on that point; and thenceforward my care was directed to the breaking of every link that bound her soul to Popery.

The Lord blessed it to us both; and many an ardent thanksgiving burst from her lips, as, from day to day, she looked back with an eye more perfectly purged from former mists, upon the way in which she had been led from gross darkness to marvellous light. She distinctly admitted that what had enabled her boldly to withstand the priest's authority, after her temporary yielding, was the very strong bearing of all my reading and remarks on the delusions in which she had been so long held. She was so bigoted a Papist, that no Protestant liked to go near her; and the very first time that I saw her in the workhouse, the priest was sitting by the bedside, muttering prayers from his breviary in her ear. This gave me my cue at once; and I bless God that neither in her case nor in that of any other person to whom I bore the message of mercy, did I neglect to ascertain at the outset, under what particular form Satan held dominion over the conscience and soul of the victim; whether it were Popery, Socinianism, Atheism, or formality in external duties. I am fully persuaded that a half message cannot be a whole gospel; and we deliver but half if we omit, "Cease to do evil". "Repent ye of your sins." Be it remembered that the deadliest errors in faith are not known to be sins by those who hold them; and our very first work must be, following the order of the Divine procedure, to convince of sin; of THE sin that lurks in the individual's heart;

be it vanity, or be it covetousness; be it malignity, or be it idolatry. To hold up Jesus as an object of saving faith to the dying sinner, and at the same time to leave that sinner under the persuasion that the Jesus in whom he is invited to trust is shut up in a box in a Romish chapel, and may be brought to his bed-side at the last between the priest's finger and thumb, is—is it not ?— a dangerous error

Poor Anne! God grant that the story of her dreadful doom may be blessed to the plucking of many brands from the flaming fire of that wrath which excludes "idolaters, and whatsoever loveth and maketh a lie" from the heavenly city. I cannot despair of her, as of one who had rejected the gospel; because she believed to the last, having never been told otherwise, that the Redeemer of the world was under the power of the priest; and that the Virgin Mary could save her soul, the fires of purgatory could burn away her sins, and the smear of oil on her dying brow answer as well as the seal stamped by God's own hand on the forehead of his children. Poor lost lamb of a fold where the wolf is lord of the sheep, a stronger than he could wrest her from his grasp, even in the dying moment. He could ; but did He? We know not; we never can know; but those who have closed the eyes of a rejoicing believer, rescued in open day, and enabled to testify to the power and love of Him who made darkness light, and crooked things straight before them, while rejecting with horror the symbols of their former idolatrous delusion,—such will not, cannot, dare not shrink from the duty, nor would they for a thousand worlds barter the privilege, of pointing out in all its awful depth of colouring the portrait drawn by God Himself, of Babylon the Great, and echoing aloud the divine command, "Flee out of her!"

THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD,

OR THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

No. I.

"YE are the light of the world,”—were the words of the Incarnate Deity to his disciples. And this was no new arrangement of Divine wisdom; for it has ever been the good pleasure of God to place the treasure of his truth" in earthen vessels." No succession of angels has been commissioned to dwell on earth, and to hold forth "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God," to the gaze of a wondering world. Man must be taught by man; patriarch, priest, prophet—all were human, all spoke the truths of heaven in the language of earth. And even "when the fulness of time was come," and a higher teacher, a more glorious prophet was to appear on the dark platform of our world, still the same principle was maintained a human medium was chosen for the wondrous manifestation, and God" was formed in fashion as a man ;" even the 66 man of sorrows;" who went about, not only "doing good," but shedding the blessed influences of his teaching on those multitudes that followed him, in the words and in the metaphors of their own language.

And now that this great prophet, who is also the great High Priest and the King of kings, has left the earthly scene,-passing, through the bloody way of

His atonement, the dark valley of the tomb, and the bright path of his ascension, up "to the right hand of the Majesty on high," no more to return until the day of his glory,-He has left this "light of the world,” the knowledge of himself, visibly embodied in a few despised disciples, whom he has charged to "let their light so shine before men, that they may glorify their Father which is in heaven." The brightness of Divine truth is still ordained to beam from lamps of clay. Yet is it the true, the only "light of the world ;" and no other light can chase, nor ever yet has chased away, those deep shades of darkness, moral and intellectual, which brood over our sinful world.

All this is the plain statement of Scripture; but there are those who,-weak in faith, or unwilling to acknowledge that all light, not Divine, is but darkness,-may ask-How are these assertions borne out by facts? how do we practically and positively know that the only true light has been that held forth by these few patriarchs and believers, in various ages? We know indeed that "darkness covered the earth, and gross darkness the people," both in days of old, and in times more recent; but we do not see the distinct and close connexion between the degree of this obscurity and the distance from the Divine light.

Be it then our present object to exhibit this connexion, by historical testimony, by the incontrovertible evidence of facts. Let us glance at the moral and mental character of different periods and various nations; and then trace the effect to its cause, the stream to the fountain, the darkness of man to his departure from the light of heaven.

I have called this subject "the influence of Christianity." I may perhaps be told that there was no