It is one proof of a religious instinct, and of a universal belief in a controlling and benevolent Deity, that all men however abased, scornful of divine and human law, invariably, in their moments of desperation, call upon God. Their first appeal is, involuntarily, to him. The outlaw, as the fatal bullet pierces his breast--the infidel, sinking and struggling in the water--the cold stony heart of the murderer, the miser, the assassin of reputation as of life--all cry out upon God in the unexpected paroxysms of death. Let us hope that the instinct which prompts this involuntary appeal for mercy, somewhat helps to secure its blessings. It is thus also with one who, in the hey-day of the youthful heart, has lived without thought or prayer--a tumultuous life of uproar and riot--a long carnival of the passions--the warm blood suppressing the cool thought, and making the reckless heart impatient of consideration. Let the sudden emergency arise, with such a heart--let the blood become stagnant with disease--and the involuntary appeal is to that God, of whom before there was no thought. We turn to him as to a father who is equally strong to help and glad to preserve us. Margaret Cooper, in the ordinary phrase, had lived without God. Her God was in her own heart, beheld by the lurid fires of an intense, unmethodized ambition. Her own strength--or rather the persuasion of her own strength--had been so great, that hitherto she had seen no necessity for appealing to any other source of power. She might now well begin to distrust that strength. She did so. Her desperation was not of that sort utterly to shut out hope; and, while there is hope, there is yet a moral assurance that the worst is not yet--perhaps not to be. But she was humbled--not enough, perhaps--but enough to feel the necessity of calling in her allies. She dropped by her bedside, in prayer, when she arose that morning. We do not say that she prayed for forgiveness, without reference to her future earthly desires. Few of us know how to simplify our demands upon the Deity to this one. We pray that he may assist us in this or that grand speculation: the planter for a great crop; the banker for investments that give him fifty per cent.; the lawyer for more copious fees; the parson for an increase of salary. How few pray for mercy--forgiveness for the past--strength to sustain the struggling conscience in the future! Poor Margaret was no wiser, no better, than the rest of us. She prayed--silly woman!--that Alfred Stevens might keep his engagement!