With all my heart I loved the gentle, affectionate, elegant nun, and earnestly did I pray for help in bringing her back, as I was resolved to do, from the path of destruction; and while I deliberated on the best means of commencing the work, the difficulty was removed by her openly attempting to convert me. To this end she urged on me a strict inquiry into the real doctrines and tenets of her church, for myself and by myself, promising to lend me books of the most candid character, if I would engage to read them. I agreed, stipulating that I was freely to write out my remarks on them for her consideration; and with this mutual understanding, I brought home from the convent as a loan Dr. Milner's "End of Controversy," furnished for my especial benefit by a seminary of Jesuit priests, located near the town: and thus was I become the object of a combined attack from the forces of great Babylon. True to what I considered a tacit engagement to study the matter alone, I read the book. Never shall I forget the effect it produced on me. I seemed to be holding communion with Satan himself, robed as an angel of light, the transparent drapery revealing his hideous form but baffling my endeavors to rend it away. Such sophistry, such impudence of unsupported assertion, such distortion of truth and gilding of gross falsehood, I never met with. I tried in vain to find an answer to things that I saw and felt to be antiscriptural and destructive; but this "End" was the beginning of my controversy, for I was wholly new to it, and ignorant of the historical and other facts necessary to disprove the reverend author's bold assumptions. At last I burst into tears, and kneeling down, exclaimed, "O Lord, I cannot unravel this web of iniquity: enable me to cut it in twain." I was answered; for after a little more thought, a broad view of the whole scheme of man's salvation as revealed in the holy Scriptures appeared to me the best antidote for this insidious poison. I read through the New Testament with increased enjoyment, and casting from me the wretched fabric of lies, with all its flimsy pretences, I resolved, instead of attempting a reply to what I saw to be falsehood, to set forth a plain statement of what I knew to be truth. Indeed it is indescribable how disgusting the painted face, the gaudy trappings, and the arrogant assumptions of the great harlot appeared in my eyes, when thus contrasted with the sublime simplicity, purity, and modesty of the chaste spouse of Christ.