"I have known," I remarked, "some young Christians commence their religious profession under auspicious influences. They have been hailed by pious parents and pious friends with acclamations of joy; the spring-time of their spiritual existence has been free from the rude blasts of persecution; and they have advanced from stage to stage, with unobstructed and undiverted steps. I have known others rocked in the whirlwind, and cradled in the storm. They have had to contend with the principalities and powers of evil in their high places. They have been despised and rejected; and the reproaches of men have fallen upon them. But I generally find that opposition at the commencement of a religious profession has a beneficial rather than an injurious tendency. It forces its principles deeper into the mind. It consolidates them. It gives to them an energy which ultimately rises superior to resistance; a healthful vigour, which they rarely attain to when nourished by the fostering hand of parental solicitude; and it brings them forth into such visible and powerful manifestations, that even the enemies of our common faith are compelled to feel 'How awful goodness is!'" "Yes, Sir," observed Mrs. Stevens, "and we should remember that those who oppose religion, when it takes possession of an individual mind, and exerts its influence over the visible actions of the life, often do it ignorantly. If they knew that they were attempting to resist the work of God in the new creation of the human soul, they would cease their opposition. But they do not. They have no conception of such a thing. They ridicule it as visionary; and if a person offer to prove, by sober arguments taken from the Scriptures, or from the Articles of our church, that such a new creation of the soul is a reality, and that it will develope itself precisely in that exterior form which they see exhibited in the conduct of those whom they oppose, yet they will refuse to hear. Their unfairness to meet the arguments in support of _the reality of the thing_, I grant, is very censurable; but it must be attributed to that judicial moral blindness which is one of the consequences of our apostasy from God, and which calls for the exercise of our forbearance and our tenderest pity. Hence, when we are reviled for our religion, we should not revile again; when we suffer, we should forbear to reproach; and commit our cause to Him who judgeth righteously." * * * * *