I knew that she could sing and play, so, pointing to the piano, I asked her if she would sing a hymn.  “Yes,” she said, “I will.  What shall I sing?”

“Find ‘When I survey the wondrous cross,’” I said.

She did not need to find the music, for she knew it without; so, sitting down, she began to sing, till the tears came into her eyes, and her voice broke down.  “I never knew the meaning of these words before,” she said; “‘Sorrow and love flow mingled down.’  How could I be so blind and ignorant?  ‘Love so amazing, so divine,’ does ’demand my life, my soul, my all!’ O Lord, take it!”

After this, I had a few parting words with her, and pointing to the crucifix I said, “Remember Christ is not on the cross now.  He died; that is past.  He is risen, and has ascended up on high.  The throne of grace is not the crucifix or the confessional, but where Christ sits—­at the right hand of God; and we, as believers, may in heart and mind thither ascend, and with Him continually dwell.  Have done, then, with this dead Popery; you know better now.  Testify for the glory of God.”

This lady’s conversion vexed her husband greatly, and brought down the frowns and disapprobation of the reverend doctor; altogether, it did a deal of mischief in the camp.  The “Sisters of Mercy” with whom she was connected were kept aloof from her contaminating influence, and soon afterwards were altogether removed from the place.  There was one, however, a particularly hard-headed looking individual, who used to stare at me through her round spectacles whenever I met her, as if I were an ogre.  I heard that she was a great mathematician.  She looked like it; and evidently there was no fear entertained of her being converted.  She and one other were left behind; but otherwise the house, which had been built at great cost, was empty.  The lady was not allowed to speak to me any more; but I hope she continued to go to the true throne of grace, and not to the crucifix to a living, not a dead Christ.

All this, doubtless, was intended to sicken me of my reverence for the Catholic theory.  I was evidently under an infatuation on the subject, which, for the time, nothing could dispel.  I had some poetic or imaginary fancy of spiritual catholicity before my mind, which I supposed was something better than the fleshy spirituality of Methodism, to which I had taken a great dislike; but where to find this Utopia, or how to embody it, I knew not.  These specimens of catholic people I certainly had no sympathy with; nor had I any patience with their hollow devotion and their studied imitation of Popery.  I plainly saw that light could have no fellowship with darkness, or life with death.  I was more and more convinced that when a man has more sympathy with dead Catholics than with living Dissenters, he is not a living soul at all.  There is no necessity to go to one extreme or the other.  I believe the reformed Church of England (in her principles, at least) occupies the middle path between these two extremes, with the excellences of both, and the faults of neither.  I think I was permitted to be thus unsettled in my mind, because I did not keep to my work with a single eye to God’s glory.