“Oh Beulah, such is now my prayer.”

As Beulah stood near the lamp, strange shadows fell on her brow; shadows from the long, curling lashes.  After a brief silence, she asked earnestly: 

“Are your prayers answered, Clara?  Does God hear you?”

“Yes; oh, yes!” “Wherefore?”

“Because Christ died!”

“Is your faith in Christ so firm?  Does it never waver?”

“Never; even in my most desponding moments.”

Beulah looked at her keenly; and asked, with something like a shiver: 

“Did it never occur to you to doubt the plan of redemption, as taught by divines, as laid down in the New Testament?”

“No, never.  I want to die before such a doubt occurs to me.  Oh, what would my life be without that plan?  What would a fallen, sin-cursed world be without a Jesus?”

“But why curse a race in order to necessitate a Saviour?”

Clara looked in astonishment at the pale, fixed features before her.  A frightened expression came over her own countenance, a look of shuddering horror; and, putting up her wasted hands, as if to ward off some grim phantom, she cried: 

“Oh, Beulah! what is this?  You are not an infidel?”

Her companion was silent a moment; then said emphatically: 

“Dr. Hartwell does not believe the religion you hold so dear.”

Clara covered her face with her hands, and answered brokenly: 

“Beulah, I have envied you, because I fancied that your superior intellect won you the love which I was weak enough to expect and need.  But if it has brought you both to doubt the Bible, I thank God that the fatal gift was withheld from me.  Have your books and studies brought you to this?  Beulah!  Beulah! throw them into the fire, and come back to trust in Christ.”

She held out her hands imploringly; but, with a singularly cold smile, her friend replied: 

“You must go to sleep.  Your fever is rising.  Don’t talk any more to-night; I will not hear you.”

An hour after Clara slept soundly, and Beulah sat in her own room bending over a book.  Midnight study had long since become an habitual thing; nay, two and three o’clock frequently found her beside the waning lamp.  Was it any marvel that, as Dr. Hartwell expressed it, she “looked wretched.”  From her earliest childhood she had been possessed by an active spirit of inquiry which constantly impelled her to investigate, and as far as possible to explain, the mysteries which surrounded, her on every side.  With her growth grew this haunting spirit, which asked continually:  “What am I?  Whence did I come?  And whither am I bound?  What is life?  What is death?  Am I my own mistress, or am I but a tool in the hands of my Maker?  What constitutes the difference between my mind and my body?  Is there any difference?  If spirit must needs have body to incase it, and body must have a spirit to animate it, may they not be identical?  With these