little company were landed on the shore. They stood still till the
boat had cleared; and then, with tears and embracings, the husband and
wife, with their wondering child in their arms, knelt down and lifted up
their hearts to God!

"'T was something like the burst from death to life;
From the grave's cerements to the robes of heaven;
From sin's dominion, and from passion's strife,
To the pure freedom of a soul forgiven;
Where all the bonds of death and hell are riven,
And mortal puts on immortality,
When Mercy's hand hath turned the golden key,
And Mercy's voice hath said, _Rejoice, thy soul is free."_

The little party were soon guided, by Mrs. Smyth, to the hospitable
abode of a good missionary, whom Christian charity has placed here as
a shepherd to the outcast and wandering, who are constantly finding an
asylum on this shore.

Who can speak the blessedness of that first day of freedom? Is not the
_sense_ of liberty a higher and a finer one than any of the five? To
move, speak and breathe,--go out and come in unwatched, and free from
danger! Who can speak the blessings of that rest which comes down on the
free man's pillow, under laws which insure to him the rights that God
has given to man? How fair and precious to that mother was that
sleeping child's face, endeared by the memory of a thousand dangers!
How impossible was it to sleep, in the exuberant possession of such
blessedness! And yet, these two had not one acre of ground,--not a roof
that they could call their own,--they had spent their all, to the last
dollar. They had nothing more than the birds of the air, or the flowers
of the field,--yet they could not sleep for joy. "O, ye who take freedom
from man, with what words shall ye answer it to God?"

CHAPTER XXXVIII

The Victory

"Thanks be unto God, who giveth us the victory."*

* I Cor. 15:57.

Have not many of us, in the weary way of life, felt, in some hours, how
far easier it were to die than to live?

The martyr, when faced even by a death of bodily anguish and horror,
finds in the very terror of his doom a strong stimulant and tonic. There
is a vivid excitement, a thrill and fervor, which may carry through any
crisis of suffering that is the birth-hour of eternal glory and rest.

But to live,--to wear on, day after day, of mean, bitter, low, harassing
servitude, every nerve dampened and depressed, every power of feeling
gradually smothere