te and bereaved, and gives health and refreshment to the suffering.
When nature pines in winter cold or in summer drought and lacks power to
revive, when the sun is darkened, when lies and evil instincts alienate
the soul from its pure first cause, then Isis uplifts her complaint,
calling on her husband, Osiris, to return, to take her once more in his
arms and fill her with new powers, to show the benevolence of God once
more to the earth and to us men. You have learnt that lament; and when
you sing it at her festival, picture yourself as standing with the Mother
of Sorrows--the mother of your crucified divinity, by his open grave, and
cry to your God that he may let him rise from the dead."

Olympius spoke the last words with excited enthusiasm as though he were
certain of the young girl's consent; but the effect was not what he
counted on; for Agne, who had listened to him, so far, with increasing
agitation, setting herself against his arguments like a bird under the
fascinating glare of the snake's eye, at this last address seemed
suddenly to shake off the spell of his seductive eloquence as the leaves
drop from the crown of a tree shaken by the blast; the ideas of her
Saviour and of the hymn she was to sing were utterly irreconcilable in
her mind; she remembered the struggle she had fought out during the
night, and the determination with which she had come to the house this
morning. All the insidious language she had just heard was forgotten,
swept away like dust from a rocky path, and her voice was firmly
repellent as she said:

"Your Isis has nothing in common with the Mother of our God, and how can
you dare to compare your Osiris with the Lord who redeemed the world from
death?"

Olympius, startled at the decision of her tone, rose from his seat, but
he went on, as though he had expected this refusal:

"I will tell you--I will show you. Osiris--we will take him as being an
Egyptian god, instead of Serapis in whose mysterious attributes you would
find much to commend itself even to a Christian soul--Osiris, like your
Master, voluntarily passed through death--to redeem the world from
death--in this resembling your Christ. He, the Risen One, gives new
light, and life, and blossom, and verdure to all that is darkened, dead
and withered. All that seems to have fallen a prey to death is, by him,
restored to a more beautiful existence; he, who has risen again, can
bring even the departed soul to a resurrection; and w