rayers. There
are responses to be made, I believe."

Mr. Lacy perceived that she was anxious that he should begin
the service at once, without previously entering into
conversation with her; and feeling deeply himself that no
words of his could bring such powerful consolation to the
soul, if burthened with sorrow, or so forcibly awaken the
sense of sin, if guilt and remorse were troubling it, as those
which the Church supplied him with, he knelt at once by
Ellen's couch, and with more emotion than he had perhaps ever
felt before in the exercise of this portion of his sacred
ministry, he read the solemn prayer for mercy, with which this
service opens.

After the Lord's Prayer, in which Ellen had feebly joined, Mr.
Lacy and the two women, who knelt opposite to him, repeated
alternately the impressive sentences of the Litany, which
immediately follows it.

There was something in these supplications that seemed to
accord, in some extraordinary manner, with the state of
Ellen's mind. When the minister prayed "that her enemy should
have no advantage of her," she started convulsively, and gazed
wildly about her, as the women responded, "Nor the wicked
approach to hurt her." When the words "From the face of her
enemy," were uttered, she hid her face in her hands, and a
slight shudder shook her frame. After a pause, Mr. Lacy read
the prayers that follow, and then rising from his knees,
turned towards Ellen, and addressed to her the beautiful and
touching exhortation, that forms part of the service; but when
towards the end of it--"Forasmuch as after this life there is
an account to be given unto the Righteous Judge, by whom all
must be judged, without respect of persons"--he required her
to examine herself and her estate, both towards God and
towards man, so that accusing and condemning herself for her
own faults, she might find mercy at our Heavenly Father's hand
for Christ's sake, then Ellen trembled. When he rehearsed to
her the Apostles' Creed, and asked her if all these articles
of the Christian faith she stedfastly believed, she bowed her
assent. And now they had arrived at that solemn period in the
service when the minister was bound by his sacred office to
examine whether she truly repented her of her sins, and was in
charity with all the world;--when he was to exhort her to
forgive from the bottom of her heart the persons that had
offended her; and if she had offended any other, to ask of
them forgiveness; and