f 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 when during this
life its high aims have kept it unspotted by the dust of the sensual
life, and he, as the judge, sees that it has preserved itself worthy of
its pure First Cause, he allows it to return to the eternal and supreme
Spirit whence it originally proceeded.

"And do not you, too, strive after purification, to the end that your
soul may find an everlasting home in the radiant realms? Again and
again do we meet with the same ideas, only they bear different forms
and names. Try to feel the true bearing of my words, and then y