from my soul every feeling of resentment towards my persecutors, hatred returned with redoubled power.  I often repeated the words of Christ, ’Father, forgive them, they know not what they do;’ but immediately a voice would answer, ’This prayer is not intended for the Jesuits; they resemble not the crucifiers, who were blind instruments of the rage of the Jews; while these men are fully conscious of what they are doing; they are the modern Pharisees.’  The reading of the Bible would have afforded me great consolation, but this was denied me.” * * *

The fourteenth day of his imprisonment he was taken to the council to hear his sentence, when he was again urged to sign the form of recantation.  But he refused.  The Father Rossini then spoke:  “Yon are decided; let it be, then, as you deserve.  Rebellious son of the church, in the fullness of the power which she has received from Christ, you shall feel the holy rigor of her laws.  She cannot permit tares to grow with the good seed.  She cannot suffer you to remain among her sons and become the stumbling-block for the ruin of many.  Abandon, therefore, all hope of leaving this place, and of returning to dwell among the faithful.  Know, all is finished for you!”

For the conclusion of this narrative we refer the reader to the volume itself.

If any more evidence were needed to show that the spirit of Romanism is the same to-day that it has ever been, we find it in the account of a legal prosecution against ten Christians at Beldac, in France, for holding and attending a public worship not licensed by the civil authority.  They had made repeated, respectful, and earnest applications to the prefect of the department of Hante-Vienne for the authorization required by law, and which, in their case, ought to have been given.  It was flatly refused.  They persisted in rendering to God that worship which his own command and their consciences required.  For this they were arraigned as above stated, on the 10th of August, 1855.  On the 26th of January, 1856, the case was decided by the “tribunal,” and the three pastors and one lady, a schoolmistress, were condemned to pay a fine of one thousand francs each, and some of the others five-hundred francs each, the whole amount, together with legal expenditures, exceeding the sum of nine thousand francs.

Meantime, the converts continue to hold their worship-meetings in the woods, barns, and secret places, in order not to be surprised by the police commissioner, and to avoid new official reports.

“Thus, you see,” says V. De Pressense, in a letter to the ‘American and foreign Christian Union,’ “that we are brought back to the religious meetings of the desert, when the Protestants of the Cevennes evinced such persevering fidelity.  The only difference is, that these Christians belonged only a short time ago to that church which is now instigating persecutions against them.”