to make one proselyte, and when they have caught him, make him tenfold more a child of hell than themselves. I see with grief and horror their success in these latter days, not only in making actual perverts, but (and this is worse, because more insidious) in corrupting by their evil communications the purity of the Reformed Church of England, which, just as Israel so easily fell into backsliding towards the Egyptian idolatries, or as Lot's wife looked back towards the wicked and condemned city, does from time to time, and in these days most greedily, hanker after the carnalities to escape from which she was led out into the wilderness. Words would fail me were I to attempt fully to express my indignation with regard to the traitors among the ordained clergy of the Church of England, who, having signed the Thirty-nine Articles in order to gain an entrance into the ministry, make it their object to bring back the Roman Mass, the doctrine of the material sacrifice, the belief in Purgatory, compulsory confession as a condition to receiving communion, and the whole medieval superstition. The Romanists, and their imitators-who are even baser than

the Romanists, because they break every law of their own Church-turn to their advantage the natural weaknesses and inclinations of the corrupt human heart. They fight not against fallen nature, but minister to its sensual cravings. All their worship, especially the idolatry which they substitute for the Lord's Supper, is originally imitated from heathen rites, and is such as men would have invented for themselves, if no Christian revelation had been vouchsafed, and if they had been left to their natural light, or rather darkness. Under the name of prayer the Romanists, and especially the Jesuits, whose victim, I have no doubt, you especially are, use the force of disciplined and combined wills to overcome and capture weak individual wills. What they call "conversion" is, I firmly believe, a scientifically applied process of hypnotic influence and suggestion. But I should have hoped that you were a sufficiently strong character, and were well enough grounded and built up in the spirit, and glorious freedom, and true faith of our Lord, to resist these evil and black arts, as of sorcerers or magicians, exerted by those

in the employment of that pernicious and meretricious organisation in which our fatherstoo much contemned now-saw the influence of Antichrist, or the Scarlet Woman of the Seven Hills. They were right in the main.

I grieve for you as for a lost soul, and I speak the truth, painful though it is, when I say that I would sooner have heard of your death than of your perversion. For then I should have mourned for your bodily death, in hope of a glorious resurrection; but now I mourn for your spiritual death, and I know not whether from that there can be any resurrection, save to an eternal pain and remorse. My one consolation is that I know that with God all things are possible, and that you may yet by a marvellous dispensation see the error of your ways, abjure that strange and wicked country, and, like the prodigal son, return to the house of your merciful and forgiving Father. With this hope, I remain, your friend and former tutor,

WILLIAM COWPER.

Bertram then read a little letter from a nun in a London convent, with whom very many

years earlier his mother had been acquainted, and whom for her sake he had occasionally visited: :

CONVENT OF THE ASSUMPTION,

DEAR MR. BEVOR,

HICKMAN SQUARE, N.W.

Would you forgive me if I venture, as an old friend of your beloved mother, to say how greatly I rejoice in hearing of your reconciliation with the Holy Catholic Church. I have for many years prayed for this to our Lady and to St. Joseph, and especially before the Altar of the Sacred Heart in our chapel. I am sure that you will now find a wonderful peace and happiness of mind in belonging to the Church in which one knows for certain what to do and what to believe. I often feel so sorry for those who are still outside, and who wander about in such dreadful darkness and confusion. I am growing old, and often feel very tired of my life in the convent, and pray our Lord that He will not keep me too long in this life; yet I always feel most grateful for all the mercies which I have received,

and, above all, that I was from my birth a Catholic.

How I wish that your dear mother, who was so kind and good, might, while she still lived, have been guided into the Church, for in soul and heart she belonged to us, and does now, I am sure, rejoice in Paradise in knowing that her son has found the way of peace and safety. -Ever, dear Mr. Bevor, most sincerely yours, SISTER THERESA.

Bertram Bevor then read a letter from an old Eton and Oxford friend, a man of society and clubland, a sportsman, traveller, an habitué at times of Africa or the borders of Thibet, or the Rocky Mountains, at others of Piccadilly, the Boulevards, or the Riviera. The letter ran

thus:

:

QUEEN STREET, MAYFAIR, W.,

DEAR OLD FELLOW,

28th April.

So you have become a Catholic. I never knew that you were inclined that way; but these sort of inclinations often