a new world, Macer, has our new faith
introduced us! I am now happier than ever I was, even with my wife and
children around me.'

'Some of our neighbors,' said Auria, 'wonder what it is that makes us so
light of heart, notwithstanding our poverty and the dangers to which we
are so often exposed. I tell them that they, who, like us, believe in
the providence of a God, who is always near us and within us, and in the
long reign with Christ as soon as death is past, have nothing to fear.
That which they esteem the greatest evil of all, is, to us, an absolute
gain. Upon this they either silently wonder, or laugh and deride.
However, many too believe.'

'Probus, we are all ready to be offered up,' the enthusiast rejoined.
'God's mercy to me is beyond all power of mine to describe, in that he
has touched and converted the hearts of every one under my roof. Now if
to this mercy he will but add one more, that we may glorify him by our
death as well as in our life, the cup of his servant will be full and
running over.'

Probus did not choose again to engage with his convert upon that theme,
knowing him to be beyond the reach of influence and control. We could
not but marvel to see to what extent he had infused his own enthusiasm
into his family. His wife indeed and elder daughters would willingly see
him calmer and less violent when abroad, but like him, being by nature
of warm temperament, they are like him Christians warm and zealous
beyond almost any whom I have seen. They are as yet also so recently
transferred from their Heathen to their Christian state, that their
sight is still dazzled, and they see not objects in their true shapes
and proportions. In their joy they seem to others, and perhaps often
are, greatly extravagant in the expression of their feelings and
opinions.

When our temperate repast was ended, Macer again prayed, and we then
separated. Our visit proved wholly ineffectual as to the purpose we had
in view, but by no means so when I consider the acquaintance which it
thus gave me with a family in the very humblest condition, who yet were
holding and equally prizing the same opinions, at which, after so much
research and labor, I had myself arrived. I perceived in this power of
Christianity to adapt itself to minds so different in their slate of
previous preparation, and in their ability to examine and sift a
question which was offered to them; in the facility and quickness with
which it seized both upo