these remarks, by presenting outlines of some that were deemed the best which were delivered during this meeting.

Mr. M- took for his text, "Take ye away the stone." It is found in the account of the raising of Lazarus. The preacher alluded but little to the history; but proceeded to assume as the spiritual teaching of the text, (1) That the unconverted are morally dead and buried, and as incapable of any thing good as is a literally deceased person of exerting his physical powers. (2) That there are certain obstacles in God's way, which prevent his calling these dead sinners to life: these are the stone upon the mouth of the sepulchre, which christians are called upon to remove. (3) It was sagaciously hinted, that if the friends of Lazarus had refused to take away the stone, in the case under notice, that Christ could not have called him to life; and, from analogy, it was supposed, that if when God proposes to work by his spirit for the renovation of dead sinners, the saints refuse to co-operate, and prepare his way, the work of Jehovah cannot go on. Such was the sum of Mr. ―'s discourse, and the burthen of the several prayers put up at the close, was, "Oh Lord! poor sinners are dead and in their graves around us-thou awaitest to awake them to spiritual lifebut requirest in this solemn business the co-operation of thy pecple. Oh, help us then to take away the stone, that they may not remain dead to all eternity through our neglect."

M

Mr. B preached from the words, "Their feet shall slide in due time," from which he assumed, (1) That God has a set time from eternity for all the work he performs, (inclusive of the saving or damning of sinners,) and, therefore, (2) It must not be presumed from the fact that sinners, long in rebellion, are yet out of hell, that God's mercy will always endure toward them, for "their feet shall slide in due time." (3) "It might be," the preacher remarked, "that God had appointed the close of that very meeting as the time when the feet of many of the congregation, still remaining hardened, should slide into unending burnings. They were therefore solemnly admonished to submit without delay, and avert this dreadful doom." Avert a doom appointed from eternity!

Mr. A chose the following words: "For ye know that afterward, when he would have received the blessing, he was rejected, and found no place for repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears." There is allusion here to the history of Jacob and

Esau. The latter, when it was too late, indulged in unavailing regrets at having sold his birth-right, and implored his father, in the most moving manner, to bless him in such terms of benediction as he could, consistently with what he had already invoked upon the head of his brother Jacob; the poor old father was much moved for his unfortunate son, and most fervently complied with his desire. The preacher, however, disregarded all the analogies in the case, and assumed from his text, (1) That each sinner has a certain term of time allotted him, within which he may secure the salvation of his soul. (2) If he fail to improve this space, no future opportunities for this great business will be afforded him; "the divine wrath will kindle, and blaze against him to all eternity he will cry out from the depths of his wretchedness in hell, in order to move God to compassion, but all in vain-he will find no place for repentance in the divine mind-(there was in Isaac's, however!)-no pity-no relentance there: the forked lightnings of Almighty anger shall scath and blast the sinner with every stroke." Had it been the preacher's object to depict his Maker's character in the most repulsive colors, he could not have succeeded in that business better than he did. The mind instinctively recoiled with loathing from the contemplation of a being, clothed with almighty power, and exerting it for the infliction of the most horrid torments upon impotent worms.

Mr. S, who preached the next sermon in course, evidently thought that the chords of horror had been so often and so violently struck during the meeting, that they had nearly lost their power to vibrate; he therefore touched an opposite note. He read for his text," Is there no balm in Gilead?" His prayer also, and the hymns he selected, were in the same strain. He began with

"Sinners, will you scorn the message,

Sent in mercy from above?

Every sentence, oh, how tender!

Every line is full of love.

Listen to it

Every line is full of love."

"Is it so ?" mentally inquired our heroine, whose orthodoxy by this time, (truth must be told,) had begun to stagger under the load of nauseous and contradictory stuff to which, for several days in succession, she had been listening. "Is it then the fact, that

every line in the message from heaven to man, is full of love? Then, indeed, have I not heard one line of this message since this meeting began, until this moment! for all here has been wrath— vengeance-damnation-horror-malediction! What am I to think

of all this ?"

Last of all, arose Mr. F.

the great, the notorious Mr. F————, who was kept to the last as a sort of force in reserve, that when the congregation had become fatigued in body and mind—their spirits jaded-their nervous systems morbidly excitable-he might then strike a decisive blow, and secure an easy victory. Mr. Frolled his large eyes over the audience for some time in silence, affecting to peruse every countenance, in order, it would seem, that he might estimate the degree of resistance that still remained to be overcome. At length, assuming a stern aspect, and modulating his voice to a tone of hoarse and triumphant bitterness, he announced his text from Proverbs-" The scorner shall scorn alone." My pen, thou art a feeble thing; I will not trust thee in the attempt to describe the harangue that followed-the task surpasses thy powers. I can only say, that from beginning to ending, it was as disgusting and horrid a melange as the alphabet of the English, or any other tongue, was ever combined to form. His soul revelled in the infernal pictures which his fancy drew he completely personated the deity of his own descrip tions; his countenance, voice, attitudes, all evinced, that, for the time, he imagined himself the almighty avenger of human crime : and with what eagerness did his ears drink in the groans and shrieks of suffering spirits, from his ideal abyss of wrath! "Ye shall scorn alone!" he tauntingly responded again and again, as he imitated these cries with his own hoarse tones, and fancied them realities. "Water! water! for my burning tongue!!" "Ah! ye wretched sinners! where now are your insulting scoffs at God's people? You are each too much occupied with your individual agonies, I trow, to unite longer in this business; and now to all eternity you must scorn alone!" "

Such was the closing exercise of this twelve-days' meetingsuch the sermon that had wrought so powerfully upon poor Bridget Bounce, which was "something about getting religion," she believed, and the text for which was found, she expected, “ somewhere in the book of Paul !"

CHAPTER V.

How much of happiness, hope, intellect, has been wrecked beyond repair, and how much of family and social discord has been engendered, by extravagant and fanatical proceedings, bearing the name of religious worship, the omniscient God alone is capable of determining: a few local details only fall within the range of mortal ken. I have not taken it upon me to ascertain the result of the operations on THE POINT-I know, however, that a lad of very bright promise, in his 16th year, a clerk and chief agent in the employ of an eminent member of the bench in that county, was converted by their means into a maniac for life. I also know that the meeting utterly failed of effecting the object for which it was gotten up; that on the contrary, it even had a reaction against it, as might have been foreseen by the agents in the business, had not the adage, "whom the god's purpose to destroy, they first make mad," had some kind of verification in their case.

The public there had been advertised that a traveling advocate of the universal love of heaven would preach in their academy on the evening of the day which was to close the long meeting. The famous Mr. F. adverted to this fact in his sermon in the morning, with ineffable contempt; he cautioned his people at the peril of their souls against hearing the stranger, and ended his notice of him by very charitably assigning him a final doom amongst those who "shall scorn alone." This very allusion to the stranger, induced one of his hearers, a transient sojourner on THE POINT, to resolve, for the first time in his life, on hearing this new doctrine for himself; not, however, with the remotest intention of believing a word of it but in this he was greatly and agreeably disappointed, for at the close of the sermon, which was nowise remarkable for talent, either in the composition or delivery, but was somewhat so for an unaffected simplicity of arrangement and diction, he arose before all present and avowed himself a convert to its doctrine, declaring that he had never before heard preaching which so came home to his understanding, and carried conviction to his judgment, as did that.

Poor Waters! he soon experienced that he had pushed out his

skiff on a troubled sea. Supposing that all might be convinced by the evidence which had satisfied his own mind, he began zealously to advocate his new faith. Ha, ha! he found very few disposed to even hear him! not even to hear him quote from the bible! and of those too whom he had often heard confess themselves as "poor, erring mortals," and with much affected humiliation, pray that God would "lead the blind by a way that they knew not," and "set their feet in the paths of truth." His own brother, a deacon of the church, to visit whom he had traveled some hundreds of miles, actually denied him the hospitalities of his house, for the sin of having thereis given utterance to his newly acquired views, and he was therefore fain to take up his lodgings at one of the public inns of the place! Even such is but too frequently the triumph, which the dark spirit of human creeds achieves in the hearts of men, over the heaven-born spirit of charity.

We mortals, and those of us too who term ourselves christians, are very modest and unpretending beings, very ; we bow ourselves humbly down before the throne of heaven, owning that we are blind and impotent, and most devoutly imploring superior guidance; when, should the Being we supplicate vouchsafe an answer to our petitions, we would spurn his instructions with scorn if they accorded not with our preconceived opinions.

A few days after our heroine had resumed her school in Univer salia, a note was brought her, by a little girl, a daughter of one of the few families in the place who held a different religious faith from that which generally prevailed there. The note set forth, that, as the universalists were to hold an association in the church, on the Wednesday and Thursday evening, and as it was understood that Miss Alice purposed attending the religious services on the occasion, this was to apprise her that the writer, as one of her employers, would not consent that the school should be suspended for those two days. * "For the yuniversalers," (so ran the scrawl,) "havn't no religion in no shape nor fashon no how, and shudent ought to be kowntenansed by the peepal of God, i was willin yu shud tend the meetin on the PINT, all tho im no more a kalwinite than nothin at all, but the kalwins beleev in bein born agin, which i doo too, and i kan kownte Nanse them, bekase they may be will see like us sum day. So no more at present. DOLLY TROWLER,”

*