She shines, a star in the midnight sky, giving comfort to the sorrowing heart; she, who has languished in grief, pours balm into the wounded souls of the desolate and bereaved, and gives health and refreshment to the suffering.

When nature pines in winter cold or in summer drought and lacks power to revive, when the sun is darkened, when lies and evil instincts alienate the soul from its pure first cause, then Isis uplifts her complaint, calling on her husband, Osiris, to return, to take her once more in his arms and fill her with new powers, to show the benevolence of God once more to the earth and to us men.

You have learnt that lament; and when you sing it at her festival, picture yourself 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.