I went to religious services in our little district school-house, up among the green hills of Central New York.

The officiating clergyman was not one of the high-cultured pulpit orators of the day; he indulged in no grand flights of eloquence nor fine figures of rhetoric-his sentences may not all have been grammatical; but he knew the "Old, Old Story!" He had sat at the feet of Jesus, and had learned of him! And as he earnestly portrayed Christ's personality, divine mission, and present attitude, standing at the right hand of God, making intercession for us as our mediator, advocate, and Great High Priest, and that through him must our petitions to the Father be made, -as he pictured this, a new conception of Christ's character and office dawned on me; and on reaching home I at once retired to my room, and on bended knee fervently prayed God, for Christ's sake, to forgive my sins.

And then the glad light came-right then and there, just as the Savior told Nicodemus that it would come-"As the wind bloweth

where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth, so is every one, that is born of the Spirit." And in this age of free thought, liberal Christianity, and trying to get to Heaven by climbing up some other way, I wish to place myself on record as saying that Christian conversion, as defined in the New Testament, is a glorious reality, and if you would gain the high and beautiful Heaven, do not rest till you have experienced it, whether in the church, or out!

As I arose from prayer on that eventful Sabbath day, I knew just as well that I was forgiven, and had passed from darkness to light, as the glad prisoner knows that he is free, when with the Governor's pardon in his hand, he steps forth from his gloomy cell into God's free air and sunlight; but being of a somewhat retiring and bashful temperament, I reasoned to myself,--Now I have this "Pearl of great price," I can hide it in my bosom, and the world and my young associates need not know what God has done for me. You see the work was not quite