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Dear old soul! my heart went out to her in tender compassion, for the journey of life was nearly ended, and she was only waiting for the summons from the other side. After a while, our conversation became very serious, and I was led to set the only way of salvation before her so plainly that she would be without excuse if she never heard more. She repeatedly wiped the tears from her faded eyes, and at last said, with apparent feeling: "I will confess to you just as I would to my priest. I have such a wicked heart; what can I do with it?" "Take it to Jesus; He came for sinners, not the righteous. Go to Him just as you are, and let Him save you. 'Repent, and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved,' is God's own word, not mine." While we were conversing, the daughter sat by, listening with a countenance which betokened deep interest and sympathy. When I arose to leave, she came to me and expressed much gratitude, saying, "The Lord sent you to speak to her." The old lady followed me downstairs, and even out into the street, thanking me again and again for my words. Their house was in the Armenian quarter, and Soorpohi, the daughter, promised to gather the children for an hour of instruction in the Bible every Sunday.

Nicomedia was twice overturned by earthquakes, in the second and fourth centuries. Perhaps the sun never shone upon more horrible persecutions than were enacted within its walls during the reign of Diocletian-the " era of martyrs." The ruthless Emperor used every device which fiendish ingenuity could suggest, to "crush out" Christianity. "Houses filled with Christians were set on fire, and droves of them were bound together with ropes and cast into the sea." For ten long years the unrelenting perse

cutor, like a thirsty bloodhound, hunted down his helpless victims. The climax was reached when, on a Christmas morning, he caused a church filled with worshipping Christians, to be securely fastened, closing every avenue of escape, and then set fire to the building, and consumed them all in one horrible holocaust! A few years later, and Nicomedia was demolished, and its inhabitants buried in its ruins, by a fearful earthquake, as if earth shuddered at the cruel deeds, and sought to bury within her bosom the terrible record. And, till the sea shall give up its dead, what fearful secrets are hidden in its depths! Under the Emperor Valens, eighty Christian fathers were put into a ship, which was set on fire, and then driven out to sea, at Nicomedia, A.D. 370. Modern excavations have brought to light many vestiges of past ages in that fated city, reminding one of the prayer of Job: "Oh, earth! cover thou not my blood!

Passing through the city one day, and slowly descending its steep and stony streets,-presenting the general aspect of all Eastern towns,-relieved on the outskirts by ancient burialplaces, with the sombre cypress standing sentinel over mossgrown graves, and turbaned tombstones, mantled with ivy; and, now and then, an old, fantastic, pagoda-like fountain, overshadowed by lofty trees, whose mossy trunks spoke of bygone centuries-we came down to the borders of the great plain where Diocletian celebrated the imposing ceremony of abdication, the 1st of May, A. D. 305. Wandering about among those ancient relics, trying to decipher partially restored inscriptions upon aged tombs, eulogizing the virtues of some "Octavia," or "Flavius," we stumbled upon great heaps of human skulls, thrown out from the foundations of a new Greek church, built entirely of stone and marble

exhumed from the old Roman ruins a striking emblem of

the new Church of the living God, founded upon the ruins of the old, effete church in the East, whose light, if kept pure, can never go out!

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