mercies! Woe to them in their lifetime! Cursed are they in the delight
and pleasure of their hearts! Woe to them in their death-hour, whether
it come swiftly with blood and violence or after long and lingering
pain! Woe in the dark house, in the rottenness of the grave, when the
children's children shall revile the ashes of the fathers! Woe, woe,
woe, at the judgment, when all the persecuted and all the slain in
this bloody land, and the father, the mother and the child, shall
await them in a day that they cannot escape! Seed of the faith, seed
of the faith, ye whose hearts are moving with a power that ye know
not, arise, wash your hands of this innocent blood! Lift your voices,
chosen ones, cry aloud, and call down a woe and a judgment with me!"

Having thus given vent to the flood of malignity which she mistook for
inspiration, the speaker was silent. Her voice was succeeded by the
hysteric shrieks of several women, but the feelings of the audience
generally had not been drawn onward in the current with her own. They
remained stupefied, stranded, as it were, in the midst of a torrent
which deafened them by its roaring, but might not move them by its
violence. The clergyman, who could not hitherto have ejected the
usurper of his pulpit otherwise than by bodily force, now addressed
her in the tone of just indignation and legitimate authority.

"Get you down, woman, from the holy place which you profane," he said,
"Is it to the Lord's house that you come to pour forth the foulness of
your heart and the inspiration of the devil? Get you down, and
remember that the sentence of death is on you--yea, and shall be
executed, were it but for this day's work."

"I go, friend, I go, for the voice hath had its utterance," replied
she, in a depressed, and even mild, tone. "I have done my mission unto