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. He, the Risen One, gives new light,
and life, and blossom, and verdure to all that is darkened, dead and
withered. All that seems to have fallen a prey to death is, by him,
restored to a more beautiful existence; he, who has risen again, can
bring even the departed soul to a resurrection; and when during this life
its high aims have kept it unspotted by the dust of the sensual life, and
he, as the judge, sees that it has preserved itself worthy of its pure
First Cause, he allows it to return to the eternal and supreme Spirit
whence it originally proceeded.

"And do not you, too, strive after purification, to the end that your
soul may find an everlasting home in the radiant realms? Again and again
do we meet with the same ideas, only they bear different forms and