church or people which would save her, but that she must be converted
through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and that the fruits of
believing in Him as a personal Saviour would be power to love and
serve God with a holy heart. That was excellent, but it had not been
so explained to the child that she could understand the process either
of "faith" or of "conversion." The result was perplexity.

Not a few children in bygone days have had to suffer long Sunday
afternoon agonies over the harrowing pictures of Foxe's "Book of
Martyrs," this being then considered a profitable and bracing Sabbatic
"exercise" for hundreds of sensitive little ones whose dreams were
haunted, and whose waking hours in the dark were rendered terrific by
vivid imaginings of racked, tortured, and burning saints. Mary was one
of these. Yet so troubled was her little heart over the ungrasped
subject of faith that one day, while gazing upon these fearful
pictures, she exclaimed to herself, "Oh! oh! I do think it would be
easier to _burn_ than to _believe!_"

Mary seems to have been busy with these thoughts for nearly two years.
She had not passed her eighth birthday when we find her sitting by
herself for "a good think," and wondering "_What_ can it mean to
have faith in Jesus?"

Vexed with the mystery of the subject, her childish soul rose in
rebellion against God for having chosen so hard a way into salvation,
and she exclaimed aloud--

"Oh, if I had to die a martyr, I could do it; or give away all I have,
I could do that; or when I grow up to have to be a servant, that
would be easy; but I shall never, never, _never_ know how to