THE INFIDEL RECLAIMED.

CHAPTER I.

It was a lovely evening, in the month of May; the sun had just sunk beneath the western hills; a softened stream of golden luxuriant light was thrown all over the landscape; and the air, loaded with the fragrancy of unnumbered blossoms, which flung their scents upon the gale, afforded a season for calm and serious meditation.

It was just such an evening when Mrs. Nelson was seated by her parlour window, her elbow placed on her work-table, and her head supported by her hand, her attention completely absorbed by the perusal of a religious tract which lately had been given to her; when, suddenly, the door of the parlour opened, and her husband, Mr. Nelson, stood before her. As she lifted her eyes from the book at the sound of her husband's voice, she saw that anger was strongly depicted upon his countenance.

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Why, in the name of reason," said Mr. Nelson, indignantly, "do you spend your time in reading those nonsensical pedler's books? Are there not good books enough in the house without reading such trash? I insist that you lay aside such engagements for the future."

Mrs. Nelson, unwilling to offend or irritate him, and fearing to enter into any contest with him on the subject of religion; immediately, with calmness, closed the book; laid it aside with a look of kindness and affectionate submission, which softened, for the time, his wrath, though it did not conquer his malignity.

Having again reprobated the perusal of such books, and, with an authoritative air, forbidden his wife again to offend in this manner, Mr. Nelson left the room.

Mrs. Nelson, it should be observed, was one of the very mildest and gentlest of her sex, whose form and temper were cast in nature's fairest mould. She had in early life become the wife of a respectable attorney; she was surrounded with all the comforts, and even the luxuries of life. Her house was large, her furniture was sumptuous, her means were ample; and by many her lot was deemed happy and enviable.

Mr. Nelson, however, was a man of haughty and overbearing temper, extremely irritable; who not only lived "without God and without hope" himself, but who would have had all others to resemble him. He publicly avowed his infidelity; and not only expressed the strongest contempt for the religion of Jesus, but entertained for all pious persons the utmost dislike, embracing every opportunity to treat them with unkindness, and to pour upon them the bitterness of his ridicule and scorn.

As this disposition gradually augmented after their marriage, it was a sore trouble to Mrs. Nelson, who, though not truly pious, could not endure to hear religion so fearfully set at naught, and whose spirit was often bowed with anguish at the harsh treatment she sometimes experienced from the husband she so tenderly loved; so that she was fain to retire and weep. Amidst all her splendour, she often deemed herself one of the most unhappy of her sex.

She had now been married something more than fifteen years; and though she meekly bore with the unkindness of her husband, and secretly mourned over his infidel principles, yet she found his harshness of temper increasing constantly, instead of diminishing. Indeed,

latterly, since she had read one or two of the religious tracts which had been given to her, she thought his enmity against religion to have acquired a greater inveteracy, and the gusts of his passion towards her to have become more sudden and violent; but the tracts had interested her a new world had begun to unfold itself before her mind—and as these little books were small, they could easily be kept out of his view; and as they were short, she could read them in secrecy and retirement.

It may, perhaps, not be uninteresting to the reader to be informed of the manner in which she first became possessed of these little works, which so deeply interested her, and which ultimately proved to her to be so signally beneficial.

In a neighbouring town there resided an individual, whose circumstances in life were comparatively easy, but who was afflicted with one of the sorest calamities to which mankind are sometimes subject, having been born blind; so that with him, in the language of the poet, knowledge was at one entrance quite shut out;" but it pleased God, in whose providence we often see the doctrine of compensation obtaining, to make up to him the loss of natural

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vision, by bestowing upon him the faculty of spiritual perception. "God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, had shone into his heart to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus." This excellent man, blessed with the sight of those things, which but to the eye of faith are invisible, felt a deep commiseration for those whom he knew to be in a state of spiritual blindness; and as he was engaged in journeying often for purposes of health and enjoyment from place to place, he always provided himself with religious tracts, which he every where distributed in his excursions, in the hope of thus effecting some good. And truly interesting was it to beholders, to witness a blind man giving to others, and soliciting their attention to good books, which he himself could not read, but which he knew how to value; and affecting it was to the receivers to listen to his kind and friendly admonitions, who exhorted them to improve the faculty which they owned, but of which he was deprived, in perusing these tracts, that they might be partakers of divine illumination, and thus become "wise unto salvation."

Now it happened that in his journey, this blind individual was introduced to a female