No meat on Friday.

His first step.

inquire into this matter. I saw good papists eating eggs, and fish, and getting drunk on these days, but this was no violation of the law of the Church! Yet, if these persons should eat meat of any kind, or use gravy in any way, their consciences were troubled, and they must perform penance! This led me to ask, Is this reasonable? If I may eat meat on Thursday, why not on Friday? Can God, in things of this kind, make that to be a sin on one day which is not on another? I saw, also, persons for whose moral worth I had the highest regard eating meats on those days, and without any injury, and I came to the conclusion that the regulations upon this matter were unreasonable, and rejected them. And, as far as I now remember, this was my first step toward light and freedom.

"Devoted to reading at this period of my life, I perused, without discrimination, every thing that came in my way. Some book or tract, now forgotten, gave rise to some inquiries as to the Mass. I asked, What does it mean? I could not tell, though for years a regular attendant upon it. Why does the priest dress so? What book does he read from when carried now to his right and now to his left? What mean those candles burning at noonday? Why do I say prayers in Latin which I understand not? Should I not know what I am saying when addressing my Maker? Why bow down, and strike my breast, when the little bell rings? What does it all mean? The darkness of Egypt rested upon these questions. I thus reasoned with myself: God is a spiritual and intelligent being,

The Mass abandoned.

Conviction.

What wor

and He requires an intelligent worship. ship I render Him in the Mass I know not. My intelligent worship only is acceptable to Him, and is beneficial to me. I am a rational being, and I degrade my nature and insult my Maker by offering to Him a worship in which neither my reason nor His intelligence is consulted. Having come to this conclusion, I gave up the Mass as a superstitious form, well enough fitted for an idol, but unfitted to be rendered by a rational being to the infinitely intelligent Jehovah. I have never been to Mass since, save out of curiosity to see how an ignorant people can be edified by what seems to me the most unmeaning and farcical of all the rites that ever man has devised.

"When I came to this conclusion on the subject of the Mass, I experienced no great difficulty as to other matters which passed rapidly in review before me. Must I go to confession? My prejudices said Yes; my reason said No; and my logic was simply as follows: If I truly repent of my sins, God will forgive me; if I do not, the priest can not absolve me; and I spurned as unreasonable, and as an insult to my common sense, the terrible doctrine that 'every Christian is bound, under pain of damnation, to confess to a priest all his mortal sins, which, after diligent examination, he can possibly remember; yea, even his most secret sins-his very thoughts; yea, and all the circumstances of them which are of any moment.'

"With yet greater abhorrence I gave up the doctrine of transubstantiation. As explained by Dr. Challoner in his Catholic Christian Instructed,' it means

Transubstantiation.

Absurdity.

'that the bread and wine are changed by the consecration into the body and blood of Christ; and are so changed that Christ himself, true God and true man, is truly, really, and substantially present in the sacrament.' With this doctrine in view, I went to witness the administration of the Eucharist. I went to St. Peter's, in Barclay Street. The communicants drew around the altar upon their knees. With a little box in his hand, the priest passed from one to the other, taking a wafer, smaller than that used in sealing a letter, from the box, and placing it upon the extended tongue of the communicant. I was always taught that the teeth must not touch the wafer-that it must melt upon the tongue. This I find to be the law of the Church. I witnessed the ceremony, as I had often done before. I retired from the scene asking these questions: Is that little wafer the real body and blood of Christ? Does the priest, in that little box, not as large as a snuff-box, carry two or three hundred real bodies of Christ? Do these communicants, each in their turn, eat the real body and blood of Christ? I can not express the violence with which my mind rejected the absurdity. Look at it in what light you may, it is abhorrent to our common reason: it gives the lie to every sense with which God has endowed us. It is a wicked imposition. It is an impious priestly hoax, which, if practiced by a juggler, would subject him to the penalties of the law against blasphemy.

"Having gone through this process, not with a light and trifling, but with a serious mind, my prejudices rising in stormy rebellion against my convictions, I

The delusion gone.

Nothing left.

raised my eyes, and behold, my religion was gone! The priest was a juggler, and his religion a fable! Every thing that I had ever learned from parent and priest to esteem as religion was now rejected as false; and not knowing but that this was all of religion that was in the world, I had no alternative but infidelity. I had no test of truth but my reason, and when I brought the Roman Catholic system to that, I was compelled to reject it, not only as false, but as a monstrous absurdity, and with it all religion."

Rev. Dr. Mason.

A probationer.

CHAPTER II.

Hears Rev. Dr. Mason.-Conversion. - Joins the Brick Presbyterian Church. His first Prayer in Public.-Letter from Rev. Mr. Steele.-Meets Rev. Dr. Proudfit.-Letter from him.-Encouraged to study for the Ministry.-Goes to Amherst Academy.— Writes to Rev. Dr. Griffin.-Letter from him.

IN the perplexity and darkness which beset him when compelled to abandon the miserable religion he brought with him from Ireland, Mr. Murray was kindly and rapidly guided into the way of light and truth. During the months of his conflict, and while he was actually persuading himself that the conflict was over, and all religions were alike impostures unworthy of his belief, he was led one day to hear a sermon by the Rev. Dr. John M. Mason, and another and another. One from that distinguished preacher on the First Epistle of Peter shattered his poor fabric of infidelity into fragments. He awoke to the consciousness of his condition as a sinner in need of salvation. The way of life by Christ Jesus was opened to him by the Spirit. He was received as a member on probation in the Methodist Church, and so remained for a year

or more.

About this time he was thrown into association with some of the young men who belonged to the Brick Presbyterian Church, of which the Rev. Dr. Spring was pastor. He had sought religious counsel