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Soon after, Mrs. McFarland came to my room, with a tumbler of her jelly, the second red sacrifice she had presented me, for an atonement for her husband's sins! and gave me a pleasant visit besides. I read to her my "Dedication," and she very sensibly remarked:

"It is so very strange and mysterious why your friends should have all deserted you so. I cannot understand it -- how friends can treat their friends in this manner. They put them in here, and then seem to desert them, as if they were not worth caring for afterwards. I am sure I could not desert my friends in this manner."

"No, Mrs. McFarland, I don't think you could, for you are too true to your womanly nature to do such an unnatural act. But Mrs. McFarland, this is a perverted age. Christianity is almost totally eclipsed by Calvinism. The sun, moon and stars are all under this eclipse. Men, women and children are all more or less perverted by it. This is the culminating age of Calvinism. Its deadly principles must be exposed and abandoned, before Christianity can exert its benign and legitimate influence over the character and destiny of the present age. Mrs. McFarland, we are now passing through the very nadir of the eclipse. It is not midnight. It is a noon-day eclipse of the world's luminary, and when this awful shadow shall have once passed across its disk, it is forever descending to its no distant tomb; while Christianity, dismantled of its false habiliments will shine out with meridian splendor, and the natural and spiritual reign of Christ will have fully commenced. Until then, we must grope our way in darkness, not knowing at what we stumble."

Mrs. McFarland is a very kind woman; none could fill her place as our matron, better than she does. She has repeatedly remarked to me:

"We should be glad to cure you all of your diseases, if we could."

But, alas! mine is one of their "hopeless cases!" My Christianity is incurable! And all the treatment of this American inquisition cannot induce me to abandon it for Calvinism.

I told her how her husband was going to let me have my book all my own way, and how he would be rewarded if "he endures to the end" in his well begun course -- that of allowing an American woman her right of opinion during this great eclipse. For he, like all others, must stand on his own actions, and if they exalt and promote him, no influence can dethrone him. And he has as good a right to plume his cap with his own, well-earned feathers, as Mrs. Packard has her bonnet; for the fortitude of Honesty in enduring his chastisement so martyr-like, is as truly his rightful claim as the innocent fearlessness of Truth in inflicting the chastisement is Mrs. Packard's rightful claim.

It is my private opinion, that Dr. McFarland's conscience dictated to him the fate which he assigned to the "old man of sin," that "Nathan's" wife had exerted her share of influence in convincing this modern king, that the pet book of the pauper ought not to be sacrificed to the cupidity of the rich man.

It is also my fondly cherished opinion, that the good Dr. McFarland will never let the "bad man" crowd his ewe lamb again; since he has found, that a lamb can even crowd a lion, if self-defense demands the pressure of truth upon the lion's conscience, to quicken it into healthful action!

He may, too, be compelled to admit the truth, however unwelcome, of Mrs. Timmons' compliment, viz:

"That two hard heads meet when Mrs. Packard and Dr. McFarland meet," on the arena of discussion; and it is by no means certain which head would be the most exposed by a collision!

I have volunteered both my manuscripts and myself to Dr. McFarland as a burnt offering, on condition that he can detect a single lie in all my manuscripts. I shrink not on this condition, to be burnt alive, as God's appointed portion for the liar; for whether I choose it or not, I know it is God's invincible purpose, to make me stand on my own deserts: and if I am a liar, I know hell is my portion.

I make no claim to infallibility. I am finite in knowledge and intelligence, and liable to prejudices, prepossessions, and springs of error from educational influences; yet not from an imperfect organization, since God has endowed me with a good female development; and am true to my own convictions of truth and duty -- and am no "respecter of persons" in dealing with wrong, or evil, in any form.

God grant I may always be loyal to God's government, and disloyal to every other government which interferes with this; and the test of my loyalty is found in my being true to my conscience -- God's secretary within me.

My conscience is not a standard for any human being, except myself. I grant every human being an equal right to differ from me in opinion, that I have to differ from them, in relation to my views of truth and duty. God is the only dictator of my inalienable rights; and whoever dares to trespass upon them, does it at their own peril, not mine.

Dr. McFarland has no right guaranteed to him, from any intelligence in God's universe, to dictate to, or interfere with, the utterance of a single expression found in my book. And if he dares to attempt it, he dares to trespass on God's authority, not mine -- and God, not I, will be his judge of the act.