interest now led to serious alarm. At last he told his wife, who, so far from sympathising with his doubts and fears, only remonstrated with her husband for reading a heretical book, and for venting heretical opinions, and straightway told the parish priest, who came to the house with the view of taking possession of the Bible. The husband, however, had hidden his treasure, and the priest was disappointed. Soon afterwards the wife contrived to get possession of the Bible, and for a time her husband was deprived of it; but he subsequently recovered it, and ultimately succeeded in convincing his wife that the Bible was no heretical book,—that it was the only source from which the Roman Church professed to derive its authority. From reading the Bible, this stone-carver took to reading the sermons of John Huss and of other Protestant divines, and succeeded in obtaining some knowledge of Protestant doctrines.
Meanwhile the effect of the change which was being carried out in him began to be seen in his life and conversation. Such a love and admiration had he for the Bible, that he commenced to read it to his neighbours, and in this way a meeting for Bible reading was set agoing almost unconsciously. About this time he happened to meet Pastor Havelka, one of the Evangelical pastors of the Reformed Church, in a railway carriage, and entering into a conversation with him, told him of the manner of his acquaintance with the Bible, and of the Bible readings held in his house, and expressed the desire that Pastor Havelka should visit them. This the pastor did, and the result of further instruction from him was the renunciation by several of the people of Horitz of Roman Catholic superstitions, their admission into the Reformed Church, and the formation of a Protestant preaching station in the town. The leaven thus hid in the midst of a Roman Catholic population has since gone on spreading and increasing, and the station is now one of the most hopeful of those under the charge of the Continental Society of London.
The difficulties with which the Reformed Church has had to contend have not been entirely from without. Twenty years ago Rationalism had a firm hold within her own ministry, but for several years the
