Morning Star

ROMANISM IN THE 19th CENTURY.

Some ten years ago a poor widow died in Hanover, York county, Pa., leaving a daughter who was bound out to a Roman Catholic lady. The orphan girl was distressed one night with that morbid oppression usually termed the nightmare. The next day she related to the lady with whom she was in service, how she had been afflicted with a sense of pressure on her breast; the lady a zealous Romanist, persuaded the poor girl that her deceased mother was in purgatory and could not be rescued without the prayers of the priest, and that her distress during the night was a visitation from God for not having employed the priest to intercede for her deliverance. The deluded girl hastened to the priest, who with uplifted arms and great solemnity confirmed all that her mistress had told her, and covenanted with the girl to pray her mother out of purgatory for a stipulated amount. The girl, anxious for the relief of her suffering mother, saved all that she possibly could from her very limited earnings (which were scarcely sufficient to clothe her) and carried it from year to year to this reverend papist, and paid it over at the rate of 50 cents for each prayer. The poor creature often complained of her extreme indigence, and on one occasion, that she had actually denied herself of the necessary comfort of wearing shoes in order to meet the demands of the man of God. "No matter for that," replied he, "it were better you went bare-footed all your life time, than that your wicked mother should remain in the flames of purgatory." The poor girl thought so too, and accordingly continued to deposit all her scanty but hard-earned savings on the rapacious priest, until the sum amounted to upwards of ten dollars! A short time since she removed to this city, where she attended a Methodist meeting, was brought under conviction and hopefully converted. She has since joined the Methodist church, and now with shame and regret relates the foregoing facts.

This is not a fiction but the sober truth, if the evidence of a worthy female & a zealous Christian can be relied upon. We have the name and certificate of the girl attested by respectable witnesses, and also the name of the priest in our possession, and whoever will may come and examine. Comment we deem unnecessary; read, ponder, and judge! Luth Obs.