In every case of persecution, whether in science or religion, the causes are to be sought in something peculiar in the views advanced, as bearing on received opinions and on the state of the world; but there are general principles involved, which demand only a slight modification to enable us to understand why Christianity has been, from the beginning, compelled to make its way through scenes of suffering.117
On arriving in Lynn, Mrs. Glover was presented by her loyal students with a huge, handsome, family-style Bible “as a token of their appreciation of her valuable services to them, and as a fitting emblem of her moral worth and goodness.”118 This was accompanied by Cruden’s Complete Concordance to the Holy Scriptures, an invaluable adjunct to her study.
At this time also she was giving increasing thought to the apostolic age, especially to the work of Paul. In her copy of The Early Years of Christianity by Pressensé, she marked a passage which evidently spoke to her heart:
Every great truth which is to win a triumphant way must become incarnate in some one man, and derive from a living, fervent heart that passion and power which constrain and subdue. So long as it remains in the cold region of mere ideas it exercises no mighty influence over mankind. . . . This man was St. Paul, and never had noble truth a nobler organ.119
The germ of Paul’s conversion and transformation, wrote Pressensé, lay in his “moral nature,” and the exponent of Moral Science marked that with interest, as she also did a later statement: “He then . . . received his calling . . . but he had not then any conception of its greatness or of ● ● ●
117 Albert Barnes, Scenes and Incidents in the Life of the Apostle Paul Viewed as Illustrating the Nature and Influence of the Christian Religion (Philadelphia: Zeigler, McCurdy, 1869), pp. 32–33, B00122, MBEL.
118 [See inscription in The Holy Bible Containing the Old and New Testaments (Philadelphia: John E. Potter, n.d.), B00001, MBEL.]
119 [E. de Pressensé, The Early Years of Christianity, vol. 1, The Apostolic Era, trans. Annie Harwood (New York: Carlton and Lanahan, 1870), pp. 95, B00165, MBEL.]