A GENTLEMAN of New York, who personally knew Thomas Paine, and was repeatedly in his company during the last years of his life, gave the following account of a conversation with him respecting the Bible :— "One evening I found Paine haranguing a company of his disciples, on the great mischief done to mankind by the introduction of the Bible and Christianity. When he paused, I said : ‘Mr. Paine, you have been in Scotland; you know there is not a more rigid set of people in the world than they are in their attachment to the Bible; it is their school-book; their churches are full of Bibles. When a young man leaves his father’s house, his mother always, in packing his chest, puts a Bible on the top of his clothes.’ "I continued : ‘You have been in Spain, where the people are destitute of the Bible, and there you can hire a man for a dollar to murder his neighbor, who never gave him any offense.’" "‘You have seen the manufacturing districts of England, where not one man in fifty can read, and you have been in Ireland, where the majority never saw the Bible. Now you know it is an historical fact that in one county in England or Ireland there are many more capital convictions in six months than there are in the whole population of Scotland in twelve. Besides, this day there is not one Scotchman in the almshouse, State prison, bridewell or penitentiary of New York.’" "Now, then, if the Bible were so bad a book as you represent it to be, those who use it would be the worst members of society; but the contrary is the fact; for our prisons, almshouses and penitentiaries are filled with men and women whose ignorance and unbelief prevent them from reading the Bible." "It was now near ten o’clock at night. Paine answered not a word, but, taking a candle from the table, walked up stairs, leaving his friends and myself staring at one another." This was the best he could do with that argument.—Sel.