I have before noticed the indifference which Jolin appeared to feel to outward circumstances. I have yet to observe another point connected with it, in this day’s visit, which was the brightness and almost cheerfulness of aspect that his manner and countenance gradually assumed. In the period before his condemnation, his downcast look and general air of wretchedness were not unsuited to a state of despair; but now he lifted up his head, and even his voice seemed to have changed its tone. This surprising change was observed by others. Mr. Hammond, Jolin’s advocate, told M. Durell, as he himself has recorded it, that when he saw the prisoner on the twenty-third of September, he found him “in really a distracted state, torn by every conflicting passion, and all his faculties hurried by the unutterable anguish of remorse. The dread of death was uppermost in his thoughts; and there was nothing to which he would not have submitted to avoid capital punishment: but when he saw him again on the evening of the twenty-sixth, he was astonished at the sudden change which had taken place in him: he was calm, placid, and resigned, and he had not one wish to live. I then,” continues Mr. Durell, “mentioned to Mr. Hammond, that I had found him exactly in that state on my first visit, the twenty-sixth, which had preceded his own only by a few hours.” He adds, “the opinion of an impartial and enlightened man, like Mr. Hammond, was certainly very important: but M. de Quetteville, the mayor of the town, and other laymen of the highest respectability, who had formerly known the prisoner, had been equally struck with that great and salutary change. From a comparison of dates,” adds Mr. Durell, “I am inclined to believe, that his change must not only have been rapid, but that his heart must have been almost as instantaneously touched as that of the penitent malefactor in the gospel.” Now how was this wonderful change to be accounted for? We read in Acts xvi. 34, that when the keeper of the prison in Philippi had received St. Paul’s message, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved;” that he “took” the apostles “_the same hour of the night_, and washed their stripes;” and was “baptized,” and rejoiced believing in God. It was perhaps this very feeling of joy which Jolin now experienced; a joy which arose from a clear, full, well-grounded belief in the doctrine of justification by faith. This doctrine, which gives peace with God, is, when rightly apprehended, attended with an experience of the love of God shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost, Rev. i. v., and this necessarily brings joy with it. Thus, the man who has been taught to look to him that justifieth the ungodly, is able to walk in the light of God’s countenance, and is “filled with all joy and peace in believing.”