This young man, on some occasions previous to his committal to prison, had read the Bible; for he remarked to one of his attendants, that when at sea, during his watch, he had done so; but he added, “I then read it as a sealed book. I had neither eyes given me to see, nor ears to hear, and this was a just judgment upon me for my sins.” His mode of life had, indeed, been one of complete dissoluteness. He went to sea, because he was too bad to remain on land; and he returned to shore, probably because he was wearied of the restraints at sea. The relations of the family, disgusted at the scenes of vice in his father’s house, abandoned them. So that it is not easy to conceive a state of lower degradation than this young man had reached. No one, as he himself said, could describe the misery of this state as he had experienced it. What situation could indeed more completely tend to brutalize the mind, to deaden every feeling of conscience, to leave the man long habituated to it “without hope,” and indeed “without God in the world?” The nature of the crime for which Jolin was committed to prison, was such as to increase the general horror against him. This was exhibited by the crowd, in the streets, on the occasion of his trial; so that his various crimes had made him an outcast from the pity and compassion of his fellow-creatures. It is true, there were particular circumstances in his case, which, if generally known, would have lessened the public indignation, and which might have been a source of secret satisfaction to himself. These were the exceeding badness of his education, the brutality of his father, the continual discord of his family, the state of intoxication in which he was when he unintentionally committed the crime; but these points, although once alluded to in his appeal to his judges, were scarcely mentioned by him in his private conversations, so completely was the conviction established in his mind, that he had fallen into sin by the wilfulness of his own heart, that he had destroyed himself; and that to a greater depth of transgression he could scarcely have reached.