for me was found. I asked counsel of our captain for whom I had the greatest esteem and respect, but it was so easy for him to believe that I thought his case must be very unlike my own, so I spoke to another one of our company, the only one of our number who had a clear religious faith, and seemed to be happy in it. His first answer was very striking. I asked how he felt about death. He thought I referred to our worldly prospect, and answered that probably we would soon all be put to death. ‘But what is your feeling about death itself?’ I continued. He said, ‘I am not afraid to die if it is God’s will. I trust him now and I expect to trust him to the last.’ He took my hand and there was a steady light in his eye that made me believe every word he said. But when I asked him how he got such a faith, he could only tell me that he went to a ‘mourners bench’ two years before and sought till he found it. This did me no good, for there was no place accessible here. In sore perplexity I read the Bible from day to day and prayed, taking my turn in praying aloud and reading with the others. At length I thought I began to see that trusting Christ must be something like taking his words and teachings for my guide, trying to do all that he commanded, and leaving the result while I did this with him. This was not that sudden transformation that I had hoped, but I soon found that it opened up a good many things that I had never dreamed of. One of these seemed especially strange under the circumstances. I had yet but a slender hope of ever escaping from the prison except by the way of the scaffold. But in spite of that dark prospect as an absolute test of my obedience—‘Will you, if satisfied that it is God’s will, be ready to give up the profession of law if you ever get home and go into the ministry?’ The first and spontaneous reply was, No! I had studied law and meant to practice it if I ever got where law reigned. But at once the self response was clear, ‘What kind of obedience was this?’ I saw that I was not sincere in professing to enlist under Christ as my captain unless I would really obey him. It would be a poor allegiance that stopped short with the things I wanted to do. For a long time I could not pass this point. The difficulty when communicated to my prison companions seemed utterly absurd. ‘Try to serve God in the prison where you are,’ they said with a cheer plausibility, ‘and do not bother about preaching, being a lawyer or anything else, when you get out, for you never will get out.’ This seemed good advice but it would not give a serene mind or the victory over the fear of death, which I so much desired.