He had need of a sturdy belief. With that tempestuous, unruly disposition of his boiling all the time within him, living in the age of Chesterfield and Bolingbroke, fighting his way through the world amid a thousand difficulties and temptations, he had great need to get a firm grip upon some realities of religion and hold fast to them as things that were settled. His first conviction of the truth of Christianity came to him while he was at Oxford, through a casual reading of Law’s _Call to the Unconverted_. There were some years after that, he tells us, when he was totally regardless of religion. But sickness and trouble brought it back, “and I hope,” says he, “that I have never lost it since.” He was not unwilling to converse with friends at fitting opportunities in regard to religious subjects, and no one who heard him could have remained long in doubt as to the nature of his views. There was one conversation in particular, on the subject of the sacrifice of Christ, at the close of which he solemnly dictated to his friend a brief statement of his belief, saying finally, “The peculiar doctrine of Christianity is that of an universal sacrifice and a perpetual propitiation. Other prophets only proclaimed the will and the threatenings of God. Christ satisfied his justice.” Again, one calm, bright Sunday afternoon, when he was in a boat with some friends upon the sea (I think it was during his journey to the Hebrides,) he fell into discourse with Boswell about the fear of death, which was often very terrible to his mind. He would not admit that the close of life ought to be regarded with cheerfulness or indifference, or that a rational man should be as willing to leave the world as to go out of a show-room after he has seen it. “No, sir,” said he, “there is no rational principle by which a man can die contented, but a trust in the mercy of God through the merits of Jesus Christ.” He was not ashamed to say that he was afraid to die. He assumed no braggadocio before the grave. He was honest with himself, and he felt that he needed all the fortitude of a religious faith to meet the hour of dissolution and the prospect of divine judgment without flinching. He could never have understood the attitude of men who saunter as unconcernedly and airily towards the day of judgment as if they were going to the play. But Johnson was by no means given to unseasonable or unreasonable religious discourse. He had a holy horror of cant, and of unprofitable controversy. He once said of a friend who was more loquacious than discreet, “Why, yes, sir; he will introduce religious discourse without seeing whether it will end in instruction and improvement, or produce some profane jest. He would introduce it in the company of Wilkes, and twenty more _such_.”