I must mention here that William's constitution had received the seeds of disease while at sea during the war. He ran away from home and engaged in the revenue service. He also served in the army. He has never been well since his return. His friends tell me that he has been wild, not that he was immoral, to use their own expression. He had been religiously trained in England, did nothing that the world would call bad; but he was wayward, and the occasion to them of great anxiety and displeasure also. As I said before, we did not talk much at first about religion, not that he avoided the subject. He was very conscious of his own situation as far as the uncertainty of his life was concerned, but he had apparently no sense of sinfulness before God. Perhaps the reserve was on my side. I think I never felt so much as in this case the utter powerlessness of human influence to bring the soul to God. He spoke calmly of death; but when I asked him what was the ground of his hope beyond the grave, he replied: "I have never done any one harm; I have tried to live right." I replied earnestly: "Do not trust to any such refuge as that." I then warned him against any hope not founded on Christ alone. He acknowledged that what I said was true, and seemed for a moment disturbed. I cannot recall another conversation in our earlier acquaintance, in which I was able to speak with any earnestness, or in which he seemed at all impressed. I could only pray: "Lord, open his eyes!" It is very wonderful to me, on looking back, to see how God was leading him all this time. Once he told me of a sermon which he had heard months before, upon the text: "Set thine house in order, for thou shalt die, and not live." He had never been so impressed by a sermon; he could not forget it. Occasionally, I observed that his mind was well stored with the Prayer Book version of the Psalms. Sometimes he would quote a petition, telling me it had been specially upon his mind. Upon inquiry, I found that at home in England, he had been a chorister boy at church. He has since told me he used to sing the Psalms without any sense of their meaning. Probably the words were never explained to him, or impressed upon him in any way. It was a mere form of a church which confirmed its members at fifteen years old, with very little cognizance of their spiritual life. William, however, had not been confirmed. It would seem from his subsequent life that the words he had chanted, from Sunday to Sunday, had no effect on him, but now, in his last days, God was bringing them home to his heart, over all the years of his carelessness, and accomplishing that which he pleased. It has helped me to believe that it is not in vain to store the mind of thoughtless Sunday-school scholars with the Word of God, and that in the most formal Christian Church the words of Scripture are not lost.