I determined therefore to work willingly; to accept my hard tasks as those appointed of God; to be no longer an eye-servant but an earnest, faithful, intelligent co-operator in building, repairing and improving the magnificent temples, baths, aqueducts, walls, quays and fortifications of Antioch; to treat my fellow-laborers as brethren, not by descending to their gross level, but by striving to lift them as well as myself up to the height of a noble and unselfish manhood. All this was facile and beautiful in theory, difficult and painful in practice. The struggle was intense; and many, many dark and miserable days alternated with my bright ones. It was the great warfare of my life, less imposing than my struggles with Magistus and Helena, but far more productive of results. It was a process by which good was substituted for evil; but as fast only as the evil was thoroughly repented of and put away. It was a process of growth by which the germ of the heavenly life, penetrating through the dead shell of the old nature, passed upward into a serener light and larger liberty. It was a death and a resurrection. How small an affair was my first resurrection in comparison with this! Twenty years or more were spent in the great combat between my old natural man and the new spiritual man which was being conceived, born, nourished, instructed and vitalized within me. I am still engaged in the same conflict. But after twenty years, I felt that the good had attained a permanent ascendency—that duty had become pleasure—that self was so far subdued that I expected nothing, desired nothing for myself alone, and experienced a serene delight in promoting the happiness of others. The reader need not think that a convict’s prison afforded no opportunities for the great work of regeneration, and for the development of Christian character. The rainbow that shines in the cloud, and glitters in the dew-drop, is the same. The divine influx is identical in the greatest things and in the least. The patience, the meekness, the kindness to others, the obedience to law, the truthfulness, the industry, the honesty which can be exhibited in the lowliest sphere of human life, have no sweeter odor, no greater worth in the sight of heaven when they are displayed on the throne of the Cæsars. I worked faithfully at all my tasks until my overseers respected me so much that they did not watch me at all. I was always ready to assist every one with word and deed, until my power over my fellow-prisoners was such that my voice of intercession could suspend a quarrel or even suppress a riot. I delighted to instruct these poor degraded fellows in the truths of religion; and when they turned a deaf ear to these, I could still please them with scraps of poetry or history or science. It was a special pleasure to nurse the sick; and in the course of twenty or thirty years, hundreds and even thousands felt the benefit and the blessing of my presence.