One of the most striking instances of this wonderful work of God in the soul that has ever come under my notice is that of a sailor who, strange as it may seem to-day, had never, until the time of which I speak, received the remotest idea of the relations of God to man, and had not the faintest conception of religion of any kind. Born in the squalid slums of a Lancashire town nearly sixty years ago, he became at a very early age a waif of the streets, losing all recollection of who were his parents, as they had forgotten all about him. It is hardly possible to conceive of a mind more perfectly desert than was John Wilson’s. Reading and writing were of course out of the question, and it is probable that any mental operations that went on in his dark mind were more nearly related to brute instincts than to any of the ordinary processes of human reasoning. Now it is no part of my present plan, even if I had the necessary material, to trace Johnny’s career from the gutters of ---- until he found himself in the position of boy on board a North Country collier brig, being then, as he supposed, about thirteen years of age. By some inherited tenacity of constitution he had survived those years of starvation, cold, and brutality, and was, upon going to sea, like a well-seasoned rattan, without an ounce of superfluous flesh upon him, and with a capacity for stolid endurance almost equalling a Seminole Indian. Of kindness he knew nothing, and had any one shown him any disinterested attention, he would have been as alarmed as are the birds in a London garden when a lover of them goes out to scatter crumbs. He would have suspected designs upon his liberty, or something worse. Of the treatment he endured on board those East Coast colliers I do not dare to speak at present. The recital would, I know, arouse an almost frantic feeling of resentment that such things should have been possible such a handful of years ago, and readers would forget that, by the blessing of God, men’s hearts to-day, even in the lowest strata of our society, have been marvellously softened towards children. He learned many things on board those ships, he told me, but, so far as he knew, not one that was good. Blasphemy, drunkenness, cruelty, debauchery--all these he became an adept in as he grew up, and besides he knew every conceivable trick by means of which he could shirk duty and shift it on to the shoulders of others.