I was called forward to see Tom Collis, the poor fellow who was wounded in the boat. The surgeon can do nothing for him, he says, and I see that the man's countenance is marked by death's hand. Around us, as I sit by him, we hear laughter, and oaths, and gross talking. Collis is suffering great agony. "Mercy! mercy!" he shrieks out. "To die thus-- no time for repentance, with hideous crimes weighing down my soul!" Sometimes he raves, and says things which make my blood run cold; but I talk quietly to him, and he grows calmer. I tell him in few words of that simple plan God in His gracious mercy arranged before the world began, by which sinners even great as he might be saved. He drinks in every word. I tell him how the loving Jesus came on earth to live as a man a life of suffering, that men might understand that He knows how they suffer; that He was tempted, that they might feel assured He pities, and will help them when they are tempted; that He was crucified,--made a sacrifice, that He might take their sins on His shoulders; that His blood was shed that it might wash away the sins of all who trust in it, and look to Him; that He was buried, and rose again, that He might conquer death, and show that all who follow Him must conquer too; and that He ascended up on high, that He might present all who place their faith in Him washed from their sins pure and undefiled before the throne of God. "But all that could not be done for such a wretch as me," says Collis. "If God would let me live, I might repent, and lead a different sort of life, and do all sorts of things to please Him; and then perchance He might think me more fit for heaven." "Oh, my dear shipmate," I say, "don't think of such folly. You could never do anything to make you more fit for heaven than you now are, vile, sinful, guilty wretch as you may be." I then read to him how the Israelites, bit by the fiery serpents in the wilderness, were saved from death and cured by looking at the brazen serpent held up by Moses. And then I read about the thief on the cross, and then I say: "Just look to Jesus in that way. Feel that you are bitten by sin, helpless, and dying, and deserving of death; and He says to you, as He said to the thief on the cross, `To-day shalt thou be with Me in paradise.'--`Thy sins are forgiven thee.'" "What, sir!" exclaims Collis, "you don't mean to say that the Son of the great God who made heaven and earth, and all those thousands of stars we see up there, did all that for me, and such as me,--that He says all that to me, and such as me?"