It was in 1740 that a young blacksmith introduced him to the people whom he had hitherto hated and despised—the Methodists. He heard John Wesley preach at the Foundry in the Moor Fields from the text, “I write unto you, little children, for your sins are forgiven you.” This set his soul on fire; he became a Methodist, notwithstanding the very vehement opposition of his wife, to whom he appears to have been very tenderly attached, and who herself was a very motherly and virtuous woman, but altogether indisposed to the new notions, as many people considered them. He improved in circumstances, and became a responsible managing clerk on a wharf at Wapping. While there Mr. Wesley repeatedly and earnestly pressed him to take charge of the charity school he had established at the Foundry. After long hesitation he did so; and it was here that while attending a service at five o’clock in the morning, he heard Mr. Wesley preach from the text, “I was sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.” By a most remarkable application of this charge to himself, Silas testifies that his mind was stirred with a strange compunction, as he thought that he had never cared for, or attempted to ameliorate the condition, or to minister to the souls of the crowds of those unhappy malefactors who then almost weekly expiated their offences, very often of the most trivial description, on the gallows. It seems that the hearing that sermon proved to be a most remarkable turning-point in the life of Silas. Through it he became most eminently useful during a very remarkable and painful career; and his after-life is surrounded by such a succession of romantic incidents that they at once equal, if they do not transcend, and strangely contrast with his wild adventures on the seas.