And here we may pause a moment to reflect how every man’s work derives its character from what he was before. What thousands of sailors, in that day, passed through all the trials which Silas passed, leaving them still only rough sailor men! In him all the roughness seemed only to strike down to depths of wonderful compassion and tenderness. Singular was the university in which he graduated to become so great and powerful a preacher! How he preached we do not know, but his words must have been warm and touching, faithful and loving, judging from their results; and as to his pulpit, we do not hear that it was in chapels or churches—his audience was very much confined to the condemned cell, and to the cart from whence the poor victims were “turned off,” as it was called in those days. In this work he found his singular niche. How long it often takes for a man to find his place in the work that is given him to do; and when the place is found, sometimes, how long it takes to fit nicely and admirably into the work itself! what sharp angles have, to be rubbed away, what difficulties to be overcome! It is wonderful, with all the horrible experiences through which this man had passed, and spectacles of cruelty so revolting that they seem almost to shake our faith, not merely in man, but even in a just and overruling God, that every sentiment of religion and tenderness had not been eradicated from his nature; but it would appear that the old gracious influences of childhood—the days of the _Pilgrim’s Progress_, and the wonderful vision when drowning beneath the waters, had never been effaced through all his strange and chequered career, although certainly not untainted by the sins of the ordinary sailor’s life. The work in which he was now to be engaged needed a very tender and affectionate nature; but ordinary tenderness starts back and is repelled by cruel and repulsive scenes. Told’s education on the seas, like that of a surgeon in a hospital, enabled him to look on harrowing sights of suffering without wincing, or losing in his tender interest his own self-possession. It ought not to be forgotten that John Howard, the great prison philanthropist, belongs to the epoch of the Great Revival. Of him Edmund Burke said, “He had visited all Europe in a circumnavigation of charity, not to survey the sumptuousness of palaces, or the stateliness of temples; not to collect medals or to collate manuscripts, but to dive into the depths of dungeons and to plunge into the infections of hospitals.” About the year 1760,[13] when he began his consecrated work, Silas Told, as a prison philanthropist upon a smaller, but equally earnest scale, attempted to console the prisoners of Newgate. Footnote 13: See Appendix.