Shortly after hearing that sermon to which we have alluded, a messenger came to him at the school to tell him that there were ten malefactors lying under sentence of death in Newgate, some of them in a state of considerable terror and alarm, and imploring him to find some one to visit them. Here was the call to the work. The coincidences were remarkable: John Wesley’s sermon, his own aroused and tender state of mind produced by the sermon, and the occasion for the active and practical exercise of his feeling. So opportunities would meet us of turning suggestions into usefulness, if we watched for them. The English laws were barbarous in those days; truly it has been said that a fearfully heavyweight of blood rests upon the conscience of England for the state of the law in those times. Few of those who have given such honour to the noble labours of John Howard and the loving ministrations of Elizabeth Fry ever heard of Silas Told. In a smaller sphere than the first of these, and in a much more intensely painful manner than the second, he anticipated the labours of both. He instantly responded to this first call to Newgate. Two of the ten malefactors were reprieved; he attended the remaining eight to the gallows. He had so influenced the hearts of all of them in their cell that their obduracy was broken down and softened—so great had been his power over them, that locked up together in one cell the night before their execution, they had spent it in prayer and solemn conversation. “At length they were ordered into the cart, and I was prevailed upon to go with them. When we were in the cart I addressed myself to each of them separately. The first was Mr. Atkins, the son of a glazier in the city, a youth nineteen years of age. I said to him, ‘My dear, are you afraid to die?’ He said, ‘No, sir; really I am not.’ I asked him wherefore he was not afraid to die? and he said, ‘I have laid my soul at the feet of Jesus, therefore I am not afraid to die.’ I then spake to Mr. Gardner, a journeyman carpenter; he made a very comfortable report of the true peace of God which he found reigning in his heart. The last person to whom I spoke was one Thompson, a very illiterate young man; but he assured me he was perfectly happy in his Saviour, and continued so until his last moments. This was the first time of my visiting the malefactors in Newgate, and then it was not without much shame and fear, because I clearly perceived the greater part of the populace considered me as one of the sufferers.”