“The life of Thomas Walsh,” says Dr. Southey, “might almost convince a Catholic that saints were to be found in other communions as well as in the Church of Rome.” Walsh became a great biblical scholar; he was an Irishman, he mastered the native Irish, that he might preach in it; but Latin, Greek, and Hebrew became familiar to him; and of the Hebrew, especially, it is said that he studied so deeply, that his memory was an entire concordance of the whole Bible. His soul was as a flame of fire, but it burnt out the body quickly. John Wesley says of him, “I do not remember ever to have known a man who, in so few years as he remained upon earth, was the instrument of converting so many sinners.” He became mighty in his influence over the Roman Catholics. The priests said that “Walsh had died some years ago, and that he who went about preaching, on mountains and highways, in meadows, private houses, prisons, and ships, was a devil who had assumed his shape.” This was the only way in which they could account for the extraordinary influence he possessed. His labours were greatly divided between Ireland and London, but everywhere he bore down all before him by a kind of absorbed ecstasy of ardent faith; but he died at the age of twenty-seven. While lying on his death-bed he was oppressed with a sense of despair, even of his salvation. The sufferings of his mind on this account were protracted and intense; at last he broke out in an exclamation, “He is come! He is come! My Beloved is mine, and I am His for ever!” and so he fell back and died. Thomas Walsh is a great name still in the records of the lay preachers of early Methodism.