This, indeed, began to grow upon me, and made me very melancholy; but as to religion, I understood so little about it that if I had resolved upon any such thing as a new course of life, or to set about a religious change, I knew not at which end to begin or what to do about it. One day it happened that my tutor—for so I always called him—had the Bible in his hand, and was looking in it, as he generally did many times every day, though I knew not for what. Seeing the Bible, I took it out of his hands, and went to look in it, which I had done so little before that I think I might safely say I had never read a chapter in it in all my life. He was talking of the Bible then as a book only, and where he had it, and how he brought it to Virginia, and in some ecstasy he took and kissed it. “This blessed book!” says he; “this was all the treasure I brought out from England with me. And a comfortable treasure it has been to me,” added he; “I would not have been without it in my sorrows for any other treasure in the world;” and so he went on at large. I, that had no notion of what he meant—only, as I have said above, some young infant thoughts about the works of Providence in the world and its merciful dealings with me—took the book out of his hand and went to look in it; and the book opened at the Acts xxvi. 28, where Felix says to St. Paul, “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.” “I think,” says I, “here’s a line hits me to a tittle, upon the long account you have given of yourself, and I must say them to you, as the governor here said;” and so I read the words to him. He blushed at the text, and returns, “I wish I could answer you in the very words the Apostle returned to him in the next verse: ‘I would thou wert both almost, and altogether such as I am, except these bonds.’”