"'I should like,' said he, 'to know what the enemies of religion would say to John Colby's conversion. There was a man as unlikely, humanly speaking, to become a Christian as any man I ever saw. He was reckless, heedless, impious--never attended church, never experienced the good influence of associating with religious people--and here he has been living on in that reckless way until he has got to be an old man, until a period of life when you naturally would not expect his habits to change, and yet he has been brought into the condition in which we have seen him to-day, a penitent, trusting, humble believer. Whatever people may say,' added Mr. Webster, 'nothing can convince me that anything short of the grace of almighty God could make such a change as I with my own eyes have witnessed in the life of John Colby.'" Mr. Colby was eighty-four years old at the time of his conversion. At that age he learned to read for the single purpose of reading the Bible, and it was the only book he ever did read. He lived for three years after this, and to the end gave the clearest evidences of a change that to Mr. Webster's judicial mind could be explained only by the supposition of a divine interposition; it was a divine reality. The last intelligible words of the once terrible blasphemer were, "Jesus! glory!" Changing the details, the experience of John Colby has been the experience of thousands upon thousands. And--I put it to you in all candor--is it all a lie? Was Webster--one of the grandest intellects of this or of any age--was he a fanatic or a fool to believe in the reality of the religion that John Colby had experienced? Was he a weakling to put his faith where John Colby had put his, and to trust that when the summons of both should come--as it soon did come--they might meet each other and those who had gone before them trusting in the same divine, free grace?