At first, I thought myself too wicked to offer to pray and converse with
these men, but my conscience would not let me rest until I did so. It
appeared to me as if the bible had been placed in my way, as much for
their use as my own, and I could not rest until I had offered them all the
consolation it was in my power to bestow. I read with these men for two or
three weeks; Chapman, the American, being the man who considered his own
moral condition the most hopeless. When unable to go myself, I would send
my books, and we had the bible and Pilgrim's Progress, watch and watch,
between us.
All this time we were living, as it might be, on a bloody battle-field.
Men died in scores around us, and at the shortest notice. Batavia, at that
season, was the most sickly; and, although the town was by no means as
dangerous then as it had been in my former visit, it was still a sort of
Golgotha, or place of skulls. More than half who entered the Fever
Hospital, left it only as corpses.
Among my English associates, as I call them, was a young Scotchman, of
about five-and-twenty. This man had been present at most of our readings
and conversations, though he did not appear to me as much impressed with
the importance of caring for his soul, as some of the others. One day he
came to take leave of me. He was to quit the hospital the following
morning. I spoke to him concerning his future life, and endeavoured to
awaken in him some feelings that might be permanent, he listened with
proper respect, but his answers were painfully inconsiderate, though I do
believe he reasoned as nine in ten of mankind reason, when they think at
all on such subjects.
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