six weeks old, he should prejudice so good a cause by his unskilful manner of defending it.  However, he sought his refuge in earnest and repeated prayers to God, that he who can ordain strength, and perfect praise, out of the mouth of babes and sucklings, would graciously enable him on this occasion to vindicate his truths in a manner which might carry conviction along with it.  He then endeavoured to marshal the arguments in his own mind as well as he could; and apprehending that he could not speak with so much freedom before a number of persons, especially before such whose province he might seem in that case to invade, if he had not devolved the principal part of the discourse upon them, he easily admitted the apology of a clergyman or two, to whom he mentioned the affair, and waited on the lady alone upon the day appointed.  But his heart was so set upon the business, that he came earlier than he was expected, and time enough to have two hours’ discourse before dinner; nor did he at all decline having two persons, nearly related to the lady, present during the conference.  The major opened it, with a view of such arguments for the Christian religion as he had digested in his own mind, to prove that the apostles were not mistaken themselves, and that they could not have intended to impose upon us, in the accounts they give of the grand facts they attest; with the truth of which facts, that of the Christian religion is most apparently connected.  And it was a great encouragement to him to find, that unaccustomed as he was to discourses of this nature, he had an unusual command both of thought and expression, so that he recollected and uttered every thing as he could have wished.  The lady heard with attention; and though he paused between every branch of the argument, she did not interrupt the course of it till he told her he had finished his design, and waited for her reply.  She then, produced some of her objections, which he took up and canvassed in such a manner that at length she burst into tears, allowed the force of his arguments and replies, and appeared for some time after so deeply impressed with the conversation, that it was observed by several of her friends; and there is reason to believe that the impression continued, at least so far as to prevent her from ever appearing under the character of an unbeliever or a sceptic.

This is only one specimen among many of the battles he was almost daily called out to fight in the cause of religion and virtue; with relation to which I find him expressing himself thus in a letter to Mrs. Gardiner, his good mother, dated from Paris the 25th of January following, that is 1719-20, in answer to one in which she had warned him to expect such trials:  “I have (says he) already met with them, and am obliged to fight, and to dispute every inch of ground.  But all thanks and praise to the great Captain of my salvation.  He fights for me, and then it is no wonder that I come off more than conqueror:”