I took one of the Bibles in my pocket, and when I came to Will Atkins’s tent, or house, and found the young woman and Atkins’s baptized wife had been discoursing of religion together—­for Will Atkins told it me with a great deal of joy—­I asked if they were together now, and he said, “Yes”; so I went into the house, and he with me, and we found them together very earnest in discourse.  “Oh, sir,” says Will Atkins, “when God has sinners to reconcile to Himself, and aliens to bring home, He never wants a messenger; my wife has got a new instructor:  I knew I was unworthy, as I was incapable of that work; that young woman has been sent hither from heaven—­she is enough to convert a whole island of savages.”  The young woman blushed, and rose up to go away, but I desired her to sit-still; I told her she had a good work upon her hands, and I hoped God would bless her in it.

We talked a little, and I did not perceive that they had any book among them, though I did not ask; but I put my hand into my pocket, and pulled out my Bible.  “Here,” said I to Atkins, “I have brought you an assistant that perhaps you had not before.”  The man was so confounded that he was not able to speak for some time; but, recovering himself, he takes it with both his hands, and turning to his wife, “Here, my dear,” says he, “did not I tell you our God, though He lives above, could hear what we have said?  Here’s the book I prayed for when you and I kneeled down under the bush; now God has heard us and sent it.”  When he had said so, the man fell into such passionate transports, that between the joy of having it, and giving God thanks for it, the tears ran down his face like a child that was crying.

The woman was surprised, and was like to have run into a mistake that none of us were aware of; for she firmly believed God had sent the book upon her husband’s petition.  It is true that providentially it was so, and might be taken so in a consequent sense; but I believe it would have been no difficult matter at that time to have persuaded the poor woman to have believed that an express messenger came from heaven on purpose to bring that individual book.  But it was too serious a matter to suffer any delusion to take place, so I turned to the young woman, and told her we did not desire to impose upon the new convert in her first and more ignorant understanding of things, and begged her to explain to her that God may be very properly said to answer our petitions, when, in the course of His providence, such things are in a particular manner brought to pass as we petitioned for; but we did not expect returns from heaven in a miraculous and particular manner, and it is a mercy that it is not so.