66 Well, isn't it true?"

66 It may be-but not for me, now."

"But He says, 'If you will come to him;' He does not say, 'If you had come,' or, 'If you would have come,' but 'if you will come''whoso cometh'-comes to-day-' He will not cast out.' It's a great pity you haven't come already, but—”

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"Pity! It's my ruin, sir. I cannot come now-I will not. See there, stranger, do you think I am going to give that withered, driedup hand to God, after I have given all its strength to the devil? Do you think I'm going to drink the devil's wine all my life up to this last day in hospital, and then offer the settlings to Jesus?"

"It was wrong, it was mean for you to refuse the best to your God, but see what you are doing now. Jesus has followed you all through, and to-day asks for this remnant of your life, 'these settlings,' as you call it. He really desires your affection and trust in Him for the little while you will lie on this bed."

"Is it honorable or decent to give it now?"

"If He can ask it, is it honorable or decent for you to refuse it now? You have refused everything; Jesus makes a last request; will you refuse that?"

"I see it—that's so,-but-I am afraid I shall. You come a little too late! It's getting dark now."

I prayed at his bedside, but he was only partially conscious. As I sat watching him, he said in a whisper, scarcely audible—

"If I could get back again-back again—"

Supposing he was thinking of his friends, I asked about his home in Michigan; rousing slightly, and with a shake of his head, he said

"No, no-a boy again-a boy again-"

Thinking that he might have fallen into a sleep from exhaustion, I left him for a while. But it was the sleep of death. The consistency of sin held him straight through his course. He could not break it. He must begin anew, if at all, he thought, with the beginning of life; but, alas! for the boyhood with its thousand invitings it came back no more!

The work under charge of the Western Army Committees did not close as soon as did the field labors in

the East. The St. Louis Branch kept open its office at Memphis until October, 1865; and work upon the Plains, directed from Fort Leavenworth by Rev. W. J. Gladwin, as Field Agent, was continued into 1866.

CHAPTER XVIII.

ALONG THE COAST.

1861-1865.

THE New York Branch of the Commission on its organization took the charge of the work among sailors and soldiers operating along our extended coast line from Virginia to Texas. It was a quieter service than was found elsewhere in any field of the war. On account of the distance from New York, Delegates were chosen for longer periods of labor. So much, however, which was common in all army experience, has been anticipated in the notice of other fields, that we shall not repeat ourselves by attempting to give even a representative series of incidents of this coast work. We begin our record on the seaboard of North Carolina.

Rev. Dr. A. L. Stone, who was for a time Chaplain of the 45th Mass. Regt., in a letter from Newbern, N. C., to the people of Park Street Church, Boston, his parish at home, gives a narrative of the illness and death of a soldier of his regiment, a younger brother of the Rev. Phillips Brooks of Philadelphia:

George Brooks, one of our own Boston boys, a member of Co. A, recruited by Captain Russell Sturgis (now our Major), was taken ill of typhoid fever about a week ago. From the first, he expressed his

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The Three Petitions.

entire resignation to the Divine will, and enjoyed the constant presence of Jesus at his side. When I asked him daily, "Is your Saviour near you to-day?" the look upon his face had a radiant answer before his lips could speak, and through his sickness that faithful Presence sustained and cheered him. He was never dejected, never murmured. He would say but little, as his lungs seemed congested; but by gasps and whispers, one day he told me-holding my face close to his, so that he could make me hear his lowest words-that he had never had a full assurance of his pardon and acceptance until he became a soldier. He said that in the battle of Kingston, under that terrible fire of the enemy, "His Saviour came to him as never before, declared His presence, revealed His love, and held his soul in His hand.'"

As the hour of death drew on, he seemed to have three burdens of prayer; the first was quickly disposed of he prayed aloud:

"O Lord, keep me, hold me fast, leave me not, let me not go!" and then all thought of himself seemed to be at an end.

Shortly after his lips moved audibly, and his second burden was laid down at the Divine feet:

"My God, spare my country-oh! save my dear native land!"

After a few moments of silence, the voice of prayer was again heard, the last earthly articulation of his tongue. The words were those of the old familiar petition

66

Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

His own soul, his country, the Israel of God-these three interests he thus commended in last utterances to the faithful Promiser. How could a Christian life close more appropriately, more triumphantly?

The following incident of the siege of Washington, N. C., by the Rebels in March and April, 1863, related by a soldier of Co. G, 46th Mass. Regt., is a beautiful instance of heroic self-sacrifice and courage:

A brave band of soldiers were set for the defence of Rodman's Point. The enemy, ten to one, pressed heavily upon them to drive them from the Point or destroy them. Overpowered, they fell back