careful examination, baptized sixty-five adult converts on Whit Sunday
in that year. "I truly believe," he wrote, "that most of these are
sincere and intelligent believers in Christ, as worthy converts from
heathenism as have ever been known in the history of the Church." And
in the autumn of the following year Mr. Cridge, then Dean of Victoria,
who had from the first manifested the deepest interest in the Mission,
stayed for some weeks at the settlement, and on September 8th baptized
ninety-six adult Indians and eighteen children.

Dean Cridge was struck by the advanced age of the candidates presented
to him. Twenty-six were over fifty; and one man, who was sixty-five,
said, "I feel like an infant, not able to say much; but I know that my
heart is turned to God, and that He has given His Son to wash away my
sins in His blood."

"When he entered the room to be examined, he knelt down and offered a
silent prayer. While speaking of his sins he showed emotion, and
covered his face. Amongst other answers, these are some of his words:
'I repent very much of my past sins before Jesus.' I asked why
Christians were not afraid to die; he said, 'Faith in God will make us
not afraid to die,' I baptized him Jeremiah; he is about forty years of
age. His wife was not less satisfactory in the testimony she gave of a
true conversion to God, and was added by baptism at the same time with
her husband to the fold of Christ."

What can we say to such tokens of true knowledge and faith as these,
but that the words of our Lord to Peter are still applicable to many
even of the most degraded heathen in our own day?--"Blessed art thou,
Simon Bar-Jona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but
my Father which is it Heaven!"