Nor was his manner likely to gain them.

Grave and earnest, he had never in his life known sportiveness, and his distress and horror at the profanity and blasphemy that rang in his ears made him doubly sad and stern.

From the first his Sunday service was by most treated as an infliction, and the officers, both of the ship and of the military, had so little sense of decency as to sit drinking, smoking, and talking within earshot.

The persons who professed to attend showed no reverence of attitude; and when he endeavoured to make an impression on the soldiers and their wives between-decks, he was met with the same rude and careless inattention.
With very little experience of mankind, he imagined that these hardened beings could be brought to repent by terror, and his discourses were full of denunciations of the wrath of God.

He was told that, if he threatened them thus, they would not come to hear him, and his reply was an uncompromising sermon on the text, "The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the people that forget God." The bravery of the thing, and the spirit of truth and love that pervaded all he said on this solemn verse, was not lost upon all: some of the cadets were moved to tears, and an impression was made upon several persons.