118 JOHN ADAMS'S DREAMS. 
be hoped that the blessing had not been wholly 
lost upon Christian and Young. 
Besides the Holy Scriptures, Adams had the 
comfort and advantage of possessing a Common 
Prayer-book, one copy of which had also been 
recovered from the ship ; and of this book he 
made, constant use. 
In the year 1800, having then reached his 
thirty-sixth year, he found himself the only 
man on the island. The younger part, con- 
sisting of twenty children, looked up to him 
with reverence and affection. In that year his 
son George, who yet survives, was born. About 
ten years after this, John Adams had two re- 
markable dreams, which presented to him in 
vivid colours his past transgressions, and the 
awful nature of the punishment threatening 
to await them. In one of these dreams, he 
imagined * that he saw an awful being ap- 
proaching, and about to thrust him through with 
a dart. The other vision represented to him 
the horrors of a future place of torment. These 
terrible dreams not only alarmed him at 
the time, but produced on him a lasting and 
wholesome impression, and effectually moved 
his conscience. May we not believe this to have 
been the influence of the Holy Spirit, whose 
merciful design it was to give him a better 
knowledge of himself, and a sense of the justice 
and goodness of God, and to bring him, an 
humble suppliant, to the throne of grace, for the 
pardon of his sins, through the merits of a cruci- 
fied Saviour ? " Behold, I stand at the door, 
and knock ; if any man hear my voice, and open 
