188 PROGRESS OF RELIGION. 
Mr. Nobbs had been between eighteen and 
nineteen years in the midst of the people, when 
the above letters were written ; and he had 
maintained and advanced among them, accord- 
ing to the teaching of the Church of England, 
those good principles with which the very name 
of Pitcairn has been so long and so happily 
associated. 
As their religion has been full of good fruits, 
so it has been of a quiet, sensible, and unosten- 
tatious kind. Inquiry having been made of 
Mr. Nobbs by some persons in the United States 
of America, a few years since, as to any instances 
of sudden and extraordinary conversion, which 
might have fallen under his notice, he replied 
that his experience did not furnish any such 
cases from Pitcairn. In answer to the questions 
put to him, he remarked, in reference to the last 
hours of Polly Adams, which will be found 
noticed in a subsequent page, as we]l as to some 
other instances of dying persons : — 
" Had inquiry been made for examples of 
happy deaths, I could have replied with un- 
mitigated satisfaction ; for I have seen many 
depart this life, not only happy, but triumphant. 
And herein is, I think, the test of the Christian 
character ; for when we see a person, who for a 
number of years has not only in word, but in 
deed, adorned the doctrine of God our Saviour 
in all things, brought by sickness or casualty 
to the confines of the eternal world, about to 
enter the precincts of the silent grave, yet with 
unabated energy and fervour proclaim his hope 
of a glorious resurrection ; when we see a person t 
