dded to the
rest, the vessel sprung a leak, gave up in despair. Crew and passengers
were finally reduced to a few drops of water and one potato a day, and
they merely waited death from starvation or drowning. All but one! One
man; a minister, whose faith and belief in their final escape burned but
brighter and brighter, as the others sank in the gloom of silent
despair. A few days before they made the land, the leakage suddenly
ceased; no one could account for it; but a week after their arrival,
when the vessel had been condemned by the authorities as unsea-worthy,
it was proposed to turn it bottom upward and see what stopped the leak.
God seemed to have performed a miracle for them, when it was discovered
that that end of the vessel was entirely covered with barnacles!
A REMARKABLE PRAYER CONCERNING A REMARKABLE TEXT.
A clergyman, accustomed to preach regularly in his journey through
Fleming Circuit, Kentucky, was preparing on one Saturday for the labors
of the next day. He was then staying at the residence of a family named
Bowers, from which he was to journey the next day five miles to preach
at 11 A.M., at a church called Mt. Olivet. On this Saturday, as he
relates the incident, as soon and as privately as practicable, I pored
over the Bible in quest of a suitable subject for the next day at Mount
Olivet, and strange to tell! not one passage in the whole Book, that
afternoon and night, could I fix upon, as, in my estimation, suitable
for the next day. There was one passage, (two or three clauses of which
I had by some means got fixed in my memory), that early that afternoon
appeared in my mind as though each word was written in CAPITAL LETTERS.
I turned to the whole passage as soon as I could find it; Heb. 6: 4-6;
and read, "For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened,"
etc., etc. I had previously studied that whole subject, as recorded in
the original, and as disposed of by learned Commentators of different
creeds. I had settled in my own mind the import of the passage. But it
seemed unsuitable for me, not then three years old in the ministry, to
attempt the settlement of a theological question, about which the best
and most learned of modern days had differed. I therefore tried to
dismiss it from my mind, and to find some passage more suitable for the
coming morrow. But my constant effort proved unsuccessful; and the said
passage in Hebrews often recurred to my mind. Thus passed my time till I
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