“Adrift on an Ice-Pan”
He had returned home on Easter Sunday after the service when he received an urgent call to go sixty miles to help a young man on whom he had previously operated. Crossing the ice the next day, as it was breaking up, he found that he was on a piece which was drifting into the open Atlantic. Three of his dogs were killed, and from their bones he made a flagpole; while their coats were used to keep him warm during the night.
All night long he drifted, but was rescued in the morning, although there seemed little probability that he would be. Through the night, expecting death at any moment, there ran through his mind the words of an old hymn which came back to him from his boyhood days:
“My God, my Father, while I stray
Far from my home, on life’s rough way,
O teach me from my heart to say,
Thy will be done!”
Referring to this rescue, Dr. Grenfell said: “As I went to sleep that first night there still rang in my ears the same verse of the old hymn which had been my companion on the ice, ‘Thy will, not mine, O Lord.’”
There is much significance in a ceremony associated with