Alles was Obem hat ruse Amen!
Und bringe Lob mit frohem Muth.
Ihr Kinder Gottes, lobt und preis’t
Vater und Sohn und heil’gen Geist.
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
Aug. 15th, 1892.
FORTY YEARS OF GRACE.
On the 15th day of August, 1852, I was a passenger on a sailing ship nearly in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. On that night we had a storm of a pretty good size, and the way our old ship was rocking us, it seemed to me that I would never see daylight again. Well, that condition of things will learn a poor sinner to pray, and learned me to pray at least for that night, and in my prayer of that awful night I promised the Lord, that if he would deliver me from the Perils and Dangers of that night, I would always keep the 15th day of August as a day to offer especial thanks to Him as my Deliverer. Well the Lord seems to have heard my prayer and that storm passed off and now—forty years after that time, I am able to record it in the pages of this book. I feel as though I cannot close this work unless I give at least one page of it to the praise of Him from whom all blessings flow, and who is able to deliver us from all dangers.
But I must acknowledge that I have not fulfilled the promise of the night of the 15th of August, 1852, at least not in that sense in which I made it, though I have remembered it every year but one, when it slipped my mind until a few days after. Some of my readers may say that it is silly to write the above in this book, but I think any place is good enough to give thanks and praise to the Lord.