Mr. Ufford, the author of the lines, once sang them at a watch-service in California, and there he told how the Elsie Smith was lost on Cape Cod in 1902, showing the very life-line that saved sixteen lives from the sea, and by chance one of the number was present at the service.
From a room, in a building hired for religious services in a Pennsylvania city, and where a series of revival meetings was being held, rang out, one night, the hymn, “Throw out the life-line,” in the hearing, next door, of a convivial card-party. It was a sweet female voice, followed in the chorus by other and louder voices chiming in. The result was the merriment ceased as one of the members of the card-party remarked: “If what they’re saying is right, then we’re wrong,” and the revelers broke up. An ex-member of that party is now an editor of a great city daily, and his fellows are all filling positions of responsibility. The life-line pulled them ashore.
In a Massachusetts city, twenty years ago, this hymn won to Christ a man who is now a prosperous manufacturer.
At a special service held at Gibraltar for the survivors of an emigrant ship that went ashore there during a storm, this hymn was sung with telling effect.
The story of that life-line is long enough and strong enough to tie up a large bundle of results wrought by it.
(1801)
Life-material—See [Material for a Great Life].
LIFE, NEW, FROM GOD
In London there dwells a man interested in rare and exotic plants. A friend who had been in the Amazon brought him home a rare tree. In the winter he keeps it in the hothouse, but when summer comes, he carries it into his garden. So beautiful is the bloom that he gave garden-parties that men might behold the wondrous flower. One summer’s day he noticed a strange thing that set his pulses throbbing—a singular fruit had begun to set. Sending for an expert, they took counsel together. They knew that this was the only tree of the kind in Paris, and they could not understand from whence had come the pollen that had fertilized the plant. At length they published the story in the papers, and that story brought the explanation. A merchant wrote that years before he had brought to Marseilles a young plant from the Amazon. The pollen of that tree nearly four hundred miles away had been carried on the wings of the wind over hill and vale, and found out the blossom that awaited its coming.
And not otherwise is it with the soul. Because it is in His likeness, it shares with Him in those attributes named reason, wisdom, goodness, holiness and love. The soul waits. Without God it can do nothing. Its life is from afar. Expectant and full of longing, it hungers and thirsts, and desires His coming. That repentant youth, lying in the desert, with a stone for his pillow, waits, and then the light comes from God.—N. D. Hillis.