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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · September 3, 1867

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. XXX, No. 12

REMARKABLE ESCAPES OF EMINENT MEN.

An English journal enumerates some examples under this head, which illustrates the truth of an overruling Providence:

“Some years ago, a young man, holding a subordinate position in the East India Company's service, twice attempted to deprive himself of life by snapping a loaded pistol at his head. Each time the pistol missed fire. A friend, entering the room shortly afterward, he requested him to fire it out of the window; it then went off without any difficulty. Satisfied thus that the weapon had been duly primed and loaded, this young man sprang up exclaiming, ‘I must be reserved for something great;’ and from that moment gave up the idea of suicide, which for some time previous was uppermost in his thoughts. That young man afterward became Lord Clive.

“Two brothers were on one occasion walking together, when a violent storm of thunder and lightning overtook them. One was struck dead on the spot, the other was spared; else would the name of the great reformer, Martin Luther, have been unknown to mankind.

“The holy St. Augustine having to preach at a distant town, took with him a guide, who by some unaccountable means mistook the usual road and fell into a by-path. He afterward discovered that his enemies having heard of his movements, had placed themselves in the proper road with the design of murdering him.

“Bacon, the sculptor, when a tender boy of five years old, fell into the pit of a soap-boiler, and must have perished had not a workman, just entering the yard, observed the top of his head, and immediately delivered him.

“When Oliver Cromwell was an infant, a monkey snatched him from his cradle, leaped with him through a garret-window, and ran along the leads of the house. The utmost alarm was excited among the inmates, and various were the devices used to rescue the child from the guardianship of his newly found protector. All were unavailing; his would-be rescuers had lost courage, and were in despair of ever seeing the baby alive again, when the monkey quietly retraced his steps and deposited his burden safely on the bed. On a subsequent occasion, the waters had well-nigh quenched his life. He fell into a deep pond, from drowning in which a clergyman named Johnson was the sole instrument of his rescue.

“By the siege of Leicester, a young soldier, about seventeen years of age, was drawn out for sentry duty. One of his comrades was very anxious to take his place. No objection was made, and this man went. He was shot dead while on guard. The young man first drawn, afterward became the author of the Pilgrim's Progress.

“Doddridge, when born, was so weakly an infant he was believed to be dead. A nurse standing by fancied she saw some signs of vitality. Thus the feeble spark of life was saved from being extinguished, and an eminent author and consistent Christian preserved to the world.

“John Wesley, when a child, was only just preserved from fire. Almost the moment after he was rescued, the roof of the house where he had been fell in.

“Of Philip Henry a similar instance is recorded.

“John Knox, the renowned Scotch Reformer, was always wont to sit at the head of the table with his back to the window. On one particular evening, without being able to account for it, he would neither himself sit in the chair nor permit any one else to occupy his place. That very night a bullet was shot in at the window purposely to kill him; it grazed the chair in which he usually sat, and made a hole in the foot of a candlestick on the table.

“Many years have now elapsed since three subalterns might have been seen struggling in the waters of St. Helena; one of them, peculiarly helpless, was fast succumbing. He was saved to live as Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington.

“The life of John Newton is but the history of a series of marvellous deliverances. As a youth, he had agreed to accompany some friends on board a man-of-war. He arrived too late to go; the boat in which his friends had gone was capsized, and all its occupants drowned. On another occasion, when tide surveyor in the port of Liverpool, some business had detained him, so that he came to his boat much later than usual, to the great surprise of those who were in the habit of observing his then undeviating punctuality. He then went out in the boat as heretofore to inspect a ship, which blew up just before he reached her. Had he left the shore a few minutes sooner, he must have perished with the rest on board.”