HEROIC LIFE-SAVING

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · May 27, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 21.

HEROIC LIFE-SAVING.

THE Northwestern University, situated at Evanston, twelve miles north of Chicago, has organized among its students a volunteer life-saving crew, which has become famous for its services. Some years ago, in the early morning, there came the word that a steamer was in distress. The students hurried down to the shore. There they saw the Lady Elgin, not only in distress, but going to pieces, and men and women in imminent peril of being lost.

Among the students were two brothers from Iowa. One of these brothers stripped off all surplus trapping and swam out and brought one to the shore, and another, and another, and another, and another, until he had, what seems incredible, some eight or nine rescued on the shore of Lake Michigan.

They had built a fire of logs, and he was blue with cold. As he stood there trembling before the fire, and looked out over the lake again, he saw another man in peril. He said, "I must go again." They gathered around him and said, "It does not mean rescue for him for you to go; it means death to you." He broke from the crowd and plunged out, and brought a tenth, an eleventh, and twelfth, and again he stood, strength apparently all gone. And as they looked at him there, so blue and

chilled, they thought that death had put its finger upon him. He looked out and again he saw others in peril, and again he struck out through the storm, and he brought the thirteenth, and fourteenth, and fifteenth to the shore.

And now he stood there by the fire once more. Again he looked out and saw a beam drifting in, and clinging to that beam a man. And as he looked again he saw the man's wife, apparently, and the man was making almost superhuman efforts to save his wife, and as he looked he saw that beam was drifting around a point of land that meant death. He broke out from the crowd again. He plunged into the water, grasped hold of that beam. He swung it round the perilous corners of that lake, and brought man and wife safely to land. That afternoon as he stood in his room with his roommate, shivering, and white, and exhausted, he said: "Did I do my best? Did I do my very best? O, I am afraid I did not do my best!"

And that night they say he tossed in delirium all night, and they tried to calm him, and his brother sat beside his bed as he tossed through the night. The only thing he thought of was those that were lost. His brother said:—

"Why, you saved seventeen!"

"O," he said, "if I could only have saved just one more!"

Gentlemen, look out to-day. Don't you see the storm-tossed sea? Don't you see the people in your home? Don't you see the millions of heathen going down? O, in the strength of God, men, in the strength of God, to-day let us plunge in again, and again, and again, until every last ounce of strength is gone; and when at last, utterly exhausted in the service of Jesus Christ, we sink upon the sand, in the intensity of our longing to save some, let us cry, "O, if I could only have saved just one more!"—The Evangel.