PHILIP HENRY, the father of the well-known commentator, a devoted and useful minister, had in his boyhood a remarkable escape from fire. He was at Westminster School, where he had formed the dangerous habit of reading in bed. One night, as he was thus occupied, he was overcome with sleep; and the candle having fallen, the bed took fire, and was partly consumed before he awoke. Nothing but the arrival of speedy and efficient help saved him from death.
Dr. Adam Clarke, in his boyhood, escaped from danger even more imminent. He rode a horse down to a large river which flowed near his father’s house, and attempted to cross it. The stream proved both deeper and stronger than he anticipated. The horse lost its footing, and was swept down the current. He was speedily carried off his back, lost his consciousness, sank, and continued in the water he knew not how long, for the next thing he could remember was his recovering from insensibility on the bank of the river. He must have been drifted there by the stream, and the hot summer sun must have acted as a restorative to the system. Sixty years afterward he related this fact in a sermon preached before the Royal Humane Society.
A providential escape of a similar character was experienced by the excellent and devout Cecil. Whilst quite a youth he was playing in a yard at the back of his father’s house, in which were several large tanks of water. One of these, which was sunk in the earth, was frozen over, and a hole had been made in the ice for the purpose of watering the horses. At this hole Richard Cecil was playing with a stick, when suddenly his foot slipped, he plunged into the hole, and was carried under the ice. The workmen in his father’s employ had received particular orders overnight to go to work in a part of a dye-house from which this piece of water was not visible; but without any assignable reason they disobeyed the orders given them, and were at work near the tank in question. So sudden and so noiseless had been the plunge that none of them perceived it at the time; but a few minutes afterward one of the men thought he saw a scarlet cloak appear at the hole, and resolved to go and see what it was. In attempting to get it out he discovered it to be the scarlet cloak of his young master. The boy was drawn from the freezing water apparently dead; but proper means being used to restore animation, after long efforts life returned.
Some time after this, Cecil was caught by the coat in the wheel of a horse-mill, and was on the point of being drawn in and crushed to atoms. With marvelous quickness and presence of mind he noticed that the head of the horse which worked the mill was within reach of his feet. He therefore dashed them violently into the animal’s face; and thus checking its progress, stopped the mill, and then succeeded in extricating himself.
He lamented in after life that these events, so fitted to arrest the mind, and lead him to a grateful dedication of himself to God, should have produced no more than a mere temporary excitement of feeling. For years afterward he lived in sin, and sought to silence the accusations of conscience by skepticism; till at length God, who had guarded his life amidst these perils, in great mercy delivered him from that fearful condition of spiritual darkness, and made him “a burning and a shining light.”