Wednesday 16 November 2011

Bible

Before, as I walked about on my hunting, or for viewing the country, the anguish of my soul at my condition would break out upon me on a sudden, and my very heart would die within me to think of the woods, the mountains, the deserts I was in; and how I was a prisoner locked up with the eternal bars and bolts of the ocean, in an uninhabited wilderness, without redemption.

But I began to exercise myself with new thoughts. I daily read the Word of God, and applied all the comforts of it to my present state. One morning, being very sad, I opened the Bible on these words, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee!” Immediately it occurred to me that these words were to me. Why else should they be directed in such a manner, just at the moment when I was mourning over my condition, as one forsaken of God and Man? “Well then,” said I, “If God does not forsake me, of what ill consequence can it be, or what matters it that the world should all forsake me, seeing, on the other hand, if I had all the world and should lose the favour and blessing of God, there would be no comparison in the loss?”

I never opened my Bible or shut it, but my very soul within me blessed God for directing my friend in England, without any order of mine, to pack it among my goods, and for assisting me afterwards to save it out of the wreck of the ship.
Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe