came in contact with the rope. Holding firmly to it as it tightened in
his grasp, he used his strong arms to draw himself up hand over hand.
His deliverance was due to a knot in the rope catching in a crevice,
thus, as it tightened, sustaining him and enabling him to climb on
deck.

It was a narrow escape, and he felt it to be so. He was a thoughtful
boy, and it impressed him. The chances had been strongly against him,
yet he had been saved.

"God did it," thought James reverently, "He has saved my life against
large odds, and He must have saved it for some purpose. He has some work
for me to do."

Few boys at his age would have taken the matter so seriously, yet in the
light of after events shall we not say that James was right, and that
God did have some work for him to perform?

This work, the boy decided, was not likely to be the one he was at
present engaged in. The work of a driver or a bowman on a canal is
doubtless useful in its way, but James doubted whether he would be
providentially set apart for any such business.

It might have been this deliverance that turned his attention to
religious matters. At any rate, hearing that at Bedford there was a
series of protracted meetings conducted by the Disciples, as they were
called, he made a trip there, and became seriously impressed. There,
too, he met a gentleman who was destined to exert an important influence
over his destiny.