still an unknown tongue to me. Among these, the thirty-second of
Deuteronomy, the fortieth of Isaiah, and other passages full of the
gospel, were repeatedly called to mind; and above all, in blowing
weather, the forty-sixth Psalm delighted me.

You may suppose that I could not wholly forget the fact of being where,
in the strictest sense, there was but a step between me and death. The
first day of our voyage some one had quoted the expression, "There is
but a plank between us and eternity," not with any serious application,
but as a fine thought. I do not think that I was ever for a moment
unmindful of this; the presence of actual danger was always felt by me:
but concerning eternity I had no fears whatever. A general reliance on
the boundless mercy of God, a recognition of Christ as having suffered
for our sins, and a degree of self-righteousness that easily threw my
sins into the shade, while magnifying my supposed merits, these formed
the staff whereon I leaned; and when the most imminent and appalling
peril overhung us, so that we expected to be ingulfed in the waves
without hope of succor, I looked it boldly in the face, confident in my
false hope. Although just then revelling in enjoyments best suited to my
natural taste, life had in reality no charms for me. From all that had
gilded the sonny hours of youth I was completely severed, and the world
on which I had launched was a wilderness indeed in comparison with the
Eden I had left. I would not have made the slightest effort to escape
from death in any form; and though I was not senseless enough to prefer
an eternity of untried wretchedness to the fleeting sorrows of mortal
life, yet as my conscience was lulled to rest by the self-delusion that
I suffered more than I deserved, and had therefore a claim on divine
justice, and as I was willing to receive the supposed balance of such
debtor and creditor account in the world to come, I was perfectly
content to be summoned to my reward. Blessed be God that I was not taken