The gale lasted all day. In the evening we had religious services with
the watch below. The captain read a chapter, made remarks, and called
on me to follow. I told them how I had heard one of the boatswains
singing, “Jesus sought me when a stranger,” in the hymn “Come thou
Fount,” &c., written by Rev. Mr. Robinson, a Baptist minister in
England, who, as a distinguished hymnologist of Baltimore told me,
quoting from an English paper which he has preserved, departed from his
early faith, but in after years when driving with a friend he heard
singing and stopping to listen these words of his own hymn caught his
ear:
“Jesus sought me when a stranger
Wandering from the fold of God;”
when Mr. Robinson, lifting his hands as in prayer, said, “I would
give worlds if I could now feel as I did when I wrote that hymn.”
The incident seemed to me a remarkable indicating of divine grace
endeavoring to call home a wandering sheep to the Shepherd and Bishop
of souls, by causing him to remember so forcibly his former religious
hope.