There was a little boy living in a fishing village on the south coast of England, who loved his Bible more than his breakfast or his dinner, and every morning he would steal away with it to the seashore. One afternoon he was reading as usual, when a number of boys found him out and began to annoy him. So, to avoid them, he got into a tiny boat that was anchored near. Some of them cut the rope, which the boy, being intent on his Bible, did not notice till he found himself drifting out to sea on the ebbing tide. Darkness and mist soon came on and the poor little boy was alone with his Bible on the wide ocean.
Two days after a large Norwegian vessel was passing up the channel, when a man at the look-out spied a black object on the water. The captain’s telescope soon made out that it was a small boat, so the ship sailed up to it, and then they saw a little boy fast asleep clasping a Bible! They lifted him out and he awoke, but fainted away directly through weakness from want of food. However, kind care soon restored him, and then he told his story, and what a comfort his loved Bible had been to him in those lonely hours on the water, until he had become too weak to read.
ML-11/04/1979