The Hero of the Humber; Or, The History of the Late Mr. John EllerthorpeWoodcock, Henry
Religion
The Hero of the Humber; Or, The History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe
Woodcock, Henry
Ellerthorpe, John, 1806-1868; Heroes -- England -- Biography; Sailors -- England -- Biography
But Mr. Ellerthorpe also tells us that though he visited, during
twenty-five years, hundreds of persons who cried aloud for mercy and
professed to obtain forgiveness, on what was feared would be their
dying beds, yet, he did not remember more than five or six who, on
being restored to health, lived so as to prove their conversion genuine.
The rest returned 'like the dog to its vomit, and the sow that was
washed to her wallowing in the mire.' The Sabbath-breaker forgot his
vows and promises, and returned to his Sunday pleasures. The swearer
allowed his tongue to move as unchecked in insulting his Maker as
before. The drunkard thirsted for his intoxicating cups and returned to
the scenes of his former dissipations; and the profligate, who avowed
himself a 'changed man,' when health was fully restored, laughed at
religion as a fancy, and hastened to wallow in the mire of pollution. He
had scarcely a particle of faith in sick-bed repentances, but believed
that in most instances they are solemn farces.
Deeply affecting and admonitory are some of the instances he records. He
says, 'One night an engineer called me out of bed to visit his wife, who
was attacked with cholera. While I was praying with _her_, _he_ was
seized with the complaint. I visited them again the next day, when the
woman died, but the husband, after a long affliction, recovered. He
seemed sincerely penitent and made great promises of amendment. But,
alas! like hundreds more whom I visited, he no sooner recovered, than he
sought to shun me. At length he left the part of the town where he
resided when I first visited him, as he said, "_to get out of my way_."
But at that time, I visited in all parts of the town, and I often met
him, and it used to pain me to see the dodges he had recourse to in
order to avoid meeting me in the street.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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