We all had a most merciful and marvellous preservation on the evening of Sabbath, December 2, when our house was struck by lightning, during the most terrific thunderstorm that had been known or heard of by the oldest inhabitant. It had been intensely hot and oppressive during the previous fortnight, but especially so that Sabbath. It seemed that such heat must soon lead to something. Towards sunset the clouds gathered, the sky grew dark--sure signs of the approaching storm. As we sat at tea, I heard the first mutterings of the thunder in the north-west and remarked: ‘There’s relief coming at last.’ After dark, as the storm drew nearer, the roll of the thunder became louder, and the flashing of the lightning more awful. As the hours of the evening passed, the storm seemed to be gathering strength for a final outburst. We heard the roaring of the wind increase, until it had the force of a tornado. The rain fell in torrents, and vivid and yet more vivid flashes of lightning were followed by louder and louder rolls of thunder. It led one to think of Him Who is ‘a hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest.’ At a quarter past nine a blinding sheet of lambent flame enveloped the house. For an instant the whole yard seemed to be flooded with living fire. This was followed by a terrific explosion in one of the lower rooms. There was a lightning-conductor twelve feet high on the centre of the roof; but the lightning, as was afterwards discovered, in striking the rod had melted the silver from it, and glancing from the rod to the gable, had gone down the chimney of the lower room, where it exploded. The ceiling at the south-west corner was torn down, the floor of the bedroom above, right under the baby’s cot--from which she had just been lifted--was blown up. The current then went up the wall of the room to a copper bell-wire. It ran along this wire, along two sides of the roof of the room, the roof of the lobby, two sides of the roof of the children’s bedroom, and then down the wire in the corner of the room, broke the bell, ploughed its way down the wall over the inner door of the kitchen, which it smashed, through the doorway and the kitchen, escaping finally by the outer door, after knocking the cook down on its way, and burning him severely! My wife, baby, and nurse were in the bedroom, and their escape from death was marvellous. The baby had wakened a few minutes before the explosion, screaming so piercingly that my wife--who had gone to bed--had to rise, lift it from its cot, and try to quieten it. She rang for the nurse to prepare its food. She took a step forward, to take the milk from the girl, and to that step, humanly speaking, she owed her own life and that of the child; for just at that instant the house was struck, the explosion took place, and the spot from which she had just stepped was blown up, the flooring being thrown over her head, a piece of one of the boards falling on the head of the nurse and cutting it open!