t prayer melts the heart and moves the arm of
Jehovah, I felt confident he would help me; and so he did; for I often,
when in the water, felt a sweet consciousness that God was with me. He
taught my hands to war with the waters, and my fingers to grasp my
precious freight. When struggling with the boy Woodman, these words came
forcibly into my mind, and I repeated them in the water:--

"When all thy mercies, O my God,
My rising soul surveys,
Transported with the view, I'm lost
In wonder, love, and praise."

[Sidenote: HIS GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF GOD.]

'I always felt it my duty, after rescuing a drowning person, to go to
the house of God at night, and return public thanks to the Almighty.
Ministers in the town, and especially the Wesleyan ministers, have often
returned thanks to God from the pulpit, on the following Sabbath. On the
morning following the deliverance, I generally went to see the rescued
person, and sought to improve the event by impressing their mind with
the uncertainty of life and with the importance of being prepared for
death.

[Sidenote: JOHN'S STATEMENT.]

'In the following list I have given, as far as my memory and knowledge
enabled me, a true and faithful account of the persons whom I have
rescued from drowning. Extracts from newspapers, and letters from the
parties themselves, and also from many who were eye-witnesses of their
deliverance, have been freely used. There are several whom I have, at
different times, saved from a watery grave, not included in this list,
but as these events produced but little impression on my mind at the
time of their occurrence, and as I am utterly unable to give either the
names of the parties, or the time when I saved them, I can make no
reliable mention of them at present, _though I hope_ to be able to do so
at some future time. I sincerely believe, however, that if I had kept a
strict account of all these deliverances, instead of having to record
thirty-nine cases, I should have been able to have recorded upwards of
fifty. I regret now that I did not keep such a record. Every now and
then I meet with persons who greet me as their deliverer. Two young men
have done so within the last four months. And very pleasant to my mind
it is to meet a fellow creature whom I have been the means, in the hands
of a wonder-working Providence, of saving from a watery grave. But all
the cases mentioned in the following chapter, except William Earnshaw