oubted his integrity!_'

'_He gained abiding glory!_'

'_This is the Victory that overcometh the World, even our Faith!_'

II

ROBINSON CRUSOE'S TEXT

I

During the years that Robinson Crusoe spent upon the island, his most
distinguished visitor was a text. Three times it came knocking at the
door of his hut, and at the door of his heart. It came to him as his
_doctor_ in the day of sore sickness; it came as his _minister_ when his
soul was in darkness and distress; and it came as his _deliverer_ in the
hour of his most extreme peril.

Nine months after the shipwreck Crusoe was overtaken by a violent fever.
His situation filled him with alarm, for he had no one to advise him, no
one to help him, no one to care whether he lived or died. The prospect
of death filled him with ungovernable terror.

'Suddenly,' he says, 'it occurred to my thought that the Brazilians take
no physic but tobacco for all their distempers, and I remembered that I
had a roll of tobacco in one of the chests that I had saved from the
wreck. I went, directed by heaven no doubt; for in this chest I found a
cure both for soul and body. I opened the chest and found the tobacco
that I was looking for; and I also found a Bible which, up to this time,
I had found neither leisure nor inclination to look into. I took up the
Bible and began to read. Having opened the book casually, the first
words that occurred to me were these: "_Call upon Me in the day of
trouble, and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me._" The words
were very apt to my case. They made a great impression upon me and I
mused upon them very often. I left my lamp burning in the cave lest I
should want anything in the night, and went to bed. But before I lay
down I did what I never had done in all my life--I kneeled down and
prayed. I asked God to fulfil the promise to me that if I called upon
Him in the day of trouble He would deliver me.'

Those who have been similarly situated know what such prayers are worth.
'When the devil was sick the devil a saint would be.' Crusoe's prayer
was the child of his terror. He was prepared to snatch at anything which
might stand between him and a lonely death. When he called for
deliverance, he meant deliverance from sickness and solitude; but it was
not of _that_ deliverance that the text had come to speak. When,
therefore, the crisis had passed, the text repeated its visit. It came
to him in time of health.

'Now,' says Cruso