A Boy Rescued From The Flames


"FIRE! fire! fire!" This terrible cry waked up the father of a large family, who lived in a little village parsonage. He jumped from his bed to see what it meant. On opening the door, the smoke in the entry almost stifled him, while he caught sight of the flames bursting through the roof.

     He ran to the chamber where his wife lay sick, and told her with the oldest girls to escape for their lives. He then burst into the nursery, where the five youngest children slept, roused the servant, who caught up the baby and called the rest to follow her. 0n their reaching the entry, they found the stairs on fire, while the roaring flames were hemming them in on every side. Danger gave them courage; some of the children scrambled through the windows', and others made a narrow escape through the garden door. But these passages seemed closed up to the poor sick mother. She could not climb to the windows, and to reach the door looked impossible. Once, twice, three times she tried to face the flames, but they drove her back with their fiery breath. "Oh Christ," she cried, " save me from this dreadful death; but, thy, will be done!" She mustered her strength for one more effort: despair urged her on; wading through the flames, she escaped, scorched and naked, into the street.  Were the children all safe? Were all the eight rescued from the burning building? At that instant a scream was heard from the nursery, louder than the roar of the fire; one little boy was left behind. 0, the agony of the parents. The father dashed into the house and ran to the stairs; they fell beneath his feet, while the flames beat him back.     The poor father fell on his knees and committed the soul of his child to a merciful God. The little fellow was now seen climbing up to the nursery window, surrounded by fire and smoke. He stretched out his hands to the people below.

     "Save him, save him!" is shouted on all sides; now or never. Ladders there were none; moments are precious.   One man leaps upon the shoulders of another; the walls are tottering, the heat is suffocating, but the window is reached; an instant more, and the boy is safe in the arms of his deliverer. 

     A shout of joy goes up. "Safe, safe!" In a few moments more the roof fell in, and the once pleasant home was a heap of ruins.

     "Come, neighbors," cried the grateful and glad father, "let us kneel down; let us give thanks to God. He has given me all my eight children; let the house go. I am rich enough."

     This signal rescue from a death so dreadful made a deep impression both upon the mother and the boy. She looked upon him as the lost one saved, and with an ever-grateful memory of his deliverance, she felt herself specially called upon to train this child for the service of God. Nor did the boy ever forget or overlook this peril of his childhood; it made him thoughtful and serious. He felt that if God had thus spared his life, he ought to love God. To obey and honor Him; he cherished a lively sense of his dependence upon him, and could never speak of it without feeling deeply grateful; and when he grew up to be a man, a house in flames was engraven under one of his portraits, with the motto, ''Is not this a brand plucked out

of the burning?"

     The boy thus saved was named John Wesley, born at Epworth, in England, in the year 1703; he grew up to be an eminent minister of the gospel, and so intent was he upon bringing people to a knowledge of God, that he used to go out in the commons and fields and highways to tell them of their great deliverer Jesus Christ, who came to seek and to save them which are lost. 




Sabbath-School Visitor


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