Page:The Methodist Hymn-Book Illustrated.djvu/256

 244 THE METHODIST HYMN-BOOK ILLUSTRATED

Webb at Bristol. We took leave of our native land, and set sail on Good Friday ; often singing in our passage these words

The watery deep I pass, With Jesus in my view.

And after a comfortable passage of six weeks arrived safely at Philadelphia.

Richard Pattison, who was a devoted Methodist missionary in the West Indies, said, Many times, in storms on the ocean, or crossing from one island to another in small vessels, I have held by a rope, and sang

The watery deep I pass, With Jesus in my view ; And through the howling wilderness My way pursue.

And I have felt my faith in God wonderfully strengthened.

Hymn 376. The God who reigns on high. THOMAS OLIVERS (374).

Hymn 377. Come, Thou Fount of every blessing.

ROBERT ROBINSON.

Robert Robinson was born of humble parentage at Swaff ham, Norfolk, in 1735. His father died early, and in 1749 he was apprenticed to a London hairdresser, who found him more given to reading than to his daily work. One Sunday, in 1752, he and some companions gave drink to an old dame who told fortunes, that they might laugh over her predictions concerning them. She sobered Robinson by telling him that he would live to see his children and grandchildren. On May 24, 1752, he heard Whitefield preach on Matt. iii. 7 : The wrath to come. After three years of darkness he found peace in his twentieth year. He attended the ministry of Wesley and other evangelical preachers in London, till he was invited, in 1758, to take charge of a chapel at Mildenhall, Suffolk, as a Calvinistic Methodist. He removed to Norwich within the year as an Independent pastor, and in January, 1759, began to preach at the Baptist church in Cambridge, where Robert Hall and John Foster were afterwards ministers. Robert Hall said he had a musical voice, and was master of all its intonations ; he

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