“JULY 4. In the morning I took the Bible, and beginning at the New Testament, I began seriously to read it, and impos’d upon myself to read a while every morning and every night, not tying myself to the number of chapters, but as long as my thoughts should engage me. It was not long after I set seriously to this work, but I found my heart more deeply and sincerely affected with the wickedness of my past life. The impression of my dream revived, and the words, ‘All these things have not brought thee to repentance,’ ran seriously in my thought. I was earnestly begging of God to give me repentance, when it happened providentially the very day that, reading the Scripture, I came to these words, ‘He is exalted a Prince and a Saviour, to give repentance, and to give remission.’ I threw down the book, and with my heart as well as my hands lifted up to Heaven, in a kind of ecstasy of joy, I cried out aloud, ‘Jesus, thou son of David, Jesu, thou exalted Prince and Saviour, give me repentance!’ This was the first time that I could say, in the true sense of the words, that I prayed in all my life; for now I prayed with a sense of my condition, and with a true Scripture view of hope founded on the encouragement of the Word of God; and from this time, I may say, I began to have hope that God would hear me.”
~Daniel Defoe (from Robinson Crusoe)
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