TWICE-BORN MEN
REMARKABLE CONVERSIONS OF WELL-KNOWN MEN
IN DIFFERENT AGES AND IN VARIED RANKS OF LIFE
Compiled by HY. PICKERING
A Gold-Miner Actor
JOHN HAMBLEDON, actor, gold-miner, lecturer, etc., had many narrow escapes. In speaking of his experiences on the Pacific Coast at the time of the discovery of gold in California, he says: “Once I was delivered from drowning when the long reeds were entwined around my body in deep water and prevented me from swimming; another time I well-nigh perished in crossing a vast desert; another time pistols were loaded, and bloodthirsty men sought my life; another time Mexican bayonets were pointed at my breast; yet another time a terrible disease laid hold of me, and so hopeless did my race appear that my comrades put me down under the shelter of a tree, and felt so sure that my hours were numbered that they began to prepare my grave near by, into which it was their purpose to cast my poor emaciated body when the spark of life had fled. I shall never forget the horrors of that situation as I seemed to feel life ebbing away, and the dread hereafter, even eternity, looming upon my benighted soul. That I lay without one ray of Gospel hope to cheer my guilty soul, but only a certain looking for of judgment and fiery indignation. There I lay a wreck in the prime of life, and to all appearances drifting fast from the shores of Time toward the vast ocean known as Eternity, for whose dark expanse I had no chart or pilot to guide me.”
Thank God, John Hambledon’s life was saved; and better than that, he obtained the forgiveness of sins and became the happy possessor of eternal life as a free gift from God (Rom. 6. 23). By faith he saw Christ dying in his room and stead, and found joy and peace in believing. He immediately commenced to preach Christ and Him crucified, and God greatly owned his ministry in the conversion of sinners throughout Britain and Australia, where he died in 1889, aged 69.