The Life-Line Hymn.

(recording by the Clara Ward Singers of "Throw Out The Lifeline")

      A speaker at one of Evan Robert's remarkable revival services in Wales, was telling of a "vision" he had had, and of a voice which exhorted him to "Throw out the life-line," when instantly the listeners sang the whole hymn together.

      Mr. Ufford, the author of the lines, once sang them at a watch-service in California, and there he told how the Elsie Smith was lost on Cape Cod in 1902, showing the very life-line that saved sixteen lives from the sea, and by chance one of the number was present at the service.

      From a room, in a building hired for religious services in a Pennsylvania city, and where a series of revival meetings was being held, rang out, one night, the hymn, "Throw out the life-line," in the hearing, next door, a convivial card-party. It was a sweet female voice, followed in the chorus by other and louder voices chiming in. The result was the merriment ceased as one of the members of the card-party remarked: "If what they're saying is right, then we're wrong," and the revelers broke up. An ex-member of that party is now an editor of a great city daily, and his fellows are all filling positions of responsibility. The life-line pulled them ashore.

      In a Massachusetts city, twenty years ago, this hymn won to Christ a man who is now a prosperous manufacturer.

      At a special service held at Gibraltar for the survivors of an emigrant ship that went ashore there during a storm, this hymn was sung with telling effect.

      The story of that life-line is long enough and strong enough to tie up a large bundle of results wrought by it. (Cyclopedia of Illustrations, 1912)