Christian Heroes in the Army and Navy (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: MAJOR-GENERAL BURN, R.M. " To go where God may lead thee, To live for Christ alone, To run thy race unburden'd, The goal thy Father's throne; To view by faith the promise, While earthly hopes decay; To serve the Lord with gladness? Be this thy work to-day." Andrew Burn was born at Anstruther, Fifeshire, on the 8th December, 1742. Both his parents, being Godfearing persons, earnestly sought to bring him up " in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." Their early teaching led him to yield a certain external respect to ordinances, and to the Divine word, afterwards, indeed, to be sadly departed from, ?yet when the blessed change came, to be remembered with deep thankfulness. " Train up a child in the way he should go," is a duty which parents ought prayerfully to remember. The seed sown may apparently be uprooted or choked among the thorns of a life of sin, yet, under Divine grace, some latent germs may spring up after the lapse of years. Such, every reader of Christian biography is aware, has often happened. So it was in the case of the subject of the present memoir. Having obtained an ordinary school education, Andrew Burn entered at the age of fourteen the office of a lawyer. He did not relish employment at the desk, and as his father had, on account of losses in trade, acceptedthe situation of purser in a sloop of war, his thoughts were turned towards a seafaring life. In his sixteenth year he joined his father's vessel, which shortly after sailed for the North Sea, having been stationed at the Dogger-hank to protect the fishing. In 1759, accompanied by his father, Burn sailed from Spithead for the West Indies. On arriving at Jamaica his father was, on account of impaired health, obliged to resign his situation, and arrange for an early return to Brit...