THE COVENANTER’S BIBLE.

. WILLIAM HANNAH, the Covenanter, lived in the parish of Sundergarth, in Annandale. He was made a prisoner for his faith, and was faithful to the end. Besides his other retreats, he had, when under persecution, a hiding place in his own barn. When he was lying on one occasion among the straw reading his bible, which he always carried with him as his sweetest companion in his solitariness, the house was visited by a party of soldiers in search of him. In his haste to flee from the place, he left his bible among the straw, and fled to a distance. The troopers, in the course of their searching, entered the barn, every corner of which they pried into, turning everything upside down, and tossing about the straw that had so recently been the bed of him whom they were so eagerly seeking. According to their custom, they thrust their long swords down through the heaps of straw and hay that lay on the floor, with the view of stabbing any one who might happen to be concealed beneath. In this process, one of the men pushed his sword accidentally on the bible lying among the straw, by which means it received a deep cut, which, doubtless, its owner would have sustained if he had been in the same place. The bible was afterwards found with the recent hack in it, and restored to Hannah, to whom it was more endeared than ever. It passed as a precious heirloom into the possession of his son William, who afterwards settled in Scarborough as a minister, and was uniformly used in the pulpit as the bible from which he preached. He held it in the greatest veneration for his father’s sake, who had so often perused it, and derived from it much comfort in the days of his sufferings for conscience sake. When the Rev. Mr. Hannah retired from the ministry through infirmity, and returned to his native parish of Sundergarth, he brought his father’s bible with him, and, after his death, it was retained in the possession of his friends as a relic too precious to be lost. This remarkable bible was printed in the year 1599, and was directly and indirectly the source of light, inspiration, and courage to many.

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