The Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. Chapter 7, 8, 9

Another reflection was of great use to me, and, doubtless, would be so to any one that should fall into such distress as mine was; and this was, to compare my present condition with what I at first expected it should be—nay, with what it would certainly have been—if the good providence of God had not wonderfully ordered the ship to be cast up near to the shore, where I not only could come at her, but could bring what I got out of her to the shore for my relief and comfort; without which I had wanted tools to work, weapons for defence, or gunpowder and shot for getting my food.

I spent whole hours, I may say whole days, in representing to myself, in the most lively colours, how I must have acted, if I had got nothing out of the ship; how I could not have so much as got any food, except fish and turtles; and that, as it was long before I found any of them, I must have perished first—that I should have lived, if I had not perished, like a mere savage—that if I had killed a goat or a fowl by any contrivance, I had no way to flay or open them, or part the flesh from the skin and the bowels, or to cut it up; but must gnaw it with my teeth, and pull it with my claws, like a beast.

These reflections made me very sensible of the goodness of Providence to me, and very thankful for my present condition, with all its hardships and misfortunes; and this part also I cannot but recommend to the reflection of those who are apt, in their misery, to say, “Is any affliction like mine?” Let them consider how much worse the cases of some people are, and what their case might have been, if Providence had thought fit.

I had another reflection, which assisted me also to comfort my mind with hopes; and this was, comparing my present condition with what I had deserved, and had therefore reason to expect, from the hand of Providence. I had lived a dreadful life, perfectly destitute of the knowledge and fear of God. I had been well instructed by father and mother; neither had they been wanting to me in their early endeavours to infuse a religious awe of God into my mind, a sense of my duty, and of what the nature and end of my being required of me. But alas! falling early into the seafaring life, which, of all lives, is the most destitute of the fear of God, though his terrors are always before them—I say, falling early into the seafaring life, and into seafaring company, all that little sense of religion which I had entertained was laughed out of me by my messmates—by a hardened despising of dangers, and the views of death, which grew habitual to me—by my long absence from all manner of opportunities to converse with any thing but what was like myself, or to hear any thing of what was good, or tended towards it.

So void was I of every thing that was good, or of the least sense of what I was, or was to be, that in the greatest deliverance I enjoyed, such as my escape from Sallee, my being taken up by the Portuguese master of the ship, my being planted so well in Brazil, my receiving the cargo from England, and the like, I never once had the words “Thank God!” so much as on my mind, or in my mouth; nor, in the greatest distress, had I so much thought as to pray to him, nor as much as to say, “Lord, have mercy upon me!”—no, not to mention the sacred name of God, unless it was to swear by it, and to blaspheme it.

I had terrible reflections upon my mind for many months, as I have already observed, on the account of my wicked and hardened life past; and when I looked about me, and considered what particular providences had attended me, since my coming into this place, and how God had dealt bountifully with me—had not only punished me less than my iniquity deserved, but had so plentifully provided for me; this gave me great hopes that my repentance was accepted, and that God had yet mercies in store for me.

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