As children we used to make either small paper boats, or hollow out a small twig in the shape of a canoe, and sail them down a rain-filled gutter. We walked alongside until our brave little ships disappeared down a grating.

The Rev. Daniel Rowland was a preacher so used of God in the eighteenth century in Wales, that there has been no equivalent successor, even though there has been an abundance of great preachers since. At the age of seventy he commanded congregations of fourteen thousand at his Saturday mid-day service. Many of these hearers would have walked over forty miles to attend. As he preached, the power from on high would descend upon the multitude, and they would shout, “He is come.”

A fast-flowing river skirted Rowland’s home, and oftentimes, as he walked along its banks meditating he would throw a leaf into the rapids, and then outrun it.

He would stop and address it, and say, “There, I have beaten thee, an old man of seventy.” God can renew our strength as an eagle, and make a man a boy again.