highly honored, Canada alone, with her reverently ordered day of
rest, exceeding us in Sabbath observance. Here and there, however,
is needed the cautionary signal of danger against the greed of
railroad and other law-defying corporations, and the loose morality
of aliens who come to us with money but without religious raising
or conviction. In no other section is there such widely diffused
catholicity of spirit and tolerance of differences among opposing
religious beliefs. If the Roman Catholic has been freer from assault
upon his religion in any country or time than in the South, I have
failed to find it. If the Jew has as kindly treatment elsewhere
under the sun, I should be glad to know it. And if there is as fine
a courtesy and fraternity anywhere as among our Southern Protestant
bodies, I have yet to discover it. A few months ago, though of
another denomination, I was called to their platform by the great
Southern Baptist Assembly. A month before that I was summoned by
the Cumberland Presbyterian Seminary, of Lebanon, to instruct its
young men. A month before that I was writing articles for the chief
religious organ of the Southern Presbyterians. I have lived long
enough and am familiar enough with other parts of the world to know
that such practical catholicity chiefly obtains in the South.
Nowhere as in the South do men so generally honor the house of God
by their attendance and support. I make bold to say that upon any
Sabbath day by count more men may be found in churches in Richmond
and Atlanta than in Chicago and New York, though the combined
population of the latter cities is ten times that of the former.
These same churchgoing men of the South, following in the footsteps
of their God-fearing fathers, are the members and supporters of
Southern Churches, and are quick to resent innovation or disturbance
of the old order. No man is so reverent and courteous toward men of
the cloth as the men of the South, and wherever a minister of the
gospel walks down the street of a Southern city or village, if worthy
to wear the cloth of his sacred calling, he is the foremost man of
his community in standing and influence.
Why this relative respect to the minister and the Church, and this
clinging to religious forms and traditions, those of us who came
up out of the Old South understand. Any reverent spirit of the New
South in matters of religion is another of the heritages from the Old
South. Then as now, even more than now, with our leaders and great
men it was religion first, politics second, and money, or whatever
money stood for, last and least. From my earliest recollection and
reading, the governors, senators, congressmen, judges, great lawyers,
physicians, merchants, and planters were commonly Christian men,
both by profession and practice; and the man who was hostile or
even indifferent to the Church and religion, however distinguished
and brilliant he might be, was under ban of public opinion. As a
commentary upon this significant religious affiliation of Southern
leadership I carefully noted a few years ago, in two contrasting
lists taken at random of governors and congressmen, that while one
list had five men out of twenty-five who were members of Christian
Churches, the Southern list of twenty-five contained eighteen. While
I share in the widespread regret that our Southern young men are
not as reverent as were those of a generation ago, and are often
conspicuous by absence upon Sabbath worship, yet in view of such
facts as I am recounting I am more hopeful of the solution of the
vexed problem of Christian young manhood in the South than in any
other part of the land.
I have paid tribute to the great political orators of the Old South.
Let me pay higher tribute to its great preachers and pulpit orators,
to whom, under God, more than to any other class or leadership,
is due what the South has ever cherished as its best. There were
giants in those days. If Yancey or Stephens could cast a spell upon
a great political gathering, and play upon its emotions as the
harper plays upon the harp, George F. Pierce in his prime could stir
men’s hearts in a way that put to shame even the eloquence of the
political rostrum. The last time I heard this greatest of all the
orators of the Old South was not far from the time of his death.
Marvin, fittingly called the “St. John of Methodism,” sat in the
pulpit behind him. To most of his audience Pierce and his preaching
were known only by hearsay, and their firm belief was that Marvin
was the real prince of the pulpit. I remember how Pierce battled
against his bodily weakness and weariness, and how there came to his
eye that wondrous flash as his old-time eloquence lifted him into
heights and visions celestial. He was preaching of the pure faith
once delivered unto the saints, and pleading for the old order of
simple gospel truth and living. He had something to say of the new
order of ministers who were substituting doubts and denials for
the long-cherished doctrines of the Church. His opening sentence
was: “A single meteor flashing athwart the heavens will arrest a
larger measure of attention than the serene shining of a thousand
planets.” I think I know who the old man eloquent meant. A little
while before, a dapper preacher, consumed by itch for popularity,
had been dispensing a perfumed and smokeless theology that drew
great crowds and tickled the ears of the groundlings. The theology
of the Old South was too crude and barbarous and unscientific for
such as he. Genesis was an allegory, creation an evolution, man was
pre-Adamic, the deluge was only a local shower, the Pentateuch was
polychromatic, Moses was largely mythical, there were two Isaiahs,
all the ante-exilian history and writings were concocted by pious
post-exilian experts, the incarnation and resurrection were touching
legends but “quite unscientific,” hell was “hades,” and hades was
a tolerably comfortable winter resort, and Bible inspiration, as
a matter of fact, seldom inspired. Many times, in sight and sound
of such dainty apostles of an emasculate Bible, have I longed for
the ghosts of the stalwart preachers of my childhood—the Pierces,
Thomas Sanford, Jefferson Hamilton, A. L. P. Green, P. P. Neely,
Jesse Boring, McTyeire, Wightman, Summers, and the like—to rise up
in their godly wrath and shake them over the flaming pit of a real
old-time, unabridged “hades” long enough to bring them to silence
and repentance.
[Illustration: BISHOP GEORGE F. PIERCE.]
Down in the straw, at the mourners’ bench of an Old South camp
meeting, some of us got our theology and our religion. The Bible,
in miracle and prophecy, was handled by reverent hands, and made
most real to us as the infallible word of Almighty God. The law of
Sinai, with unexpurgated cursings and blessings, was read to us
amid the groanings of our troubled consciences. No ear so polite,
no position so exalted, but a living and burning hell was denounced
against its meannesses. As deep as the virus of sin in our souls
sank the flashing, twoedged sword of the Spirit. The wound was made
purposely deep and wide that the balm of Gilead might enter and heal
the utmost roots of sin. By and by, when John the Baptists, like
Boring and Lovick Pierce, had cut to the quick, and laid bare the
wounded spirit, some gentler, wooing ministry, like that of Hamilton
or Neely, came pointing the way to the cross. There was no lifting of
the finger tip, daintily gloved and decorous, in token of a desire
sometime or other to become a Christian. Cards, in colors, bearing
name and rates of the evangelist, agreeing to meet everybody in
heaven, were not passed around for signatures. I never hear the old
hymn of invitation, that lured many a hardened sinner of the Old
South, as they sung it under the leafy arbor to nickering lights,
after a weird, unearthly stirring of our hearts by the man in the
pulpit, but I think of a great criminal lawyer, who for many years
had led the bar of his State, and had made mock of God’s Book and
Church and ministers. He owned an old carriage driver who was one of
God’s saints in black, gray-haired and patient “Uncle Aleck,” who had
mourned and prayed over his unbelieving master. “Uncle Aleck,” he
said to him one day, “why do you believe in a book you can’t read,
and in a God you never saw? I have thousands of books in my library,
yet I care nothing for religion.” Uncle Aleck’s only reply was to
put his hand on his heart and say: “Marse John, I’ve been true and
faithful to you all these years, ain’t I, marster?” “Yes.” “And I
never lied to you or disobeyed you, has I, Marse John?” “No.” “Then,
marster, it’s my religion that has made me what I am. I can’t read, I
can’t see God, but I know the Lord Jesus Christ here in my heart.”
Drawn by some spell he could not resist, the great lawyer came to the
old camp ground and heard the awfully solemn message of the preacher
with bowed head and heart full of trouble. When the hymn was sung,
“Come, humble sinner, in whose breast
A thousand thoughts revolve;
Come, with your guilt and fear oppressed,
And make this last resolve,”
I shall never forget the startled look of preacher and people as
straight to the mourners’ bench sped the lawyer, crying in agony
as he fell to the ground: “Send for Uncle Aleck!” And down in the
straw white-haired old Aleck wrestled with God for Marse John, until
a great shout went up from mourner and congregation as the master
hugged the old darky and the darky hugged his master, saying: “I
knew it was coming, Marse John.” You will pardon a man whose head
is growing gray if at times the heart grows hungry to turn back and
see and hear the old sights and sounds of God’s presence and power
as revealed especially at the ancient and now nearly extinct camp
meeting.
On a bright April day, 1861, books were closed in the old academy,
there was the blare of bugle and roll of drum on the streets,
people were hurrying together, and soon the roar of a cannon shook
the building, as they told us of the bombardment of Sumter by the
batteries of the young Confederacy. For months the very air had
been vibrant with sound of drum and fife, of rattling musket and
martial command. The Old South was soon a great camp of shifting,
drilling soldiery. Every departing train bore to the front the raw
and ungainly troops of the country, the trim city companies of
State guards, and the gayly dressed cadets of the military schools.
There were tender partings and long good-bys, so long to many of
them that not yet has word of home greeting come. It seemed a great
thing to be a soldier in those brave days when the girls decked the
parting ones in flowers and sang to them “The Girl I Left Behind
Me,” “Bonnie Blue Flag,” and “Maryland, My Maryland.” The scarlet
and gold and gray, the flashing sword and burnished musket, the gay
flowers and parting song, marked the beginning of that mighty death
struggle of the Old South. Soon the gay song deepened into the hush
before a great battle, or rose into the cry of the stricken heart
over the long lists of wounded and slain. War grew grim and fierce
and relentless. There were hunger and wounds, pale faces in hospital
and sharp death of men at the front; and sleeplessness and heartache
and holy privation and unfailing courage and comfort of Southern
womanhood at home. Fiercer and hotter came the storm of battle, as
the thin gray lines of Lee and Johnston confronted the soldiery and
the resources of the world. Manassas, Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg,
Seven Pines, Chancellorsville, Vicksburg, Gettysburg, the Wilderness,
Cold Harbor, Petersburg, Appomattox!—how these names, that wreathed
with crape their thousands of hearts and homes, and marked the rise
and fall of the battle tide, recall to us the passing of the Old
South!
On another April day in 1865, as a boy in Mahone’s Division, I looked
my last into the face of the Old South and its great commander, who
came riding down the line of our stacked guns, and, halting his old
gray war horse Traveler, tried to comfort our hearts by saying: “It’s
all over. Never mind, men; you have done your best. Go to your homes
and be as brave and true as you have been with me.”
In the great day of national assize, when empire, kingdom, and
republic of earth shall be gathered to judgment, and the Muse of
history shall unroll the record of their good and evil, the Old
South, the “uncrowned queen” of the centuries, will be in their
midst, her white vestment stained by the blood of her sons, her eyes
dimmed by sorrow and suffering. No chaplet of laurel shall encircle
her brow, and no noisy trump of fame shall hail her coming; but
round her fair, proud head, as of yore, shall shine a halo of love,
and Fame shall hang her head rebuked, and the trumpet fall from her
nerveless hand, as the spirit of the Old South is passing by.