THE REVIVAL AT REDWINE
But this was only the beginning of social and spiritual surprises
through which I passed. There was no culture among the people. They
looked like the poor kin of the angels in Heaven, and they really did
live so far out of the world that no bishop had ever seen them. I was
divided between horror and admiration at their soul-stretching
propensities, and it is difficult to describe the shock with which I
faced the perpetual exposure of their spiritual nakedness. It was a
naïve kind of religious indelicacy, like the unguarded ways of very
young children.
Brother Jimmie Meadows would confess to the most private faults in an
experience meeting, and, if he did not, Sister Meadows would do it for
him. They lacked the sense of humor, which, being interpreted, is a
part of the sense of proportion. They shrank from the illuminating
quality of wit as if it were a sacrilege--this auto-seriousness was
even an important part of William's character. He put on solemnity
like a robe when he was in the throes of thought.
The deadly monotony of Christian country life where there are no
beggars to feed, no drunkards to credit, which are among the moral
duties of Christians in cities, leads as naturally to the outvent of
what Methodists call "revivals" as did the backslidings of the people
in those days. So it came to pass, that year at Redwine, when the
"crops were laid by" William faced his first revival, and I faced
William. Spiritually speaking, we parted company. He passed into a
praying and fasting trance, and my heart was nearly broken with the
loneliness, for praying and fasting did not agree with me, and William
seemed to recede in some mystical sense hard to define, so that I
became a sort of unwilling grass-widow.
The revival was to begin at Redwine, when suddenly the rumor reached us
that Brother Tom Pratt, a prominent member, had back-slided, and that
nothing could be done there in a spiritual way until he was reclaimed.
He was a large, fair, goat-lipped man with a long straw beard hanging
under his chin, and he was said to be mightily gifted in prayer. But
his besetting sin was strong drink, and he had recently been drunk.
The simplicity with which William went about reclaiming him as a part
of the preparation for the coming revival seemed to me almost too
premeditatedly spiritual.
[Illustration: Brother Tom Pratt, a Prominent Member, Had Backslided.]
The revival proceeded, at first with awful chilliness, at length with
flickering warmth. At last, after a very moving sermon on the prodigal
son, the altar suddenly filled with penitents. I have often thought of
it, the tenderness with which the good God founded our Scriptures for
us, so they would fit the human heart to the uttermost generations of
men. That story of the prodigal is the eternal love message from Him
to us. Preach it anywhere, and the aching, shamed, dissolute rebel in
us trembles and wants to come home. Here in this hill settlement,
where scarcely any man had been ten miles from where he was born, it
seemed that a hundred had been secret vagabonds in the terrible "far
country." When the altar was full to suffocation William called on
Brother Tom Pratt to "lead us in prayer." And he led us through a long
night into the very morning of God. I wish it were the fashion to call
oftener on outbreaking sinners to pray in church. Usually they have a
stronger sense of the immediateness of the Lord than the long-winded
saints do; and many a time since that night have I listened to the
Heaven-turning eloquence of better men in prayer, but never have I
heard a nobler petition for the forgiveness of sin.
The church was a darkened space rimmed with light from tallow candles
standing on wooden brackets around the walls, and the space was filled
with the bowed forms of men and women. Near the pulpit there was more
light falling upon the dejected figures of the penitents clinging to
the altar rail. Within the rail, kneeling facing them, William's face
gleamed like the death mask of prayer.
There was a silence; then a voice arose from somewhere out of the
deeper shadows, timid, beseeching at first, like a sad messenger of the
outer darkness who had known all the torments of hell and trembled now
before the throne of Heaven. But as the bearer of the petition gained
courage from his very woes the volume of his voice increased until it
filled the church. The rafters shook, and sinners fell prostrate in
the chancel. This, however, was only the beginning. The great opera
of Brother Pratt's spirit went on like a rude Wagnerian measure until
none could resist it. Men arose from their knees shouting. Finally,
the prayer-maker, who had risen in his passion and stood praying with
his hands above his head, reaching visibly for salvation, fell
exhausted to the floor.
The scene is no less amazing to me now as I recall it than it was that
night thirty years ago as I sat, a trembling bride, in the remotest
corner, praying privately and fervently that the Lord would spare me
the sight of William taking part in it. I felt that if he did I should
ever after have some earth fear of him. If preachers could only preach
without thrusting us up too close to the awful elbows of God before our
time!
It was the custom in those days always to conclude a Methodist revival
with a "love feast"; you cannot have it where you cannot have an
old-fashioned revival. One of the coldest functions I ever attended
was a so-called "love feast" in a fashionable Methodist church at the
end of a series of meetings. The men wore tuxedos and the women wore
party gowns, high-necked, of course, on account of its being a church
affair. And the only difference between that and any other social
function was that a good many people were present whom the fashionable
members never invited to their own homes and whom they treated with
offensive cordiality on this occasion.
But at the end of the revival at Redwine there was a real "love feast."
A great crowd had assembled, due to the honorable curiosity in the
neighborhood to know who would "testify," who would confess his fault
or proclaim that he had forgiven some brother man about a line fence
between their farms or a shoat. It was, indeed, a sort of Dun and
Bradstreet opportunity to know the exact spiritual standing of every
man and woman in the community. And it was William's plan that the
service should be held in the evening out-of-doors under the great
pines. Torches of lightwood furnished the illumination. William stood
beside a small table facing the congregation, who were seated on the
benches that had been brought out of the church. After a song and a
prayer that must have made the old saints sit up on their dust in the
graveyard behind the church to listen, William gave the customary
invitation.
"Brethren and sisters," he said, "we have had a gracious meeting and a
mighty outpouring of the Spirit. It is meet and proper for those who
have been helped, who feel that their sins are forgiven, who aim to
live a new life, to get up and say so, and thus burn the bridges behind
them. Come out on the Lord's side so everybody can see where you
stand! I leave the meeting open to you."
"Brother Thompson," said a gray old man with meal on his coat, "I feel
that I have been blessed durin' this meetin', and I ask the prayers of
all Christian people that I may continue faithful to the end!"
"Amen!" said William, and there were general grunts of approval, for
the miller was known to be a wonderfully good man.
"Brother Thompson," said a strange, shaggy young Adam, "I feel that my
sins are forgiven me and that I am a child of God. I ask the prayers
of all Christian people that I may continue faithful." He was a
moonshiner who had destroyed his whisky and cut up his own copper worm
and vats during the meeting. As he resumed his seat a little thin
woman in a blue cotton dress sprang to her feet, hopped with the
belligerent air of a fighting jaybird across the intervening space and
lost herself in the arms of the regenerated moonshiner. She was his
wife, the good woman who stayed at home and prayed for him of nights.
Now she shouted and beat a tender tattoo with her little brown hands
upon his bowed head.
"I jest can't help shoutin'," she cried. "I'm so glad he done it!"
He had "done it" three times before--reformed, only to fall again so
soon as the corn was gathered in the fall. No one had confidence in
him save this little blue-winged heart who loved him. It is no wonder
women believe in God easier than anyone else does! They can believe
with so little reason in men.
After this followed several triumphant testimonies. Sister Glory White
began to shout sweetly and quietly in the amen corner, slapping her fat
hands together and whispering softly:
"Bless the Lord, O my soul! Bless the Lord, O my soul! And all that
is within me, praise His holy name!"
Presently there was an interruption. William had made the mistake of
confiding one of the torches to Brother Billy Fleming, a "holiness
man." Suddenly he leaped into the air, shouting and brandishing his
blaze in every direction. The paroxysm of joy was short, however, and
when quiet was restored, in the deeper darkness--for Brother Fleming's
torch had gone out--a tall man arose from near the middle of the
congregation. He had a bushy brown beard, a little apostrophe nose,
childish china-blue eyes, and a thin high voice which gave the
impression upon hearing it that he was at the very moment trying hard
to squeeze through the eye of his needle, spiritually speaking. I
recognized him as Brother John Henry, distinguished for having the most
sensitive conscience of any man in the church. Now he stood with the
tears in his eyes, too deeply moved for a moment to speak. Everyone
leaned forward, for it was always a matter of interest to know what
else was troubling Brother Henry's soul. At last, in a quavering
treble he confessed with the air of one doomed to suffer terrible
disappointment.
"Brother Thompson, you know, all of you know, I try to be a good man.
But the flesh is weak. I git tempted and fall into sin before I know
it. I'm sufferin' remorse now beca'se I set my old dominique hen twice
and cheated her into hatchin' two broods of chickens without givin' her
a day's rest between settin's! My remorse is worse beca'se a man can't
apologize to a hen or make restitution!"
Such rarefied confessions were common, and this was one of many
occasions when I disgraced William by snickering in the solemn pause
which followed.
However, these faded daguerreotypes of memory suggest but faintly any
idea of the people with whom I began my life as a minister's wife. I
can only show their narrowness. I am not able to give the shrill high
notes of faith in their lives. They made an awful business of being
good. And the contrast between them and the witty, mind-bred,
spirit-lost people of the world was startling indeed, but more to their
credit than some are accustomed to think.