"Ha! ha! good morning, Morton!" said the Captain. "You've been
keeping Patty down at the spring-house when she should have been at
the loom by this time. In my time young men and women didn't waste
their mornings. Nights and Sundays are good enough for visiting.
Now, see here, Patty, there's one of them plagued Methodist preachers
brought into the settlement by Wheeler. These circuit riders are
worse than third day fever 'n' ager. They go against dancing and
artificials and singing songs and reading novels and all other
amusements. They give people the jerks wherever they go. The
devil's in 'em. Now I want you to go to work and get up a dance
to-night, and ask all you can get along with. Nothing'll make the
preacher so mad as to dance right under his nose; and we'll keep a
good many people away who might get the jerks, or fall down with the
power and break their necks, maybe."
Patty was always ready to dance, and she only said: "If Morton will
help me send the invitations."
"I'll do that," said Morton, and then he told of the discomfiture he
had wrought in a Methodist meeting while he was gone. And he had the
satisfaction of seeing that the narrative greatly pleased Captain
Lumsden.
"We'll have to send Wheeler afloat sometime, eh, Mort?" said the
Captain, chuckling interrogatively. Morton did not like this
proposition, for, notwithstanding theological, differences about
election, Mrs. Wheeler was a fast friend of his mother. He evaded an
answer by hastening to consult with Patty and her mother concerning
the guests.
Those who got "invites" danced cotillions and reels nearly all night.
Morton danced with Patty to his heart's content, and in the happiness
of Morton's assured love and of a truce in her father's interruptions
she was a queen indeed. She wore the antique earrings that were an
heir-loom in her mother's family, and a showy breast-pin which her
father had bought her. These and her new dress of English calico
made her the envy of all the others. Pretty Betty Harsha was led out
by some one at almost every dance, but she would have given all of
these for one dance with Morton Goodwin.
Meantime Mr. Magruder was preaching. Behold in Hissawachee Bottom
the world's evils in miniature! Here are religion and amusement
divorced--set over the one against the other as hostile camps.
Brady, who was boarding for a few days with the widow Lumsden, went
to the meeting with Kike and his mother, explaining his views as he
went along.
"I'm no Mithodist, Mrs. Lumsden. Me father was a Catholic and me
mother a Prisbytarian, and they compromised on me by making me a
mimber of the Episcopalian Church and throyin' to edicate me for
orders, and intoirely spoiling me for iverything else but a school
taycher in these haythen backwoods. But it does same to me that the
Mithodists air the only payple that can do any good among sich pagans
as we air. What would a parson from the ould counthry do here? He
moight spake as grammathical as Lindley Murray himsilf, and nobody
would be the better of it. What good does me own grammathical
acquoirements do towards reforming the sittlement? With all me
grammar I can't kape me boys from makin' God's name the nominative
case before very bad words. Hey, Koike? Now, the Mithodists air a
narry sort of a payple. But if you want to make a strame strong you
hev to make it narry. I've read a good dale of history, and in me
own estimation the ould Anglish Puritans and the Mithodists air both
torrents, because they're both shet up by narry banks. The
Mithodists is ferninst the wearin' of jewelry and dancin' and singin'
songs, which is all vairy foolish in me own estimation. But it's
kind o' nat'ral for the mill-race that turns the whale that fades the
worruld to git mad at the babblin', oidle brook that wastes its toime
among the mossy shtones and grinds nobody's grist. But the brook
ain't so bad afther all. Hey, Mrs. Lumsden?"
Mrs. Lumsden answered that she didn't think it was. It was very good
for watering stock.
"Thrue as praychin', Mrs. Lumsden," said the schoolmaster, with a
laugh. "And to me own oi the wanderin' brook, a-goin' where it
chooses and doin' what it plazes, is a dale plizenter to look at
than, the sthraight-travelin' mill-race. But I wish these Mithodists
would convart the souls of some of these youngsters, and make 'em
quit their gamblin' and swearin' and bettin' on horses and gettin'
dthrunk. And maybe if some of 'em would git convarted, they wouldn't
be quoite so anxious to skelp their own uncles. Hey, Koike?"
Kike had no time to reply if he had cared to, for by this time they
were at the door of Colonel Wheeler's house. Despite the dance there
were present, from near and far, all the house would hold. For those
who got no "invite" to Lumsden's had a double motive for going to
meeting; a disposition to resent the slight was added to their
curiosity to hear the Methodist preacher. The dance had taken away
those who were most likely to disturb the meeting; people left out
did not feel under any obligation to gratify Captain Lumsden by
raising a row. Kike had been invited, but had disdained to dance in
his uncle's house.
Both lower rooms of Wheeler's log house were crowded with people. A
little open space was left at the door between the rooms for the
preacher, who presently came edging his way in through the crowd. He
had been at prayer in that favorite oratory of the early Methodist
preacher, the forest.
Magruder was a short, stout man, with wide shoulders, powerful arms,
shaggy brows, and bristling black hair. He read the hymn, two lines
at a time, and led the singing himself. He prayed with the utmost
sincerity, but in a voice that shook the cabin windows and gave the
simple people a deeper reverence for the dreadfulness of the
preacher's message. He prayed as a man talking face to face with the
Almighty Judge of the generations of men; he prayed with an
undoubting assurance of his own acceptance with God, and with the
sincerest conviction of the infinite peril of his unforgiven hearers.
It is not argument that reaches men, but conviction; and for
immediate, practical purposes, one Tishbite Elijah, that can thunder
out of a heart that never doubts, is worth a thousand acute writers
of ingenious apologies.
When Magruder read his text, which was, "Grieve not the Holy Spirit
of God," he seemed to his hearers a prophet come to lay bare their
hearts. Magruder had not been educated for his ministry by years of
study of Hebrew and Greek, of Exegesis and Systematics; but he knew
what was of vastly more consequence to him--how to read and expound
the hearts and lives of the impulsive, simple, reckless race among
whom he labored. He was of their very fibre.
He commenced with a fierce attack on Captain Lumsden's dance, which
was prompted, he said, by the devil, to keep men out of heaven. With
half a dozen quick, bold strokes, he depicted Lumsden's selfish
arrogance and proud meanness so exactly that the audience fluttered
with sensation. Magruder had a vicarious conscience; but a vicarious
conscience is good for nothing unless it first cuts close at home.
Whitefield said that he never preached a sermon to others till he had
first preached it to George Whitefield; and Magruder's severities had
all the more effect that his audience could see that they had full
force upon himself.
If is hard for us to understand the elements that produced such
incredible excitements as resulted from the early Methodist
preaching. How at a camp-meeting, for instance, five hundred people,
indifferent enough to everything of the sort one hour before, should
be seized during a sermon with terror--should cry aloud to God for
mercy, some of them falling in trances and cataleptic
unconsciousness; and how, out of all this excitement, there should
come forth, in very many cases, the fruit of transformed lives seems
to us a puzzle beyond solution. But the early Westerners were as
inflammable as tow; they did not deliberate, they were swept into
most of their decisions by contagious excitements. And never did any
class of men understand the art of exciting by oratory more perfectly
than the old Western preachers. The simple hunters to whom they
preached had the most absolute faith in the invisible. The Day of
Judgment, the doom of the wicked, and the blessedness of the
righteous were as real and substantial in their conception as any
facts in life. They could abide no refinements. The terribleness of
Indian warfare, the relentlessness of their own revengefulness, the
sudden lynchings, the abandoned wickedness of the lawless, and the
ruthlessness of mobs of "regulators" were a background upon which
they founded the most materialistic conception of hell and the most
literal understanding of the Day of Judgment. Men like Magruder knew
how to handle these few positive ideas of a future life so that they
were indeed terrible weapons.
On this evening he seized upon the particular sins of the people as
things by which they drove away the Spirit of God. The audience
trembled as he moved on in his rude speech and solemn indignation.
Every man found himself in turn called to the bar of his own
conscience. There was excitement throughout the house. Some were
angry, some sobbed aloud, as he alluded to "promises made to dying
friends," "vows offered to God by the new-made graves of their
children,"--for pioneer people are very susceptible to all such
appeals to sensibility.
When at last he came to speak of revenge, Kike, who had listened
intently from the first, found himself breathing hard. The preacher
showed how the revengeful man was "as much a murderer as if he had
already killed his enemy and hid his mangled body in the leaves of
the woods where none but the wolf could ever find him!"
At these words he turned to the part of the room where Kike sat,
white with feeling. Magruder, looking always for the effect of his
arrows, noted Kike's emotion and paused. The house was utterly
still, save now and then a sob from some anguish-smitten soul. The
people were sitting as if waiting their doom. Kike already saw in
his imagination the mutilated form of his uncle Enoch hidden in the
leaves and scented by hungry wolves. He waited to hear his own
sentence. Hitherto the preacher had spoken with vehemence. Now, he
stopped and began again with tears, and in a tone broken with
emotion, looking in a general way toward where Kike sat: "O, young
man, there are stains of blood on your hands! How dare you hold them
up before the Judge of all? You are another Cain, and God sends his
messenger to you to-day to inquire after him whom you have already
killed in your heart. _You are a murderer_! Nothing but God's mercy
can snatch you from hell!"
No doubt all this is rude in refined ears. But is it nothing that by
these rude words he laid bare Kike's sins to Kike's conscience? That
in this moment Kike heard the voice of God denouncing his sins, and
trembled? Can you do a man any higher service than to make him know
himself, in the light of the highest sense of right that he capable
of? Kike, for his part, bowed to the rebuke of the preacher as to
the rebuke of God. His frail frame shook with fear and penitence, as
it had before shaken with wrath. "O, God! what a wretch I am!" cried
he, hiding his face in his hands.
"Thank God for showing it to you, my young friend," responded the
preacher. "What a wonder that your sins did not drive away the Holy
Ghost, leaving you with your day of grace sinned away, as good as
damned already!" And with this he turned and appealed yet more
powerfully to the rest, already excited by the fresh contagion of
Kike's penitence, until there were cries and sobs in all parts of the
house. Some left in haste to avoid yielding to their feeling, while
many fell upon their knees and prayed.
The preacher now thought it time to change, and offer some
consolation. You would say that his view of the atonement was crude,
conventional and commercial; that he mistook figures of speech in
Scripture for general and formulated postulates. But however
imperfect his symbols, he succeeded in making known to his hearers
the mercy of God. And surely that is the main thing. The figure of
speech is but the vessel; the great truth that God is merciful to the
guilty, what is this but the water of life?--not less refreshing
because the jar in which it is brought is rude! The preacher's whole
manner changed. Many weeping and sobbing people were swept now to
the other extreme, and cried aloud with joy. Perhaps Magruder
exaggerated the change that had taken place in them. But is it
nothing that a man has bowed his soul in penitence before God's
justice, and then lifted his face in childlike trust to God's mercy?
It is hard for one who has once passed through this experience not to
date from it a revolution. There were many who had not much root in
themselves, doubtless, but among Magruder's hearers this day were
those who, living half a century afterward, counted their better
living from the hour of his forceful presentation of God's antagonism
to sin, and God's tender mercy for the sinner. It was not in Kike to
change quickly. Smitten with a sense of his guilt; he rose from his
seat and slowly knelt, quivering with feeling. When the preacher had
finished preaching, amid cries of sorrow and joy, he began to sing,
to an exquisitely pathetic tune, Watts' hymn:
"Show pity, Lord, O! Lord, forgive,
Let a repenting rebel live.
Are not thy mercies large and free?
May not a sinner trust in thee?"
The meeting was held until late. Kike remained quietly kneeling, the
tears trickling through his fingers. He did not utter a word or cry.
In all the confusion he was still. What deliberate recounting of his
own misdoings took place then, no one can know. Thoughtless readers
may scoff at the poor backwoods boy in his trouble. But who of us
would not be better if we could be brought thus face to face with our
own souls? His simple penitent faith did more for him than all our
philosophy has done for us, maybe.
At last the meeting was dismissed. Brady, who had been awe-stricken
at sight of Kike's agony of contrition, now thought it best that he
and Kike's mother should go home, leaving the young man to follow
when he chose. But Kike staid immovable upon his knees. His sense
of guilt had become an agony. All those allowances which we in a
more intelligent age make for inherited peculiarities and the defects
of education, Kike knew nothing about. He believed all his
revengefulness to be voluntary; he had a feeling that unless he found
some assurance of God's mercy then he could not live till morning.
So the minister and Mrs. Wheeler and two or three brethren that had
come from adjoining settlements staid and prayed and talked with the
distressed youth until after midnight. The early Methodists regarded
this persistence as a sure sign of a "sound" awakening.
At last the preacher knelt again by Kike, and asked "Sister Wheeler"
to pray. There was nothing in the old Methodist meetings so
excellent as the audible prayers of women. Women oftener than men
have a genius for prayer. Mrs. Wheeler began tenderly, penitently to
confess, not Kike's sins, but the sins of all of them; her penitence
fell in with Kike's; she confessed the very sins that he was grieving
over. Then slowly--slowly, as one who waits for another to
follow--she began to turn toward trustfulness. Like a little child
she spoke to God; under the influence of her praying Kike sobbed
audibly. Then he seemed to feel the contagion of her faith; he, too,
looked to God as a father; he, too, felt the peace of a trustful
child.
The great struggle was over. Kike was revengeful no longer. He was
distrustful and terrified no longer. He had "crept into the heart of
God" and found rest. Call it what you like, when a man passes
through such an experience, however induced, it separates the life
that is passed from the life that follows by a great gulf.
Kike, the new Kike, forgiving and forgiven, rose up at the close of
the prayer, and with a peaceful face shook hands with the preacher
and the brethren, rejoicing in this new fellowship. He said nothing,
but when Magruder sang
"Oh! how happy are they
Who their Saviour obey,
And have laid up their treasure above!
Tongue can never express
The sweet comfort and peace
Of a soul in its earliest love,"
Kike shook hands with them all again, bade them good-night, and went
home about the time that his friend Morton, flushed and weary with
dancing and pleasure, laid himself down to rest.
_CHAPTER XII._