Parson Donaldson was journeying down to Cincinnati--at that time a
thriving village of about two thousand people--to attend Presbytery
and to contend manfully against the sinful laxity of some of his
brethren in the matters of doctrine and revivals. In previous years
Mr. Donaldson had been beaten a little in his endeavors to have
carried through the extremest measures against his more progressive
"new-side" brethren. He considered the doctrines of these zealous
Presbyterians as very little better than the crazy ranting of the
ungrammatical circuit riders. At the moment of passing the tavern
where Morton sat, condemned to death, he was eagerly engaged in
"laying out" a speech with which he intended to rout false doctrines
and annihilate forever incipient fanaticism. His square head had
fallen forward, and he only observed that there was a crowd of
godless and noisy men about the tavern. He could not spare time to
note anything farther, for the fate of Zion seemed to hang upon the
weight and cogency of the speech which he meant to deliver at
Cincinnati. He had almost passed out of sight when Morton first
caught sight of him; and when the young man, finding that no one
would go after him, set up a vigorous calling of his name, Mr.
Donaldson did not hear it, or at least did not think for an instant
that anybody in that crowd could be calling his own name. How should
he hear Morton's cry? For just at that moment he had reached the
portion of his argument in which he triumphantly proved that his
new-side friends, however unconscious they might be of the fact, were
of necessity Pelagians, and, hence, guilty of fatal error.
Morton's earnest entreaties at last moved one of the crowd.
"Well, I don't mind," he said; "I'll call him. 'Pears like as ef
he's a-lyin' any how. I don't 'low as he knows the ole coon, or the
ole coon knows him--liker'n not he's a-foolin' by lettin' on; but 't
won't do no harm to call him back." Saying which, he mounted his
gaunt horse and rode away after Mr. Donaldson.
"Hello, stranger! I say, there! Mister! O, mister! Hello, you ole
man on horseback!"
This was the polite manner of address with which the messenger
interrupted the theological meditations of the worthy Mr. Donaldson
at the moment of his most triumphant anticipations of victory over
his opponents.
"Well, what is it?" asked the minister, turning round on the
messenger a little tartly; much as one would who is suddenly awakened
and not at all pleased to be awakened.
"They's a feller back here as we tuck up fer a hoss-thief, and we had
three-quarters of a notion of stringin' on him up; but he says as how
as he knows you, and ef you kin do him any good, I hope you'll do it,
for I do hate to see a feller being hung, that's sartain shore."
"A horse-thief says that he knows me?" said the parson, not yet
fairly awake to the situation. "Indeed? I'm in a great hurry. What
does he want? Wants me to pray with him, I suppose. Well, it is
never too late. God's election is of grace, and often he seems to
select the greatest sinners that he may thereby magnify his grace and
get to himself a great name. I'll go and see him."
And with that, Donaldson rode back to the tavern, endeavoring to turn
his thoughts out of the polemical groove in which they had been
running all day, that he might think of some fitting words to say to
a malefactor. But when he stood before the young man he started with
surprise.
"What! Morton Goodwin! Have you taken to stealing horses? I should
have thought that the unhappy career of your brother, so soon cut
short in God's righteousness, would have been a warning to you. My
dear young man, how could you bring such disgrace and shame on the
gray hairs----"
Before Mr. Donaldson had gotten to this point, a murmur of excitement
went through the crowd. They believed that the prisoner's own
witness had turned against him and that they had a second quasi
sanction from the clergy for the deed of violence they were
meditating. Perceiving this, Morton interrupted the minister with
some impatience, crying out:
"But, Mr. Donaldson, hold on; you have judged me too quick. These
folks are going to hang me without any evidence at all, except that I
was riding a good horse. Now, I want you to tell them whose filley
yon is."
Mr. Donaldson looked at the mare and declared to the crowd that he
had seen this young man riding that colt for more than a year past,
and that if they were proceeding against him on a charge of stealing
that mare, they were acting most unwarrantably.
"Why couldn't he tell a feller whose mar he had, and whar he was
a-goin'?" said the man from the other side of the river.
"I don't know. How did you come here, Morton?"
"Well, I'll tell you a straight story. I was gambling on Sunday
night----"
"Breaking two Commandments at once," broke in the minister.
"Yes, sir, I know it; and I lost everything I had--horse and gun and
all--I seemed clean crazy. I lost a hundred dollars more'n I had,
and I give the man I was playing with a bill of sale for my horse and
gun. Then he agreed to let me go where I pleased and keep 'em for
six months and I was ashamed to go home; so I rode off, like a fool,
hoping to find some place where I could make the money to redeem my
colt with. That's how I didn't give straight answers about whose
horse it was, and where I was going."
"Well, neighbors, it seems clear to me that you'll have to let the
young man go. You ought to be thankful that God in his good
providence has saved you from the guilt of those who shed innocent
blood. He is a very respectable young man, indeed, and often attends
church with his mother. I am sorry he has got into bad habits."
"I'm right glad to git shed of a ugly job," said one of the party;
and as the rest offered no objection, he cut the cords that bound
Morton's arms and let him go. The landlord had stabled Dolly and fed
her, hoping that some accident would leave her in his hands; the man
from the other side of the creek had taken possession of the rifle as
"his sheer, considerin' the trouble he'd tuck." The horse and gun
were now reluctantly given up, and the party made haste to disperse,
each one having suddenly remembered some duty that demanded immediate
attention. In a little while Morton sat on his horse listening to
some very earnest words from the minister on the sinfulness of
gambling and Sabbath-breaking. But Mr. Donaldson, having heard of
the Methodistic excitement in the Hissawachee settlement, slipped
easily to that, and urged Morton not to have anything whatever to do
with this mushroom religion, that grew up in a night and withered in
a day. In fact the old man delivered to Morton most of the speech he
had prepared for the Presbytery on the evil of religious excitements.
Then he shook hands with him, exacted a promise that he would go
directly home, and, with a few seasonable words on God's mercy in
rescuing him from a miserable death, he parted from the young man.
Somehow, after that he did not get on quite so well with his speech.
After all, was it not better, perhaps, that this young man should be
drawn into the whirlpool of a Methodist excitement than that he
should become a gambler? After thinking over it a while, however,
the logical intellect of the preacher luckily enabled him to escape
this dangerous quicksand, in reaching the sound conclusion that a
religious excitement could only result in spiritual pride and
Pelagian doctrine, and that the man involved in these would be lost
as certainly as a gambler or a thief.
Now, lest some refined Methodist of the present day should be a
little too severe on our good friend Mr. Donaldson, I must express my
sympathy for the worthy old gentleman as he goes riding along toward
the scene of conflict. Dear, genteel, and cultivated Methodist
reader, you who rejoice in the patristic glory of Methodism, though
you have so far departed from the standard of the fathers as to wear
gold and costly apparel and sing songs and read some novels, be not
too hard upon our good friend Donaldson. Had you, fastidious
Methodist friend, who listen to organs and choirs, and refined
preachers, as you sit in your cushioned pew--had you lived in Ohio
sixty years ago, would you have belonged to the Methodists, think
you? Not at all! your nerves would have been racked by their
shouting, your musical and poetical taste outraged by their ditties,
your grammatical knowledge shocked beyond recovery by their English;
you could never have worshiped in an excitement that prostrated
people in religious catalepsy, and threw weak saints and obstinate
sinners alike into the contortions of the jerks. It is easy to build
the tombs of the prophets while you reap the harvest they sowed, and
after they have been already canonized. It is easy to build the
tombs of the early prophets now while we stone the prophets of our
own time, maybe. Permit me, Methodist brother, to believe that had
you lived in the days of Parson Donaldson, you would have condemned
these rude Tishbites as sharply as he did. But you would have been
wrong, as he was. For without them there must have been barbarism,
worse than that of Arkansas and Texas. Methodism was to the West all
that Puritanism was to New England. Both of them are sublime when
considered historically; neither of them were very agreeable to live
with, maybe.
But, alas! I am growing as theological as Mr. Donaldson himself.
Meantime Morton has forded the creek at a point more favorable than
his crossing of the night before, and is riding rapidly homeward; and
ever, as he recedes from the scene of his peril and approaches his
home, do the embarrassments of his situation become more appalling.
If he could only be sure of himself in the future, there would be
hope. But to a nature so energetic as his, there is no action
possible but in a right line and with the whole heart.
In returning, Morton had been directed to follow a "trace" that led
him toward home by a much nearer way than he had come. After riding
twenty miles, he emerged from the wilderness into a settlement just
as the sun was sitting. It happened that the house where he found a
hospitable supper and lodging was already set apart for Methodist
preaching that evening. After supper the shuck-bottom chairs and
rude benches were arranged about the walls, and the intermediate
space was left to be filled by seats which should be brought in by
friendly neighbors. Morton gathered from the conversation that the
preacher was none other than the celebrated Valentine Cook, who was
held in such esteem that it was even believed that he had a prophetic
inspiration and a miraculous gift of healing. This "class" had been
founded by his preaching, in the days of his vigor. He had long
since given up "traveling," on account of his health. He was now a
teacher in Kentucky, being, by all odds, the most scholarly of the
Western itinerants. He had set out on a journey among the churches
with whom he had labored, seeking to strengthen the hands of the
brethren, who were like a few sheep in the wilderness. The old
Levantine churches did not more heartily welcome the final visit of
Paul the Aged than did the backwoods churches this farewell tour of
Valentine Cook.
Finding himself thus fairly entrapped again by a Methodist meeting,
Morton felt no little agitation. His mother had heard Cook in his
younger days, in Pennsylvania, and he was thus familiar with his fame
as a man and as a preacher. Morton was not only curious to hear him;
he entertained a faint hope that the great preacher might lead him
out of his embarrassment.
After supper Goodwin strolled out through the trees trying to collect
his thoughts; determined at one moment to become a Methodist and end
his struggles, seeking, the next, to build a breastwork of resistance
against the sermon that he must hear. Having walked some distance
from the house into the bushes, he came suddenly upon the preacher
himself, kneeling in earnest audible prayer. So rapt was the old man
in his devotion that he did not note the approach of Goodwin, until
the latter, awed at sight of a man talking face to face with God,
stopped, trembling, where he stood. Cook then saw him, and, arising,
reached out his hand to the young man, saying in a voice tremulous
with emotion: "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a
crown of life." Morton endeavored, in a few stammering words, to
explain his accidental intrusion, but the venerable man seemed almost
at once to have forgotten his presence, for he had taken his seat
upon a log and appeared absorbed in thought. Morton retreated just
in time to secure a place in the cabin, now almost full. The members
of the church, men and women, as they entered, knelt in silent prayer
before taking their seats. Hardly silent either, for the old
Methodist could do nothing without noise, and even while he knelt in
what he considered silent prayer, he burst forth, continually in
audible ejaculations of "Ah--ah!" "O my Lord, help!" "Hah!" and
other groaning expressions of his inward wrestling--groanings easily
uttered, but entirely without a possible orthography. With most,
this was the simple habit of an uncultivated and unreserved nature;
in later times the ostentatious and hypocritical did not fail to
cultivate it as an evidence of superior piety.
But now the room is full. People are crowding the doorways. The
good old-class leader has shut his eyes and turned his face
heavenward. Presently he strikes up lustily, leading the
congregation in singing:
"How tedious and tasteless the hours
When Jesus no longer I see!"
When he reached the stanza that declares:
"While blest with a sense of his love
A palace a toy would appear;
And prisons would palaces prove,
If Jesus would dwell with me there."
there were shouts of "Halleluiah!" "Praise the Lord!" and so forth.
At the last quatrain, which runs,
"O! drive these dark clouds from my sky!
Thy soul-cheering presence restore;
Or take me to thee up on high,
Where winter and clouds are no more!"
there were the heartiest "Amens," though they must have been spoken
in a poetic sense. I cannot believe that any of the excellent
brethren, even in that moment of exaltation, would really have
desired translation to the world beyond the clouds.
The preacher, in his meditations, had forgotten his congregation--a
very common bit of absent-mindedness with Valentine Cook; and so,
when this hymn was finished, a sister, with a rich but uncultivated
soprano, started, to the tune called "Indian Philosopher," that
inspiring song which begins:
"Come on, my partners in distress,
My comrades in this wilderness,
Who still your bodies feel;
Awhile forget your griefs and tears,
Look forward through this vale of tears
To that celestial hill."
The hymn was long, and by the time it was completed the preacher,
having suddenly come to himself, entered hurriedly, and pushed
forward to the place arranged for him. The festoons of dried pumpkin
hanging from the joists reached nearly to his head; a tallow dip,
sitting in the window, shed a feeble light upon his face as he stood
there, tall, gaunt, awkward, weather-beaten, with deep-sunken, weird,
hazel eyes, a low forehead, a prominent nose, coarse black hair
resisting yet the approach of age, and a _tout ensemble_ unpromising,
but peculiar. He began immediately to repeat his hymn:
"I saw one hanging on a tree
In agony and blood;
He fixed his languid eye on me,
As near the cross I stood."
His tone was monotonous, his eyes seemed to have a fascination, and
the pathos of his voice, quivering with suppressed emotion, was
indescribable. Before his prayer was concluded the enthusiastic
Morton felt that he could follow such a leader to the world's end.
He repeated his text: "_Behold, the day cometh_," and launched at
once into a strongly impressive introduction about the all-pervading
presence of God, until the whole house seemed full of God, and Morton
found himself breathing fearfully, with a sense of God's presence and
ineffable holiness. Then he took up that never-failing theme of the
pioneer preacher--the sinfulness of sin--and there were suppressed
cries of anguish over the whole house. Morton could hardly feel more
contempt for himself than he had felt for two days past; but when the
preacher advanced to his climax of the Atonement and the Forgiveness
of Sins, Goodwin felt himself carried away as with a flood. In that
hour, with God around, above, beneath, without and within--with a
feeling that since his escape he held his life by a sort of
reprieve--with the inspiring and persuasive accents of this weird
prophet ringing in his ears, he cast behind him all human loves, all
ambitious purposes, all recollections of theological puzzles, and set
himself to a self-denying life. With one final battle he closed his
conflict about Patty. He would do right at all hazards.
Morton never had other conversion than this. He could not tell of
such a struggle as Kike's. All he knew was that there had been
conflict. When once he decided, there was harmony and peace. When
Valentine Cook had concluded his rapt peroration, setting the whole
house ablaze with feeling, and then proceeded to "open the doors of
the church" by singing,
"Am I a soldier of the Cross,
A follower of the Lamb,
And shall I fear to own his cause,
Or blush to speak his name?"
it was with a sort of military exaltation--a defiance of the world,
the flesh, and the devil--that Morton went forward and took the hand
of the preacher, as a sign that he solemnly enrolled himself among
those who meant to
"----conquer though they die."
He was accustomed to say in after years, using the Methodist
phraseology, that "God spoke peace to his soul the moment he made up
his mind to give up all." That God does speak to the heart of man in
its great crises I cannot doubt; but God works with, and not against,
the laws of mind. When Morton ceased to contend with his highest
impulses there was no more discord, and he was of too healthful and
objective a temperament to have subjective fights with fanciful
Apollyons. When peace came he accepted it. One of the old brethren
who crowded round him that night and questioned him about his
experience was "afeard it warn't a rale deep conversion. They wuzn't
wras'lin' and strugglin' enough." But the wise Valentine Cook said,
when he took Morton's hand to say good-bye, and looked into his clear
blue eye, "Hold fast the beginning of thy confidence, brother."
_CHAPTER XVIII._