"BROTHER SODOM."
In order to explain Walter Johnson's testimony and his state of mind, I
must carry the reader back nearly a week. The scene was Dr. Small's
office. Bud and Walter Johnson had been having some confidential
conversation that evening, and Bud had got more out of his companion
than that exquisite but weak young man had intended. He looked round in
a frightened way.
"You see," said Walter, "if Small knew I had told you that, I'd get a
bullet some night from somebody. But when you're initiated it'll be all
right. Sometimes I wish I was out of it. But, you know, Small's this
kind of a man. He sees through you. He can look through a door"--and
there he shivered, and his voice broke down into a whisper. But Bud was
perfectly cool, and doubtless it was the strong coolness of Bud that
made Walter, who shuddered at a shadow, come to him for sympathy and
unbosom himself of one of his guilty secrets.
"Let's go and hear Brother Sodom preach to-night," said Bud.
"No, I don't like to."
"He don't scare you?" There was just a touch of ridicule in Bud's voice.
He knew Walter, and he had not counted amiss when he used this little
goad to prick a skin so sensitive. "Brother Sodom" was the nickname
given by scoffers to the preacher--Mr. Soden--whose manner of preaching
had so aroused Bud's combativeness, and whose saddle-stirrups Bud had
helped to amputate. For reasons of his own, Bud thought best to subject
young Johnson to the heat of Mr. Soden's furnace.
Peter Cartwright boasts that, on a certain occasion, he "shook his
brimstone wallet" over the people. Mr. Soden could never preach without
his brimstone wallet. There are those of refinement so attenuated that
they will not admit that fear can have any place in religion. But a
religion without fear could never have evangelized or civilized the
West, which at one time bade fair to become a perdition as bad as any
that Brother Sodom ever depicted. And against these on the one side, and
the Brother Sodoms on the other, I shall interrupt my story to put this
chapter under shelter of that wise remark of the great Dr. Adam Clark,
who says "The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, the terror of God
confounds the soul;" and that other saying of his: "With the _fear_ of
God the love of God is ever consistent; but where the _terror_ of the
Lord reigns, there can neither be _fear, faith_, nor _love_; nay, nor
_hope_ either." And yet I am not sure that even the Brother Sodoms were
made in vain.
On this evening Mr. Soden was as terrible as usual. Bud heard him
without flinching. Small, who sat farther forward, listened with pious
approval. Mr. Soden, out of distorted figures pieced together from
different passages of Scripture, built a hell, not quite, Miltonic, nor
yet Dantean, but as Miltonic and Dantean as his unrefined imagination
could make it. As he rose toward his climax of hideous description,
Walter Johnson trembled from head to foot and sat close to Bud. Then, as
burly Mr. Soden, with great gusto, depicted materialistic tortures that
startled the nerves of everybody except Bud, Walter wanted to leave, but
Bud would not let him. For some reason he wished to keep his companion
in the crucible as long as possible.
"Young man!" cried Mr. Soden, and the explosive voice seemed to come
from the hell that he had created--"young man! you who have followed the
counsel of evil companions"--here he paused and looked about, as if
trying to find the man he wanted, while Walter crept up close to Bud
and shaded his face--"I mean you who have chosen evil pursuits and who
can not get free from bad habits and associations that are dragging you
down to hell! You are standing on the very crumbling brink of hell
to-night. The smell of the brimstone is on your garments; the hot breath
of hell is in your face! The devils are waiting for you! Delay and you
are damned! You may die before daylight! You may never get out that
door! The awful angel of death is just ready to strike you down!" Here
some shrieked with terror, others sobbed, and Brother Sodom looked with
approval on the storm he had awakened. The very harshness of his tone,
his lofty egotism of manner, that which had roused all Bud's
combativeness, shook poor Walter as a wind would shake a reed. In the
midst of the general excitement he seized his hat and hastened out the
door. Bud followed, while Soden shot his lightnings after them,
declaring that "young men who ran away from the truth would dwell in
torments forever."
Bud had not counted amiss when he thought that Mr. Soden's preaching
would be likely to arouse so mean-spirited a fellow as Walter. So vivid
was the impression that Johnson begged Bud to return to the office with
him. He felt sick, and was afraid that he should die before morning. He
insisted that Bud should stay with him all night. To this Means readily
consented, and by morning he had heard all that the frightened Walter
had to tell.
And now let us return to the trial, where Ralph sits waiting the
testimony of Walter Johnson, which is to prove his statement false.