Indiana, for six weeks--that is, in the Methodist, the Baptist and the
Presbyterian churches. The Roman Catholics went on calmly with only
their usual services, and were regarded with more than the ordinary
measure of pity by their Protestant neighbors as persons who had never
been properly converted, and were little better than benighted heathen.
Episcopalians, too, continued in the even tenor of their way, and had
their customary dancing and card parties, which were frowned on with
greater sternness than ever by the rigid Methodist, Presbyterian and
Baptist brethren who had not yet reached the tolerant stage in relation
to these amusements attained by members of their denominations in
larger cities. Even the young people of these churches who had been
wont to think longingly of the forbidden entertainments, and sometimes
to participate in them surreptitiously, now looked askance at the
frivolous givers of the parties and promised themselves that by the
help of the Lord they would never be led into such evil doings again,
for these young people were among the fruits of the revival, and had
bidden farewell to sin.
Such a wonderful ingathering of souls had not been known before in the
history of Greenbrier. The revival movement began simultaneously in
the three churches, and almost from the beginning a wave of religious
emotion manifested itself. Young and old were affected by it; innocent
children and case-hardened sinners succumbed, the first unresistingly,
the second reluctantly, to its power. Every night the churches were
crowded and every night penitents seeking salvation rose for prayers,
or went forward and knelt at the altar as the custom of the respective
sects required. Every night numbers of these penitents declared that
they had found what they sought, that they had shaken off the bonds
of iniquity and had entered upon a new life. Backsliders returned and
renewed their faith. The interest was intense. A subdued excitement
was in the air and affected the transaction of business and household
affairs throughout the town. People hurried through their evening meals
in order that they might miss no feature of the coming services. Now,
after six weeks, though there was no falling off in attendance, it
began to be said that the meetings would soon close. As one pious but
practical elder put it, the harvest was gathered, and why go raking
over the ground? A few sinners remained unconverted, it was true, but
they were seemingly hopeless and must be left to the Lord’s mercy.
On this Friday night of the sixth week as many people as ever hastened
along the streets to the places of meeting and the Methodist Church,
at least, quickly filled with a congregation as large as at any time
during the revival season. People had come to depend on the excitement
and dreaded a termination of it. In their narrow village life the
meetings took the place of drama and opera and social gayeties,
with the addition of a personal and emotional element that such
entertainments lack, and that held them through night after night of
prayer and exhortation without wearying. A thorough-going revival in a
town of this kind has uses not contemplated by its promoters.
Among the later arrivals was a group of young girls who entered a pew
not far from the door. There was a little crowding and confusion as
they passed in, and if Althea Hood, the youngest member of the party,
had been observant of her companions she would have seen that their
purpose was to give her a seat next the aisle. She saw nothing and
sat contentedly enough, her thoughts absorbed in the scene about her.
Althea was not yet sixteen; until these meetings opened she had never
attended a religious gathering more exciting than the Sunday morning
services in the Episcopal church where she went with her parents, and
the regular weekly Presbyterian prayer-meeting to which she had gone
with an elderly neighbor on several occasions. Her parents, easy-going
and indulgent, after the American fashion, had allowed their young
daughter to take her own way, and when she showed herself disinclined
to confirmation ceremonies had not insisted, saying to each other it
was better that she should choose the bonds she would wear when she
was old enough to know her duty to God and her fellow-creatures. So
far were they out of sympathy with revival methods that, perhaps, it
did not occur to them that their self-contained, unemotional child was
likely to be affected by them, and, indeed, she had shown no signs of
being so.
One by one her school associates had succumbed to the pleadings of
the pastors, evangelists or other workers in the vineyard, had passed
through a period of penitence and grief, and had finally declared,
in more or less childlike and incoherent phrase, that they felt the
burden of sin lifted from their souls and an assurance that they were
saved by divine grace. Henceforth they would turn their backs upon
the temptations of this world and would love God and praise Him for
the rest of their days. So many of these school-mates had professed
conversion that at last Althea was the only one of her circle who
remained unmoved by the appeals that had so affected the others. She
took a deep interest in all the proceedings, but seemed to make no
personal application of the exhortations. She watched her companions
curiously. That a change of some sort had passed over them was
plain. It manifested itself in an increased sedateness of behavior;
she was aware, too, in the presence of certain ones, of a pitying
condescension, as if she were no longer on an equality with them.
Others--two or three--went about with a rapt and radiant air as if,
indeed, they had entered upon a new life, and with glorified vision
looked out upon a more spiritual world than the unregenerate saw. These
she observed somewhat wistfully, but it was at no time borne in upon
her that she, too, could share their joy.
She was not self-conscious; had she been so she would have become aware
on this Friday night that unusual attention was directed her way. Long
after, she learned that she had been regarded by the elder brethren and
sisters as a “soul” whose conversion was, for various reasons, much to
be desired, and that a determined and concerted effort to break her
hitherto unmoved calm was prearranged for that evening.
All these meetings were informal. Some one began to sing, “Jesus, Lover
of My Soul,” and the congregation joined in with more than common
fervor. It was the old-time tune even more touching than the words.
Althea added her clear young voice to the rest as she had done before:
“All my trust on Thee is stayed,
All my help from Thee I bring;
Cover my defenseless head
With the shadow of Thy wing.”
As the verse came to an end an elderly sister, passing by, touched
Althea softly on the shoulder and whispered:
“You should come, dear, and give yourself to Jesus so you could sing
that with your heart.”
An aged brother lifted up his quavering voice in prayer. He was
illiterate, but it is piety and not erudition, we must believe, which
counts with the Maker of men.
“Oh, Lord,” he prayed, “Oh, Lord, there ain’t but a few sinners left in
this yer congregation, an’ ef you’ll jest pour out the speret upon us
to-night, jest pour it out free, we’ll fetch ’em in. They cain’t stand
out agin that power; they’ll realize thet they’re pore an’ needy. Bless
us, Lord, bless us right now!”
Then came the pleading hymn:
“Come ye sinners, poor and needy,
Weak and wounded, sick and sore;
Jesus ready stands to save you,
Full of pity, love and power;
He is able, He is able,
He is willing, doubt no more.”
The exhortations of the old pastor, commonly so fatherly and gentle,
had an almost youthful fire that night. He preached the wrath of God
as he had not done in all the weeks. The guilt of the one withholding
complete submission was pictured in the darkest colors. Repentance for
sin, acceptance of atoning grace, love for the Son, were the only means
of averting this wrath. Neither gifts nor praise, neither good works
nor clean living, could avail if the doer of righteous things walked
not humbly by faith in God. Delay meant death. Let the young yield up
their hearts now, or else risk the loss of life eternal.
After him came a young evangelist who was becoming noted for his
success as an “awakener.” He was a thin-faced, long-necked young man,
spoken of by admiring women as ascetic and spiritual. Discriminating
observers would have been apt to class him as dyspeptic and his
eloquence as sounding brass; nevertheless, with his peculiarly musical
voice and pleading manner he won attention where others failed. Althea
Hood had dreamed dreams about this young man. If she had understood
the secrets of her own foolish little child-heart she would have
been aware that his presence was one of the attractions that had
made her attendance so constant at the meetings. She was not in love
with him--the sentiment had no such strength as that. She was simply
experiencing the first faint flutterings of femininity roused to life
by masculine influence.
The evangelist clasped his hands before him in the praying-Samuel
position, and tossing back his long mane began to plead with those
lambs which had wandered away from the Shepherd’s loving arms. He said
nothing of sin or of guilt, repentence or forgiveness. He only called
upon the wanderers to come where love, and shelter, and tender care
awaited them. He quoted beautiful poetic passages from the Bible and
comforting promises; he talked of green pastures and still waters,
of light, and life, and love, but love was chiefly his theme. It was
divine love, of course, but the speaker’s voice was soft and low; his
eyes were directed toward Althea, and she, poor child, thrilled at his
tones and only half comprehended his words. In conclusion he held out
his hands entreatingly and sang:
“Love divine, all loves excelling,
Joy of heaven to earth come down;
Fix in us thy humble dwelling,
All thy faithful mercies crown.”
These little tenor solos, interspersed through his talks, were
distinctive features of his methods and were considered especially
effective. The revival spirit was fully aroused now. Song and prayer
quickly succeeded each other. Ejaculations of praise and murmurs of
ecstatic feeling were heard from all parts of the room in antiphonal
likeness. Brethren and sisters, gifted as pleaders, or led by sense of
duty to exercise their influence, moved among the congregation, seeking
out the few who, as the accepted phrase was, had not yet “confessed
Christ.” One after another besought Althea to yield up her heart. Tears
fell from the eyes of the old pastor as he urged her to go forward
to the “mourners’ bench” and take what might be her last chance for
salvation.
They were singing fervently just then:
“Alas, and did my Savior bleed,
And did my Sovereign die?
Would He devote that sacred head
For such a worm as I?”
“But I am not a vile sinner,” she protested. “I am not a worm,” and
would not go.
Her school-mates who had so lately read their own titles clear added
their petitions; her teacher urged upon her the duty of subduing her
pride and indifference; women and men for whom she had the greatest
respect, came to her and pointed out the strait and narrow path. They
left her still unmoved so far as outward indications showed. The young
evangelist approached. Her lips set together firmly; her hands, already
moving nervously, clenched themselves; the strain was becoming great,
but, “I will not go,” she whispered to herself. He reached out his
hand. “Come, little sister,” he said. “Come; the Good Shepherd wants
this lamb that is outside the fold. Come.” And she arose and followed
him.
In front of the pulpit was a long bench at which already were two
penitents--an old man who was converted at every revival and as
regularly became a backslider when the excitement subsided, and a young
man who was commonly spoken of in the community as a “hard case.” She
knelt beside them mechanically.
The congregation was singing with great volume of sound, “There’s a
Land That Is Fairer Than Day.” The young evangelist turned and lifted
his hand. There was silence, and with hands clasped and eyes uplifted
he sang “The Ninety and Nine.” It was like a solo by a famous tenor in
an opera--a feature of the evening that women, at least, would not have
missed for the world. He sang it through, and when he reached the last
triumphant strain excitement was at hysterical height:
“But all through the mountains thunder-riven,
And up from the rocky steep,
There rose a cry to the gate of heaven,
‘Rejoice! I have found my sheep!’
And the angels echoed around the throne,
‘Rejoice! for the Lord brings back His own!’”
There was a chorus of amens. “Bless the Lord!” shouted one brother;
“Praise His name!” exclaimed another. There were groans and
inarticulate cries. A woman uttered a piercing shriek, and falling
prone upon the floor in the aisle, lay there like a log. No one heeded
her; she had the “power” and would come to herself in good time.
Breathing was short and quick; faces were flushed; women and girls wept
silently, or with hysterical sobs, as their temperaments constrained
them; there was a rhythmical swaying of bodies; some one prayed loudly
but no one heard; the amens, the groans, and the bless-God’s were still
louder. Althea, half terrified by the tempest of emotion about her,
her self-control broken at last, sobbed convulsively.
A mother in Israel knelt beside her and entreated her to open her heart
and let love and forgiveness come in. The old man at the mourners’
bench rose with a joyful shout and announced that he felt to rejoice
that he had once more been anointed with the oil of gladness and had
obtained forgiveness for his sins.
“Come let us anew our journey pursue” began a voice near by, and the
congregation took up the strain.
The young man, who was a hard case, rose and stammeringly declared
that he had given his heart to God and hoped, by His help, to live a
Christian life from that time on.
As suddenly as Althea’s tears had begun they ceased and her excitement
was over. She rose to her feet just as her favorite hymn was being
sung--favorite, because of the pathetic minor cadences, not the words
whose sentiment was beyond her experience yet. Unconscious as a bird,
she joined in:
“Just as I am, without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bidst me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God! I come.”
The brethren and sisters near the front pressed around her with
congratulations. The pastor took her hand and patted it, his face
beaming.
“My daughter, I knew there was a blessing for you if you would take it.
Add your word of testimony now.”
“But I did not mean,” she said with startled emphasis. “I am not--I
have not had a blessing.”
They saw her lips move, but no one listened to her words, and the song
drowned them:
“Hallelujah ’tis done! I believe on the Son,
I am saved by the blood of the crucified One!”
Following this triumphant outburst came the joyful hymn:
“How happy are they
Who their Savior obey,
And have laid up their treasures above!
Tongue can not express
The sweet comfort and peace
Of a soul in its earliest love!”
She was counted among the converts. The pastor thanked God for her in
his prayer, and was a shade less enthusiastic in thanks for the rescue
of the backslider and the hard case.
Althea did not join in the singing of the doxology. All at once a
meaning seemed to come into the words which hardly had a meaning to her
before.
“Praise God from whom all blessings flow!”
Could she really praise God? Praise Him for what?
As she passed slowly down the crowded aisle hands were stretched
from every side to grasp hers in the kindly Methodist fashion; many
a blessing was invoked upon her by the older brethren and sisters;
younger friends said they were glad she had become one of them. She
only smiled faintly and was silent. Silence seemed cowardly, but how
could she tell them that it was not true, that she had experienced no
change of heart, that she was the same in every way that she had been
the day before? Or could it be, and she grasped at the thought, could
it be that a change had come and she did not know it? She had been
excited, had wept and then become calm like all her newly converted
friends. Then her eyes fell upon the hard case as he met his mother--an
old woman with care-worn, tear-stained face, transfigured, now, with
joy. His reckless, defiant expression had given way to a look of--what
was it?--determination, gladness, high endeavor? She felt that he had
attained something she had not and her hopeful thought for herself
vanished.
Pressed by the crowd into the angle of a doorway she heard the young
evangelist say in confidential tone to a leading member: “In this
business you have to make a study of people. Different methods must be
worked on old and young men, old women and young ones. Not many’ll hold
out if you go at ’em in the right way. I felt sure I’d fetch the Hood
girl. You know they say I have a taking way with the ladies,” and he
laughed foolishly.
“I’m powerful glad ye fetched her, it makes the even one hundred and
fifty--I don’t count the other two who went for’ard to-night, they
won’t stick--and one hundred and fifty is a mighty good showing in
a town like this; they’ll build up the church amazing. Besides, her
father, Colonel Hood, ’ll be madder’n a hornet. He don’t b’lieve in
religious revivals. He’s ’Piscopal.”
The old man chuckled in an ungodly way. Althea, hurrying by, felt, with
the changing impulse of youth, that she hated them both, and, with
mist of romance suddenly and cruelly cleared, she saw the evangelist
as a lean, lank, commonplace, self-conceited youth, and an innocent,
girlish ideal of manliness was forever gone.
It was not a happy frame of mind for a new convert.
* * * * *
A few months after the revival, which remains famous in the annals of
Greenbrier, life began for Althea Hood. This first experience of life
grew out of acquaintance with death. The destroyer came suddenly to her
father, not yet an old man. Under the shock the mother drooped and soon
followed her husband.
Althea, with the bewilderment which comes to the young who encounter
the great mystery, mourned and suffered as only the young do--without
the philosophy, the resignation, sometimes the peace and hope that
bereavement brings to age. Pious friends talked to her of the duty
of submission--she was still rebellious; of God’s love--she did not
know their meaning. The experience of the revival had left her without
religious feeling; it was as if her heart, which might have unfolded as
naturally to spiritual truth as a rose opens under sun and dew, had
ceased to grow, like a bud when torn apart by rough hands.
Life was not easy. Poverty was her portion, and a home with uncongenial
relatives until school days were past and she became a teacher among
new scenes and new people in the capital of the state.
There are teachers who profess to love their calling for its own sake.
Being truthful in other matters they must be believed in this. Althea
Hood was not one of these. She found teaching irksome, and when David
Phillips asked her to marry him she promptly said yes, and gladly gave
up her work.
Althea loved her husband with as deep an affection as she was capable
of entertaining at her stage of development.
In occasional moments of introspection Althea realized that she did not
have that absorbing, overwhelming affection for him that novelists’
heroines entertain for their chosen lovers, but satisfied herself with
the theory that such ardent emotions did not belong to real life.
David Phillips was a prosperous, energetic business man several years
older than she--a quiet, self-contained person who smiled indulgently
over his young wife’s æsthetic tastes, her fondness for poetry
and romance, her little outbursts of sentiment, her feminine ways
in general. If he did not seem to sympathize he, at least, did not
antagonize, and she was fairly content in her little daily round.
There were the housekeeping and social duties, the music, the reading,
the various odds and ends that fill the time of the woman who has
no ambitions outside her home, no consciousness of work to be done
there--these made up her routine. There were no ecstacies, no deep
emotions; it was a narrow life, and yet a day came when she looked back
to this period of peace as one of enviable bliss. There are but few
heights of joy in any life, and, in most, many depths of grief, so it
may be that the dead level of calm content, the absence of emotion, is
the happiness to be chosen--if choice were in human power.
Althea attended church during this time. It was respectable to do so;
it had been her early habit, and, besides, the beauty of the Episcopal
ritual pleased her. She could join in the prayer, “Have mercy upon us
miserable sinners,” with an intellectual pleasure in the sonorousness
of the response, but with as little understanding of heart as when the
brethren at the revival besought her to seek forgiveness for sin. But
though she did not comprehend, sometimes she wondered if all those who
joined in the prayers were as unmoved as she, and, if not, what secret
they possessed that she did not.
Then, one happy day, a new interest entered into her life. Her baby
came and her soul began to grow. It is not always so, though it is the
fashion to talk of mothers as gifted with a world of new spiritual and
moral graces. To those who look on, it too often seems that motherhood
means a narrowing of vision and an intensity of selfishness. But
Althea’s horizon widened. With her own child in her arms she looked out
upon a new world. Her eyes were suddenly opened to the needs of other
little ones. A vast pity filled her heart for the waifs, the hapless
creatures who are born to poverty and know suffering almost with their
first breath. “The cry of the children” appealed to her as it had never
done before. Her eyes once open, it was strange what vistas of both
joy and sorrow spread before them; she questioned why she had not seen
these things before.
Her little son waxed fat and fair. He was the delight of her days;
waking and sleeping he was in her dreams. She rejoiced in his infantile
graces, but her thoughts ran on and on and pictured him as he should
be as time went by--the sturdy lad loved by his playmates, the youth
excelling his companions in all noble undertakings, the strong, proud
man honored by the world, but through all the changes her own dear son,
still loving and true.
Her husband looked on, pleased at the sight of the maternal joy, the
look a little wistful at times, perhaps, because the wife was so lost
in the mother that he seemed half forgotten and quite unessential to
her happiness.
Then one terrible day the baby died, the little child who had lacked no
care that love could give. Out of the mother’s arms they took the fair
dimpled body for the last time; they folded the rose-leaf hands that
would flutter upon her bosom no more; they took him away, the life of
her life, and laid him under the flowers.
Is there agony for any human creature greater than that of the mother
bereaved?
She mourned in bitterness and without hope. Between her and the
“land that is fairer than day,” the land of which she once sang
so unthinkingly, rose a wall through which came no answer to her
resentful cries. In her wretchedness she turned against her husband.
She fancied that he was not sympathetic, that he really missed
their child but little. She brooded over this imaginary trouble in
addition to the genuine woe and brought herself into such a state of
antagonism that nothing he could do pleased her, and she withdrew
her companionship from him to a degree that left him bewildered and
helpless. He ascribed her irritability and coldness to her recent
bereavement. It was really one of those critical situations that occur
in most married lives before the art of living together in harmony has
been mastered. The little rift may close itself or become a chasm never
to be bridged.
David recommended change of scene. Would she go south and get the
early spring breezes? Would she come with him on a trip to New York
which business compelled him to take? Would she go anywhere her fancy
preferred and win back health to mind and nerves? These were questions
he asked her, but to all she coldly answered “no.” She “wished to be
alone,” she said, and he left her reluctantly.