University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI.
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS.

“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 tonight,
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. White-field
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.

It 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:

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

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.