University of Virginia Library

14. CHAPTER XIV.
KIKE'S SERMON.

DURING the time that had intervened between
Kike's conversion and Magruder's second visit
to the settlement, Kike had developed a very considerable
gift for earnest speech in the class meetings.
In that day every influence in Methodist association
contributed to make a preacher of a man of force.
The reverence with which a self-denying preacher was
regarded by the people was a great compensation for
the poverty and toil that pertained to the office. To
be a preacher was to be canonized during one's lifetime.
The moment a young man showed zeal and
fluency he was pitched on by all the brethren and
sisters as one whose duty it was to preach the Gospel;
he was asked whether he did not feel that he
had a divine call; he was set upon watching the
movements within him to see whether or not he
ought to be among the sons of the prophets. Often-times
a man was made to feel, in spite of his own
better judgment, that he was a veritable Jonah, slinking
from duty, and in imminent peril of a whale in
the shape of some providential disaster. Kike, indeed,
needed none of these urgings to impel him toward
the ministry. He was a man of the prophetic temperament—one
of those men whose beliefs take hold
of them more strongly than the objects of sense. The

future life, as preached by the early Methodists, with
all its joys and all its awful torments, became the
most substantial of realities to him. He was in constant
astonishment that people could believe these
things theoretically and ignore them in practice. If
men were going headlong to perdition, and could be
saved and brought into a paradise of eternal bliss by
preaching, then what nobler work could there be than
that of saving them? And, let a man take what view
he may of a future life, Kike's opinion was the right
one—no work can be so excellent as that of helping
men to better living.

Kike had been poring over some works of Methodist
biography which he had borrowed, and the sublimated
life of Fletcher was the only one that fulfilled
his ideal. Methodism preached consecration to its
disciples. Kike had already learned from Mrs. Wheeler,
who was the class-leader at Hissawachee settlement,
and from Methodist literature, that he must “keep all
on the altar.” He must be ready to do, to suffer, or
to perish, for the Master. The sternest sayings of
Christ about forsaking father and mother, and hating
one's own life and kindred, he heard often repeated in
exhortations. Most people are not harmed by a literal
understanding of hyperbolical expressions. Laziness
and selfishness are great antidotes to fanaticism, and
often pass current for common sense. Kike had no
such buffers; taught to accept the words of the Gospel
with the dry literalness of statutory enactments, he was
too honest to evade their force, too earnest to slacken
his obedience. He was already prepared to accept

any burden and endure any trial that might be given
as a test of discipleship. All his natural ambition, vehemence,
and persistence, found exercise in his religious
life; and the simple-hearted brethren, not knowing
that the one sort of intensity was but the counterpart
of the other, pointed to the transformation as a
“beautiful conversion,” a standing miracle. So it was,
indeed, and, like all moral miracles, it was worked in
the direction of individuality, not in opposition to it.

It was a grievous disappointment to the little band
of Methodists that Brother Magruder's face was so
swollen, after his encounter, as to prevent his preaching.
They had counted much upon the success of this
day's work, and now the devil seemed about to snatch
the victory. Mrs. Wheeler enthusiastically recommended
Kike as a substitute, and Magruder sent for him
in haste. Kike was gratified to hear that the preacher
wanted to see him personally. His sallow face flushed
with pleasure as he stood, a slender stripling, before
the messenger of God.

“Brother Lumsden,” said Mr. Magruder, “are you
ready to do and to suffer for Christ?”

“I trust I am,” said Kike, wondering what the
preacher could mean.

“You see how the devil has planned to defeat the
Lord's work to-day. My lip is swelled, and my jaw
so stiff that I can hardly speak. Are you ready to do
the duty the Lord shall put upon you?”

Kike trembled from head to foot. He had often
fancied himself preaching his first sermon in a strange
neighborhood, and he had even picked out his text;

but to stand up suddenly before his school-mates,
before his mother, before Brady, and, worse than all,
before Morton, was terrible. And yet, had he not that
very morning made a solemn vow that he would not
shrink from death itself!

“Do you think I am fit to preach?” he asked, evasively.

“None of us are fit; but here will be two or three
hundred people hungry for the bread of life. The
Master has fed you; he offers you the bread to distribute
among your friends and neighbors. Now, will
you let the fear of man make you deny the blessed
Lord who has taken you out of a horrible pit and set
your feet upon the Rock of Ages?”

Kike trembled a moment, and then said: “I will
do whatever you say, if you will pray for me.”

“I'll do that, my brother. And now take your
Bible, and go into the woods and pray. The Lord will
show you the way, if you put your whole trust in
him.”

The preacher's allusion to the bread of life gave
Kike his subject, and he soon gathered a few thoughts
which he wrote down on a fly-leaf of the Bible, in the
shape of a skeleton. But it occurred to him that he
had not one word to say on the subject of the bread
of life beyond the sentences of his skeleton. The
more this became evident to him, the greater was his
agony of fear. He knelt on the brown leaves by a
prostrate log; he made a “new consecration” of himself;
he tried to feel willing to fail, so far as his own
feelings were involved; he reminded the Lord of his

promises to be with them he had sent; and then there
came into his memory a text of Scripture: “For it
shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall
speak.” Taking it, after the manner of the early Methodist
mysticism, that the text had been supernaturally
“suggested” to him, he became calm; and finding,
from the height of the sun, that it was about the hour
for meeting, he returned to the house of Colonel
Wheeler, and was appalled at the sight that met his
eyes. All the settlement, and many from other settlements,
had come. The house, the yard, the fences,
were full of people. Kike was seized with a tremor.
He did not feel able to run the gauntlet of such a
throng. He made a detour, and crept in at the back
door like a criminal. For stage-fright—this fear of human
presence—is not a thing to be overcome by the
will. Susceptible natures are always liable to it, and
neither moral nor physical courage can avert it.

A chair had been placed in the front door of the
log house, for Kike, that he might preach to the congregation
indoors and the much larger one outdoors.
Mr. Magruder, much battered up, sat on a wooden
bench just outside. Kike crept into the empty chair
in the doorway with the feeling of one who intrudes
where he does not belong. The brethren were singing,
as a congregational voluntary, to the solemn tune of
“Kentucky,” the hymn which begins:

Magruder saw Kike's fright, and, leaning over to
him, said: “If you get confused, tell your own experience.”
The early preacher's universal refuge was his
own experience. It was a sure key to the sympathies
of the audience.

Kike got through the opening exercises very well.
He could pray, for in praying he shut his eyes and
uttered the cry of his trembling soul for help. He
had been beating about among two or three texts,
either of which would do for a head-piece to the remarks
he intended to make; but now one fixed itself
in his mind as he stood appalled by his situation in
the presence of such a throng. He rose and read,
with a tremulous voice:

The text arrested the attention of all. Magruder,
though unable to speak without pain, could not refrain
from saying aloud, after the free old Methodist fashion:
“The Lord multiply the loaves! Bless and break
to the multitude!” “Amen!” responded an old brother
from another settlement, “and the Lord help the
lad!” But Kike felt that the advantage which the text
had given him would be of short duration. The novelty
of his position bewildered him. His face flushed;
his thoughts became confused; he turned his back on
the audience out of doors, and talked rapidly to the
few friends in the house: the old brethren leaned their
heads upon their hands and began to pray. Whatever
spiritual help their prayers may have brought him,

their lugubrious groaning, and their doleful, audible
prayers of “Lord, help!” depressed Kike immeasurably,
and kept the precipice on which he stood constantly
present to him. He tried in succession each
division that he had sketched on the fly-leaf of the
Bible, and found little to say on any of them. At last,
he could not see the audience distinctly for confusion
—there was a dim vision of heads swimming before
him. He stopped still, and Magruder, expecting him
to sit down, resolved to “exhort” if the pain should
kill him. The Philistines meanwhile were laughing at
Kike's evident discomfiture.

But Kike had no notion of sitting down. The
laughter awakened his combativeness, and his combativeness
restored his self-control. Persistent people begin
their success where others end in failure. He was
through with the sermon, and it had occupied just six
minutes. The lad's scanty provisions had not been
multiplied. But he felt relieved. The sermon over,
there was no longer necessity for trying to speak
against time, nor for observing the outward manner of
a preacher.

“Now,” he said, doggedly, “you have all seen that
I cannot preach worth a cent. When David went out
to fight, he had the good sense not to put on Saul's
armor. I was fool enough to try to wear Brother Magruder's.
Now, I'm done with that. The text and
sermon are gone. But I'm not ashamed of Jesus
Christ. And before I sit down, I am going to tell
you all what he has done for a poor lost sinner like
me.”

Kike told the story with sincere directness. His
recital of his own sins was a rebuke to others; with a
trembling voice and a simple earnestness absolutely
electrical, he told of his revengefulness, and of the
effect of Magruder's preaching on him. And now that
the flood-gates of emotion were opened, all trepidation
departed, and there came instead the fine glow of martial
courage. He could have faced the universe.
From his own life the transition to the lives of those
around him was easy. He hit right and left. The
excitable crowd swayed with consternation as, in a rapid
and vehement utterance, he denounced their sins
with the particularity of one who had been familiar
with them all his life. Magruder forgot to respond;
he only leaned back and looked in bewilderment, with
open eyes and mouth, at the fiery boy whose contagious
excitement was fast setting the whole audience
ablaze. Slowly the people pressed forward off the
fences. All at once there was a loud bellowing cry
from some one who had fallen prostrate outside the
fence, and who began to cry aloud as if the portals
of an endless perdition were yawning in his face. Magruder
pressed through the crowd to find that the
fallen man was his antagonist of the morning — Bill
McConkey! Bill had concealed his bruised nose behind
a tree, but had been drawn forth by the fascination of
Kike's earnestness, and had finally fallen under the effect
of his own terror. This outburst of agony from McConkey
was fuel to the flames, and the excitement now
spread to all parts of the audience. Kike went from
man to man, and exhorted and rebuked each one in

particular. Brady, not wishing to hear a public commentary
on his own life, waddled away when he saw
Kike coming; his mother wept bitterly under his exhortation;
and Morton sat stock still on the fence listening,
half in anguish and half in anger, to Kike's
public recital of his sins.

At last Kike approached his uncle; for Captain
Lumsden had come on purpose to enjoy Morton's
proposed interruption. He listened a minute to Kike's
exhortation, and the contrary emotions of alarm at
the thought of God's judgment and anger at Kike's
impudence contended within him until he started for
his horse and was seized with that curious nervous
affection which originated in these religious excitements
and disappeared with them.[1] He jerked violently—his
jerking only adding to his excitement, which
in turn increased the severity of his contortions. This
nervous affection was doubtless a natural physical result
of violent excitement; but the people of that day
imagined that it was produced by some supernatural
agency, some attributing it to God, others to the devil,
and yet others to some subtle charm voluntarily exercised
by the preachers. Lumsden went home jerking
all the way, and cursing the Methodists more bitterly
than ever.