University of Virginia Library

17. CHAPTER XVII.
DELIVERANCE.

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 wont
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 there-by
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:

When he reached the stanza that declares:

there were shouts of “Halleluiah!” “Praise the Lord!”
and so forth. At the last quatrain, which runs,
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:

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:

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,

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

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.”