30. CHAPTER XXX.
“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 gotten 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 here 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 a 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 Clarke, 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.
[ILLUSTRATION]
WALTER JOHNSON.
[Description: 556EAF. Page 204. in-line engraving of the head and shoulders
of a man with a mustache and goatee in profile.]
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.
