Part 7

If 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:

"Show pity, Lord, O! Lord, forgive, Let a repenting rebel live. Are not thy mercies large and free? May not a sinner trust in thee?"

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

"Oh! how happy are they Who their Saviour obey, And have laid up their treasure above! Tongue can never express The sweet comfort and peace Of a soul in its earliest love,"

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.

_CHAPTER XII._

MR. BRADY PROPHESIES.

The Methodists had actually made a break in the settlement. Dancing had not availed to keep them out. It was no longer a question of getting "shet" of Wheeler and his Methodist wife, thus extirpating the contagion. There would now be a "class" formed, a leader appointed, a regular preaching place established; Hissawachee would become part of that great wheel called a circuit; there would be revivals and conversions; the peace of the settlement would be destroyed. For now one might never again dance at a "hoe-down," drink whiskey at a shuckin', or race "hosses" on Sunday, without a lecture from somebody. It might be your own wife, too. Once let the Methodists in, and there was no knowin'.

Lumsden, for his part, saw more serious consequences. By his opposition, he had unfortunately spoken for the enmity of the Methodists in advance. The preacher had openly defied him. Kike would join the class, and the Methodists would naturally resist his ascendancy. No concession on his part short of absolute surrender would avail. He resolved therefore that the Methodists should find out "who they were fighting."

Brady was pleased. Gossips are always delighted to have something happen out of the usual course. It gives them a theme, something to exercise their wits upon. Let us not be too hard upon gossip. It is one form of communicative intellectual activity. Brady, under different conditions, might have been a journalist, writing relishful leaders on "topics of the time." For what is journalism but elevated and organized gossip? The greatest benefactor of an out-of-the-way neighborhood is the man or woman with a talent for good-natured gossip. Such an one averts absolute mental stagnation, diffuses intelligence, and keeps alive a healthful public opinion on local questions.

Brady wanted to taste some of Mrs. Goodwin's "ry-al hoe-cake." That was the reason he assigned for his visit on the evening after the meeting. He was always hungry for hoe-cake when anything had happened about which he wanted to talk. But on this evening Job Goodwin, got the lead in conversation at first.

"Mr. Brady," said he, "what's going to happen to us all? These Methodis' sets people crazy with the jerks, I've hearn tell. Hey? I hear dreadful things about 'em. Oh dear, it seems like as if everything come upon folks at once. Hey? The fever's spreadin' at Chilicothe, they tell me. And then, if we should git into a war with England, you know, and the Indians should come and skelp us, they'd be precious few left, betwixt them that went crazy and them that got skelped. Precious few, _I_ tell you. Hey?"

Here Mr. Goodwin knocked the ashes out of his pipe and laid it away, and punched the fire meditatively, endeavoring to discover in his imagination some new and darker pigment for his picture of the future. But failing to think of anything more lugubrious than Methodists, Indians, and fever, he set the tongs in the corner, heaved a sigh of discouragement, and looked at Brady inquiringly.

[Illustration: JOB GOODWIN.]

"Ye're loike the hootin' owl, Misther Goodwin; it's the black side ye're afther lookin' at all the toime. Where's Moirton? He aint been to school yet since this quarter took up."

"Morton? He's got to stay out, I expect. My rheumatiz is mighty bad, and I'm powerful weak. I don't think craps'll be good next year, and I expect we'll have a hard row to hoe, partic'lar if we all have the fever, and the Methodis' keep up their excitement and driving people crazy with jerks, and war breaks out with England, and the Indians come on us. But here's Mort now."

"Ha! Moirton, and ye wasn't at matin' last noight? Ye heerd fwat a toime we had. Most iverybody got struck harmless, excipt mesilf and a few other hardened sinners. Ye heerd about Koike? I reckon the Captain's good and glad he's got the blissin'; it's a warrantee on the Captain's skull, maybe. Fwat would ye do for a crony now, Moirton, if Koike come to be a praycher?"

"He aint such a fool, I guess," said Morton, with whom Kike's "getting religion" was an unpleasant topic. "It'll all wear off with Kike soon enough."

"Don't be too shore, Moirton. Things wear off with you, sometoimes. Ye swear ye'll niver swear no more, and ye're willin' to bet that ye'll niver bet agin, and ye're always a-talkin' about a brave loife; but the flesh is ferninst ye. When Koike's bad, he's bad all over; lickin' won't take it out of him; I've throid it mesilf. Now he's got good, the divil'll have as hard a toime makin' him bad as I had makin' him good. I'm roight glad it's the divil now, and not his school-masther, as has got to throy to handle the lad. Got ivery lisson to-day, and didn't break a single rule of the school! What do you say to that, Moirton? The divil's got his hands full thair. Hey, Moirton?"

"Yes, but he'll never be a preacher. He wants to get rich just to spite the Captain."

"But the spoite's clean gone with the rist, Moirton. And he'll be a praycher yit. Didn't he give me a talkin' to this mornin', at breakfast? Think of the impudent little scoundrel a-venturin' to tell his ould masther that he ought to repint of his sins! He talked to his mother, too, till she croid. He'll make her belave she is a great sinner whin she aint wicked a bit, excipt in her grammar, which couldn't be worse. I've talked to her about that mesilf. Now, Moirton, I'll tell ye the symptoms of a praycher among the Mithodists. Those that take it aisy, and don't bother a body, you needn't be afeard of. But those that git it bad, and are throublesome, and middlesome, and aggravatin', ten to one'll turn out praychers. The lad that'll tackle his masther and his mother at breakfast the very mornin' afther he's got the blissin, while he's yit a babe, so to spake, and prayche to 'em single-handed, two to one, is a-takin' the short cut acrost the faild to be a praycher of the worst sort; one of the kind that's as thorny as a honey-locust."

"Well, why can't they be peaceable, and let other people alone? That meddling is just what I don't like," growled Morton.

"Bedad, Moirton, that's jist fwat Ahab and Jizebel thought about ould Elijy! We don't any of us loike to have our wickedness or laziness middled with. 'Twas middlin', sure, that the Pharisays objicted to; and if the blissed Jaysus hadn't been so throublesome, he wouldn't niver a been crucified."

"Why, Brady, you'll be a Methodist yourself," said Mr. Job Goodwin.

"Niver a bit of it, Mr. Goodwin. I'm rale lazy. This lookin' at the state of me moind's insoides, and this chasin' afther me sins up hill and down dale all the toime, would niver agray with me frail constitootion. This havin' me spiritooal pulse examined ivery wake in class-matin', and this watchin' and prayin', aren't for sich oidlers as me. I'm too good-natered to trate mesilf that way, sure. Didn't you iver notice that the highest vartoos ain't possible to a rale good-nater'd man?"

Here Mrs. Goodwin looked at the cake on the hoe in front of the fire, and found it well browned. Supper was ready, and the conversation drifted to Morton's prospective arrangement with Captain Lumsden to cultivate his hill farm on the "sheers." Morton's father shook his head ominously. Didn't believe the Captain was in 'arnest. Ef he was, Mort mout git the fever in the winter, or die, or be laid up. 'Twouldn't do to depend on no sech promises, no way.

But, notwithstanding his father's croaking, Morton did hold to the Captain's promise, and to the hope of Patty. To the Captain's plans for mobbing Wheeler he offered a strong resistance. But he was ready enough to engage in making sport of the despised religionists, and even organized a party to interrupt Magruder with tin horns when he should preach again. But all this time Morton was uneasy in himself. What had become of his dreams of being a hero? Here was Kike bearing all manner of persecution with patience, devoting himself to the welfare of others, while all his own purposes of noble and knightly living were hopelessly sunk in a morass of adverse circumstances. One of Morton's temperament must either grow better or worse, and, chafing under these embarassments, he played and drank more freely than ever.

_CHAPTER XIII._

TWO TO ONE.

Magruder had been so pleased with his success in organizing a class in the Hissawachee settlement that he resolved to favor them with a Sunday sermon on his next round. He was accustomed to preach twice every week-day and three times on every Sunday, after the laborious manner of the circuit-rider of his time. And since he expected to leave Hissawachee as soon as meeting should be over, for his next appointment, he determined to reach the settlement before breakfast that he might have time to confirm the brethren and set things in order.

When the Sunday set apart for the second sermon drew near, Morton, with the enthusiastic approval of Captain Lumsden, made ready his tin horns to interrupt the preacher with a serenade. But Lumsden had other plans of which Morton had no knowledge.

John Wesley's rule was, that a preacher should rise at four o'clock and spend the hour until five in reading, meditation and prayer. Five o'clock found Magruder in the saddle on his way to Hissawachee, reflecting upon the sermon he intended to preach. When he had ridden more than an hour, keeping himself company by a lusty singing of hymns, he came suddenly out upon the brow of a hill overlooking the Hissawachee valley. The gray dawn was streaking the clouds, the preacher checked his horse and looked forth on the valley just disclosing its salient features in the twilight, as a General looks over a battle-field before the engagement begins. Then he dismounted, and, kneeling upon the leaves, prayed with apostolic fervor for victory over "the hosts of sin and the devil." When at last he got into the saddle again the winter sun was sending its first horizontal beams into his eyes, and all the eastern sky was ablaze. Magruder had the habit of turning the whole universe to spiritual account, and now, as he descended the hill, he made the woods ring with John Wesley's hymn, which might have been composed in the presence of such a scene:

"O sun of righteousness, arise With healing in thy wing; To my diseased, my fainting soul, Life and salvation bring.

"These clouds of pride and sin dispel, By thy all-piercing beam; Lighten my eyes with faith; my heart With holy hopes inflame."

By the time he had finished the second stanza, the bridle-path that he was following brought him into a dense forest of beech and maple, and he saw walking toward him two stout men, none other than our old acquaintances, Bill McConkey and Jake Sniger.

"Looky yer," said Bill, catching the preacher's horse by the bridle: "you git down!"

"What for?" said Magruder.

"We're goin' to lick you tell you promise to go back and never stick your head into the Hissawachee Bottom agin."

"But I won't promise."

"Then we'll put a finishment to ye."

"You are two to one. Will you give me time to draw my coat?"

"Wal, yes, I 'low we will."

[Illustration: TWO TO ONE.]

The preacher dismounted with quiet deliberation, tied his bridle to a beech limb, offering a mental prayer to the God of Samson, and then laid his coat across the saddle.

"My friends," he said, "I don't want to whip you. I advise you now to let me alone. As an American citizen, I have a right to go where I please. My father was a revolutionary soldier, and I mean to fight for my rights."

"Shet up your jaw!" said Jake, swearing, and approaching the preacher from one side, while Bill came up on the other. Magruder was one of those short, stocky men who have no end of muscular force and endurance. In his unregenerate days he had been celebrated for his victories in several rude encounters. Never seeking a fight even then, he had, nevertheless, when any ambitious champion came from afar for the purpose of testing his strength, felt himself bound to "give him what he came after." He had now greatly the advantage of the two bullies in his knowledge of the art of boxing.