In the brush

by Hamilton W. Pierson

CHAPTER XII.

HEROIC CHRISTIAN WORKERS IN THE SOUTHWEST.

It was a bright, dreamy, autumnal day, that I was making my way among the bayous of one of the most sluggish of the rivers that enter and swell the volume of the Mississippi. My ride since morning had been very long and very lonely. It is a strange sort of life to ride on horseback, week after week and month after month, over a new and sparsely settled country. The most of such journeys are alone. One but rarely meets with company, and then they usually travel together but a short distance before their paths diverge and they separate. In these long, solitary rides, any unusual scene or incident startles one as from a dreamy reverie, and makes a lasting, an almost ineffaceable, impression upon the memory.

A circuit rider in the Brush.

I have very often recalled, and shall hardly forget while I live, a most pleasing incident in this day's ride. I had recently traveled over a wide scope of country including a half a dozen counties, where the land was nearly as level as the numerous streams that flowed through it. The soil was entirely alluvial, and very rich. Occasionally, gentle elevations of a very few feet swelled above the surrounding level, which were crowned with large oaks having short trunks and heavy tops with wide-spreading branches. These oaks were usually interspersed with smaller trees and underbrush. As I floundered through a wet, marshy road, and struck a sandy path leading up one of these elevations, I saw a number of horses hitched to the limbs of the trees, and soon came up to a plain unpainted church or chapel. Its only foundation was the few wooden blocks upon which it stood, and the windows were without sash or glass, the shutters made of boards, being thrown open to admit the light, and closed when the services were ended. I rode under a tree, hitched my horse to a limb, and entered the church as quietly as possible. The preacher had closed his sermon, and was about concluding the services. It was the close of a meeting which had continued several days, in which a number of hardened and very hopeless sinners had been led to Christ. It was his last appointment before leaving them for conference. The labors of the year had left their impress upon his whole frame. He looked wan and worn. He had breathed the malaria of the rivers, bayous, and marshes, along which he had sought out these people in their homes, and near which he had preached to them, until it had changed the color of his flesh to a bloodless saffron hue. I never before or since saw such a human face. It bespoke a body, soul, and spirit, heartily, wholly, and irrevocably consecrated to his noble work. There was over it that perfect calmness that succeeds long and intense anxiety and excitement, when their end has been fully attained. As he spoke to them of the labors of the year, and of his departure for conference, he was the only one that seemed unmoved. His voice was low and calm amid the weeping that was all around him. Among the most noted of the converts was a woman who for years had done more than any other person in the neighborhood to counteract the influence of the preachers who had labored on that circuit, and to injure the little church. She was famous as a fiddler, and the leader in getting up all the neighborhood dances, and it was difficult for the young converts to withstand the fascinations of her bow. In former years she had fiddled a great many of them out of the class before their six months' probation had expired. Now that she had at last been brought down, there was general rejoicing. It was like the fall of some tall oak of the forest that brings down many smaller trees with it. They could now sing, as I have often heard them in their log-cabins:

"Shout! shout, we're gaining ground,
Oh, glory Halleluyah!
We'll shout old Satan's kingdom down,
Oh, glory Halleluyah!"

This woman sat in a chair near the pulpit (with her little babe lying, smiling and playful, upon her lap), participating with the deepest interest in all the services, and weeping among those most deeply moved. At the conclusion of his remarks the preacher baptized this little child, the mother giving to it the double name of himself and his colleague on the circuit. His work thus ended, he sang alone, in a clear, firm voice, a simple and beautiful parting hymn, that I can not now repeat, with the refrain,

"Brothers, fare ye well,"

passing at the same time through the congregation and shaking hands with the weeping class-leaders, stewards, local preachers, and other brethren present. He then moved to the other side of the room, and sang on in the same manner, changing the refrain to,

"Sisters, fare ye well,"

and shook hands with each one of them, he alone being perfectly calm amid their convulsive weeping and sobs. The benediction was then pronounced, and I withdrew as quietly as I had entered, and resumed my journey. Such labors in such a region illustrate a moral heroism that is both heroic and sublime.

REV. JAMES HAWTHORN, D.D.

I recall a very different experience with another type and class of these heroic workers for the Master.[1] Many years before, he mounted his horse and rode from his home in the Southwest, over the Alleghany Mountains, onward to Philadelphia, and thence to Princeton, New Jersey, where he sold his horse and spent three years in the Theological Seminary. He had then returned, and spent his ministerial life in preaching to feeble congregations that were able to pay but a small salary for his services. At the time I first met him he preached regularly on alternate Sabbaths to two congregations about twenty miles apart. In those months in which there was a "fifth Sabbath," he usually visited some yet smaller congregation, often at a greater distance, for the purpose of preaching to them, and perhaps administering the communion and baptizing their children. But this was only a small part of the labor he performed. The compensation he received for these services was entirely inadequate for the support of his family, and he was obliged to supplement his salary by other and more arduous labors. He spent five days each week in teaching a school in the basement of his church. And they were not such days' work as are usually given to teaching. Immemorial custom in that region had required of teachers nearly as many hours' daily labor in the school-room as were given to any other employment. Hence he usually began his labors in the school at or before eight in the morning, and did not close until five, or later, in the afternoon. His scholars were of all ages and grades of attainment, and they pursued a great variety of studies. Many of both sexes studied the higher English, classical, and mathematical branches, and completed their education at this school. This diversity in the ages of the scholars and the books they attempted to master added greatly to his labors; but from early Monday morning until late Friday afternoon he toiled faithfully in the school-room, term after term and year after year. With all this teaching, he had the other labors indispensably connected with such a school—the care of the school-room, consultations with parents, the collection of bills, and all the nameless calls and duties connected with its care and government. When to the long rides and other labors as a pastor, and the duties of a teacher, that I have enumerated, are added those of a housekeeper in providing for his family, there would seem to be little time left for the preparation of sermons. But these were thoroughly studied, and very often fully written, in hours that most others would have given to rest and sleep.

On a cold midwinter day I mounted my horse and rode with him some twenty miles to his regular appointment on Saturday afternoon. When we reached the log-school-house in the outskirts, of his congregation but a small number had come out through the cold, and at his request I preached to them. We then rode home with an old Presbyterian elder, the cold constantly increasing in severity. His heart was much warmer than his log-house. We slept in a room which he tried in vain to warm with a large wood-fire. But the water we were to use in the morning froze solid, though placed as near the fire as possible. After breakfast we mounted our horses and rode a few miles to church, though it was so cold that I nearly froze in going, and was obliged to stop on the way to warm myself. I preached to a congregation of about forty, and we reorganized the county Bible Society. Having kindly rendered me all the aid in his power, he mounted his horse after dinner, and rode home through the cold in order to be able to open his school promptly on Monday morning. At other seasons of the year, when the weather was such that the people could assemble for worship, he was accustomed to preach at the church in the morning, and at some school-house like that in which I had preached, in other and distant parts of the congregation, late in the afternoon. He would then mount his horse and ride over the roughest roads, often through mud, rain, and darkness, reaching home late at night, so that without fail he might promptly open his school the next morning. I inquired and learned of others the salary that was promised him for preaching in this manner to this congregation, twenty miles from his home, twice each month. I would state the amount, but I remember the story, told me by my genial friend, the late Rev. Dr. William L. Breckenridge, of an Irishman who desired to have a letter written home to Ireland from Kentucky, many years before, when provisions were most abundant and cheap.

After mentioning a good many things that he wished him to write to his friends in regard to America, he said:

"Tell them that I get all the meat I can eat three times a week."

"And what do you mean by that?" said his employer. "Don't you get all the bacon you can eat three times a day?"

"Yes, your riverence," was the prompt reply.

"Well, then, what do you mean by writing to your friends in Ireland that you get all the meat you can eat three times a week?"

"Faith," said Pat, "and that is more than they will belave."

But these were not the hardest and most poorly remunerated of the labors of my friend. In some of his visits to smaller congregations on the "fifth Sabbath" his rides were much longer, and he encountered difficulties and discouragements such as most Presbyterian ministers have never dreamed of. I will relate a single case. A small church some fifty miles distant was without a pastor, and for a long time the sacrament of the Lord's Supper had not been administered to them. Always ready to aid and cheer such struggling churches, he promised to give them a "fifth Sabbath." I will here say that there were hundreds of churches of different denominations in the Southwest and South that did not have preaching every Sabbath. They enjoyed this privilege but twice a month, once a month, or less frequently. When their appointments for preaching were regular, the number of the Sabbath in the month was always specified, as, for instance, the first and third Sabbaths might be the days selected for preaching regularly at one church, and the second and fourth Sabbaths might be appropriated to two other churches. Or the first, second, third, and fourth Sabbaths might be the days fixed for regular preaching, once a month, at four different places. And so of all week-day appointments for preaching. They were always made for some day in the first, second, third, or fourth week in the month. Hence the people did not need to consult an almanac in regard to the day of the month, and there was rarely any mistake or confusion in regard to these appointments. Where several different denominations occupied the same court-house or building for preaching on successive Sabbaths, this was a matter of great importance. It always stirred bad blood when from design on either part these appointments conflicted, or, in the language of the Brush, "locked horns." From the simplicity of this method of making appointments the people would learn for miles around, and remember for months ahead, that a basket-meeting, sacramental meeting, or camp-meeting would commence on the second Friday in August, or the third Thursday in September, or any other day that was announced in this manner. As the "fifth Sabbath" is of infrequent occurrence, young preachers often took this day to visit their mothers and sweet-hearts, and old preachers made missionary tours and visited neglected neighborhoods and destitute churches. It was such a day and such a work my worthy friend had promised the little church to which I have alluded. After his accustomed labors for the week, he on Saturday performed the long, rough horseback ride, and on Sabbath preached and administered the communion to them. But it was not a pleasant service. The day was cold; the church, like others I have described, had no other foundation than blocks of wood; the hogs of the neighborhood had made their bed under it, and they successfully disputed all efforts to drive them from their warm shelter. Hence all the services of preaching and the administration of the Lord's Supper were performed with the accompaniment of their incessant squealing and fighting immediately under the pulpit and communion-table. The long, cold ride home extended into the darkness of midnight. How few have ever gratuitously performed so laborious a service with so little to compensate, so much to sadden and distress!

But such experiences were relieved by many of a far different character. To many feeble churches his coming was anticipated by all needed preparations, and he was greeted with great joy by the little flock. They listened with delight to the truths that they loved as they fell from his lips. Cheerful homes welcomed him and were gladdened by his presence. To many scattered families of the church to which he belonged his pastoral visits were all that they received, and they were the more prized because such visits were so rare to them.

Faithful, laborious, self-denying man of God! his toils have not been unrewarded in the past, and they will be abundantly honored in the future.