It was not sentimentalism. A soldier who has been through a half-dozen battles is the last person in the world to indulge in sentiment. He above all men understands reality. Thus led by the sweet music and the fervent prayers of their comrades, they rejoiced in the hope that they had found forgiveness of sins through the blood of the Son of God.
At Falmouth, an old tobacco-warehouse on the bank of the river, within hail of the Rebel pickets, was cleared of rubbish, the broken ceiling and windows covered with canvas, a rude pulpit erected, where on Sabbath afternoons and every evening meetings were held, a Sabbath school was organized, also a day school. One of the soldiers established a school for the instruction of the children of the village. Often in the calm twilight of the mild winter days the Rebel picket pacing his beat upon the opposite bank stopped, and leaning upon his gun, listened to the hymns of devotion wafted on the evening air.
The Christian commission in the field.
He could have sent a bullet whistling through the building, but there was a mutual understanding among the pickets not to fire, and so the meetings were undisturbed.
In the Forty-Fourth Now York Regiment, known as the Ellsworth Avengers, were two young soldiers whose hearts were woven together with Christian zeal. They had no chaplain; but they established a prayer-meeting, holding it beside a stump, in a retired place. They obtained permission of the colonel to build a log chapel. They had to draw the logs a mile, but they had faith and energy, and laid out a building sixteen by thirty-two feet square. Rev. Mr. Alvord, the agent of a Tract Society, gives the following account of their labors.
"The first logs were heavy, and hardly any one to help. Their plan at first was not very definite. They would lay down a log and then look and plan by the eye. Another log was wearily drawn and put on. The crowd came round to quiz and joke. 'Are you to have it finished before the world ends?' 'Fixing up to leave?' 'How does your saloon get on?' The more serious, in pity, tried to discourage. There was 'already an order out to move; what's the use?' 'Who wants meetings?' But these two Christian boys (S. and L.) toiled on like Noah, amidst the scoffs of the multitude. The edifice slowly rose; volunteers lent a hand. The Christian men of the regiment became interested. (There were forty or fifty in all, eighteen or twenty of whom at length aided in the work.) A sufficient height was reached, and first a roof of brush, and afterwards of patched ponchos, was put on, and meetings began,—or rather they began when it was only an open pen. In a few days Burnside's advance came, and the regiment left for the field. In their absence, plunderers stripped the cabin, and carried off a portion of its material; but on the return of our troops the same busy hands and hearts of faith were again at work. A sutler gave them the old canvas cover of his large tent, which he was about to cut up to shelter his horses with, and lo, it precisely filled the roof of the meeting-house,—not an inch to spare!
"Well, there it stands, to his glory and the credit of their perseverance. (It took about one hundred logs to build it.) You should have seen their eyes shine, as, here in my tent for tracts, they were one day giving me its history, and you should have been with us last evening. The little pulpit made of empty box boards, two chandeliers suspended from the ridge-pole of cross-sticks, wreathed with ivy, and in the socketed ends four adamant candles, each burning brilliantly. Festoons of ivy and 'dead men's fingers' (a species of woodbine called by this name), looped gracefully along the sides of the room, and in the centre from chandelier to chandelier,—their deep green, with the fine brown bark of the pine logs, and white canvas above, striped with its rafters, sweetly contrasting. Below, a perfect pack of soldiers, in the 'Avengers'' uniform, squatted low upon the pole seats, beneath which was a carpet of evergreen sprays,—all silent, uncovered, respectful; as the service opened, you could have heard a pin fall. There was nothing here to make a noise. Pew-doors, psalm-books, rustling silks, or groined arches reverberating the slightest sound of hand or footfall, there were none. Only the click of that wooden latch, and a gliding figure, like a stealthy vidette, squeezing in among the common mass, indicated the late comer. The song went up from the deep voices of men,—do you know the effect?—and before our service closed, tears rolled down from the faces of men. To be short, every evening of the week this house is now filled with some service, four of which are religious. When they can have no preaching, these soldiers meet for prayer.
"I stole in one evening, lately, when they were at these devotions; prayer after prayer successively was offered, in earnest, humblest tones, before rising from their knees; the impenitent looking on solemnly. Officers were present and took part, and seldom have I seen such manifest tokens that God is about to appear in power. Opposition there is none. The whole regiment looks upon the house now as a matter of pride,—encourage all the meetings. It is attractive to visitors, and, when not used for religious purposes, is occupied by lyceum debates, singing clubs, &c., &c. How those two Christian boys do enjoy it! Said one of them to me, 'We have been paid for all our labor a thousand times over.'"