I remember that it was William's custom, as soon as there was the least interest manifested, to have a very searching service for his church members in which he called upon all those who were at enmity with one another to rectify whatever wrong they had committed and to be reconciled. Nearly always some stiff-necked steward had had a row with somebody else, apt as not a sinner. He would be expected to go out and find the man, whoever it was, and patch up the difficulty, and to report at the next service. I can see now the old spiritual hard-heads in William's congregations with whom, year in and year out, he had the greatest trouble. They always managed to "fall out with somebody" between revivals. But nothing in or out of the Kingdom of Heaven would make one of them admit he was in the wrong or induce him to go to the other person and attempt a reconciliation. The most you could get out of any one of them would be that if his enemy came to him and asked his pardon, he was willing to "forgive him!" If the said enemy was a good natured fellow, William usually managed to get him to make this concession, otherwise the old hard-head remained cold and aggrieved through out the revival, maybe casting a damper over the whole meeting: a figure in the Amen corner at which the young unregenerated sinners would point the finger of scorn and accusation when they were implored to repent and believe and behave themselves.
No one who has not been through it can understand how heartbreaking all this is to the preacher and how wearing on his human nerves. There have been times when I should have been almost willing to see William lose patience and expend about two pages of fierce Plutonian vocabulary on some old stumbling-block in the church. But he never did. And it will serve them right if the ten thousand prayers he made, asking God to soften their obdurate hearts, are registered against them somewhere in the debit column of the Book of Life.
Thus, I say, it came to pass that William was wearing out and no longer able to get through a protracted meeting alone. So at Springdale, he engaged Brother Dunn to come and help him.
Brother Dunn was what may be called a professional evangelist. We had never seen him, but he had a reputation for being "wonderfully successful" with sinners. And if sinners made a ripe harvest Springdale was as much in need of reapers as any place we had ever been. You might have inferred that the original forbidden fruit-tree flourished in the midst of it, the people were so given to frank, straightforward sinning of the most naïvely primitive character.
I never knew how William felt, but I was not favorably impressed with Brother Dunn when he arrived on the late evening train, a frisky, dapper young man, who looked in the face as if his light was turned too high. That night as he preceded us up the aisle of the church, which was crowded to hear him, he showed to my mind a sort of irreverent confidence in the grace of God.
The service that followed was indescribable in any religious language, or even in any secular language. Brother Dunn brought his own hymn-books with him and distributed them in the congregation with an activity and conversational freedom that made him acquainted at once. The hymns proved to be nursery rhymes of salvation set to what may be described as lightly spinning dicky-bird music. Anybody could sing them, and everybody did, and the more they sang the more cheerful they looked, but not repentant. The service was composed mostly of these songs interspersed now and then with wildly excruciating exhortations from Brother Dunn to repent and believe. He explained, with an occasional "ha! ha!" how easy it was to do, and there is no denying that the altar was filled with confused young people who knelt and hid their eyes and behaved with singular reverence under the circumstances.
The cheating began when Brother Dunn attempted to make them "claim the blessing." He induced half a dozen young girls and two or three youths to "stand up and testify" that their sins had been forgiven, simple young creatures who had no more sense of the nature of sin or the depth of genuine repentance than field larks.
Later he frisked home with us, praising God in little foolish words, and rejoicing over the success of the service. Shortly after he retired to his room we heard a great commotion punctuated with staccato shouts. William hurried to the door to inquire what the trouble was. He discovered Brother Dunn hopping about the room in his night-shirt, slapping his palms together in a religious frenzy. He declared that as he prayed by his bed a light had appeared beside him.
William tried to look cheerful and blessed, but there is one thing I can always say for him, he was an honest man in dealing with the most illusive and deceptive things men have ever dealt in, that is, spiritual values, and the more he observed Brother Dunn, the more his misgivings increased.
The next morning I met the evangelist in the hall.