It was a grievous disappointment to the little band of Methodists that Brother Magruder's face was so swollen, after his encounter, as to prevent his preaching. They had counted much upon the success of this day's work, and now the devil seemed about to snatch the victory. Mrs. Wheeler enthusiastically recommended Kike as a substitute, and Magruder sent for him in haste. Kike was gratified to hear that the preacher wanted to see him personally. His sallow face flushed with pleasure as he stood, a slender stripling, before the messenger of God.
"Brother Lumsden," said Mr. Magruder, "are you ready to do and to suffer for Christ?"
"I trust I am," said Kike, wondering what the preacher could mean.
"You see how the devil has planned to defeat the Lord's work to-day. My lip is swelled, and my jaw so stiff that I can hardly speak. Are you ready to do the duty the Lord shall put upon you?"
Kike trembled from head to foot. He had often fancied himself preaching his first sermon in a strange neighborhood, and he had even picked out his text; but to stand up suddenly before his school-mates, before his mother, before Brady, and, worse than all, before Morton, was terrible. And yet, had he not that very morning made a solemn vow that he would not shrink from death itself!
"Do you think I am fit to preach?" he asked, evasively.
"None of us are fit; but here will be two or three hundred people hungry for the bread of life. The Master has fed you; he offers you the bread to distribute among your friends and neighbors. Now, will you let the fear of man make you deny the blessed Lord who has taken you out of a horrible pit and set your feet upon the Rock of Ages?"
Kike trembled a moment, and then said: "I will do whatever you say, if you will pray for me."
"I'll do that, my brother. And now take your Bible, and go into the woods and pray. The Lord will show you the way, if you put your whole trust in him."
The preacher's allusion to the bread of life gave Kike his subject, and he soon gathered a few thoughts which he wrote down on a fly-leaf of the Bible, in the shape of a skeleton. But it occurred to him that he had not one word to say on the subject of the bread of life beyond the sentences of his skeleton. The more this became evident to him, the greater was his agony of fear. He knelt on the brown leaves by a prostrate log; he made a "new consecration" of himself; he tried to feel willing to fail, so far as his own feelings were involved; he reminded the Lord of his promises to be with them he had sent; and then there came into his memory a text of Scripture: "For it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak." Taking it, after the manner of the early Methodist mysticism, that the text had been supernaturally "suggested" to him, he became calm; and finding, from the height of the sun, that it was about the hour for meeting, he returned to the house of Colonel Wheeler, and was appalled at the sight that met his eyes. All the settlement, and many from other settlements, had come. The house, the yard, the fences, were full of people. Kike was seized with a tremor. He did not feel able to run the gauntlet of such a throng. He made a detour, and crept in at the back door like a criminal. For stage-fright—this fear of human presence—is not a thing to be overcome by the will. Susceptible natures are always liable to it, and neither moral nor physical courage can avert it.