“I see Jesus! I see Jesus! I see Jesus!”
She repeated it over and over again, “I see Jesus!” and finally she collapsed into her seat, mumbling and weeping. The evangelist took up the cry. He roared back and forth across the pulpit, shaking his hands above his head, calling on God to damn the sinners. His whole body quivered and he screamed at the top of his voice:
“Jesus is in this house! Come to Jesus! Give your heart to God!”
And above the roar of his voice and the rumble of the seething congregation rose the music. It ebbed and flowed, it beat against the rafters and rebounded from the floor, always that regular beat of a hymn, like tom-toms in the jungles of Hayti. Many of the choir members sang hysterically, their voices rising on the high notes into veritable shrieks, but there was no change in the steady thunder of the organ or the wail of the violin, and there was no escaping the emotional effect of the song:
“Bringing in the sheaves,
Bringing in the sheaves,
We shall come rejoicing,
Bringing in the sheaves.”
Then there was testimony. Old skinflints who had devoted their lives to cheating their neighbors, old women whose gossiping and backbiting were the talk of the town, hopped into the aisles and told how, at some previous meeting, God had entered their hearts and made them pure and holy. Their voices rose to shrieks; they grew red in the face from the fervor of their shouts, and one old man who had only that day cheated half a dozen men in a real-estate deal stood in the aisle with his hands raised toward Heaven and wept bitterly over the sins of the world. Tears streamed down their faces, and many who had only a few hours before dumped sand in the sugar groaned loudly in sympathetic torment, and shouted “Amen, Brother! Amen!”
By this time Brother McConnell’s collar hung limp about his neck, but his passion for the Lord was unchecked. He stopped the testimony when it appeared that everybody in the church wanted to say something; there was another hymn and he began calling for converts. He shouted that we were all wicked sinners and must come to Jesus.