We were so much encouraged in holding our prayer-meetings, that we finally were bold enough to request the privilege of having divine service every Sabbath. This was granted, much to our surprise, and we had the most happy times imaginable. Oh, it was glorious for the soul to bask in that heavenly sunlight which God thus shed upon us in our dreary prison.
About this time, I became acquainted with Simeon B. Eckels. He was very sick, and requested me often to pray for him. Our friendship was as cordial as it was short, for his sickness was unto death. The God who sent his angel to free his apostle Peter, took our sick brother by the hand, and led him from out the noisome prison to the mansions above, where care comes not, and where sickness is not known. He died at half past ten o’clock, P. M., on August 22, 1862. For several days prior to his death, I was constantly by him, and was much gratified with the manifestations he gave of preparation for the future. Brother Eckels gave me the name of the church in Iowa to which he belonged, also the names of his mother and sister, who lived in Ohio. He requested me to visit the latter. His thoughts were centred solely upon heaven and his mother, and in his moments of revival he would often repeat the lines:
“My mother, at thy holy name,
Within my bosom is a gush
Of feeling, which no time can tame,
And which, for worlds of fame,
I would not, could not crush.”
Brother Eckels’s end was indeed one of peace and bright serenity. At his request I preached his funeral sermon the day succeeding his death, from the text, “They that sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.”
At the hour appointed for the funeral of the deceased, a negro drove up with a dirty dray, on which we supposed they intended to throw the corpse, and cart it away like some animal’s carcass. At this, the Colonel of his regiment, Colonel Shaw, earnestly requested that we might be allowed to bear the body, and thus prevent the insult offered to the dead. This request had the effect of causing the officers to send for a light wagon, and in this was our sleeping brother and comrade soldier carried to his long home, followed by myself and a companion or two. Gentle be his slumbers beneath the sods of Georgia’s soil!