The obvious conclusion was, “Taken on your own terms, as you cannot be a lawyer, you cannot be a Christian.” Total physical and mental weakness could not cope with this mental suggestion. The reflections that followed led to feelings of utter despair. Thus he soliloquized, “In the day of my strength I said ‘No’ to God; now, in the hour of my weakness, he will not hear me. He knows that from fear and not from sincerity I now seek to pray. Hypocritical prayer will but add insult to injury. I must not pray.” These confused reasonings were largely due to an anemic brain and mental temptation. The weakened mind accepted a lie in place of the invigorating truth that “now is the day of salvation.” Eternity seemed to open its portals to a realm of darkness into which the soul was being forced by the stress of its own past decision, while high over these gates enthroned in light appeared the radiant form of the Son of God. While this Personage seemed unspeakably lovely and “chief among ten thousand,” the soliloquizer said, “He has been denied, he is lost to me.” These cogitations filled the waking and sleeping hours of several nights. With a sense of woe unutterable the decision of doom was accepted. The sensations of a lost soul seemed to be real. Words are entirely inadequate to express the sense of eternal, irremediable loss by which the heart was oppressed. This exhaustive strain could not long continue. The evening of a day of unusually oppressive heat presaged the end. Vividly the thought stood before the mind, “This is my last night on earth.” To the comrade who was blanket-mate the home address was given and a whispered good-bye. This was the fully accepted close of life.
Sinking into an unrestful slumber, the small hours of the morning arrived, and a forgotten incident of the long ago was revived in a dream. The scene in vision occurred on a beautiful Sunday morning of spring, eleven years before. The location was a village on the old Ridge road in Niagara county, New York. The region was, and is, noted for its orchards of deciduous fruits. On this date the blossoms were out in full. Banks of pink and white embosomed the homesteads that lined the historic highway; sweet odors filled the air, and bevies of bees with droning song were industriously gathering the abundant nectar. Nothing could surpass the beauty of that quiet Lord’s Day morning as the family, consisting of father, mother, older sister and younger brother, with the lad, wended its way to the brick church of the village. They habitually passed, on the outskirts of the same, the stone house of Col. N——, whose daughter’s husband was absent in the West.
The good lady taught in the Sunday school a class of boys who were from seven to ten years of age, and although they were possessed of irrepressible juvenile energy, and occasionally, to her distress, seemed to be irreverent; yet they regarded her with sincere respect and gave willing obedience.
On the Saturday night, preceding this Sunday morning, a great burden of solicitude for the safety of her husband was suddenly pressed in upon her mind. To her imagination he seemed to be in extreme peril; perhaps he was unattended; he might be alone and facing a speedy and fatal termination. Possessing a strong faith in God, and believing his readiness to hear and answer prayer, at midnight she aroused from her bed and engaged in an irrepressible travail of soul for the far-away loved one. For several hours the burden of intercession continued. With the coming of the Sunday morning dawn, the light which made all nature bright and beautiful was suddenly duplicated in her heart. All at once the burden lifted. Instantaneously her being was filled with the sweet assurance that all was well with her husband; that whatever was his danger he was being saved therefrom. A tender gratitude possessed her heart. A sense of union with the mighty Jehovah suffused her being with a consciousness of strength and resource. Like Deborah of old a song of triumph arose in her soul.
As the time of going to church approached, the above mentioned family came along, and, as was their custom, the teacher and her son, who was about the age of the writer, joined them on the way to the sanctuary. As the others were conversing by the way, the two boys ran on ahead and the one, having observed on the face of his teacher the marks of suffering, said to his chum, “Newton, what is the matter with your mamma?”
“O, Johnny,” was the reply; “My mamma has been feeling awful bad about my papa. I guess she thinks he is going to die, for in the night I heard her talking and talking to God about saving him and making him well. Say, Johnny, if God don’t do what mamma asks I won’t have any papa, will I?”
With their hands joined in a common sympathy, and with mutual tears, the two lads sorrowed for a brief moment. But what parental anxiety could hold their abounding life from immediate sympathy with nature smiling all around? By the time the church was reached and cheery salutations had been exchanged with arriving classmates, all impressions of grief were forgotten.
The teacher, in a mood of chastened gladness and confidence, listened to the sermon which the venerable pastor extended to an unusual length. This delay absorbed the brief period of time usually given to an intermission, during which the intermediates might straighten out the kinks which seemed to form in their lithe limbs while perched on cushioned seats so high that their feet dangled short of the carpet.
The good superintendent, whose gracious face and form are remembered as but of yesterday, called the school to order immediately after the benediction was pronounced. “We are late,” he said, “and cannot have intermission today; classes take their places at once.”
These irrepressible youngsters combined the movement of filing into the pew with motions not included in the regular order. One punched another. The lad who had recently shared the mental distress of his mother now inserted a bent pin under the descending form of his companion; resulting in a response that did not improve the discipline of the occasion. The boisterous impulse seized the entire class to the annoyance and discomfiture of the teacher, who was seated at their front in the adjoining pew. Several reproving glances directed towards the young insurgents quieted them during the opening exercises.