"Father Clark," or The Pioneer Preacher

by John Mason Peck

Father Clark, the Wells family, and several others tarried for dinner, and a good opportunity was presented to converse with Mr. Wells. Mrs. Wells and two or three other women turned into the kitchen with mother Redman, and by four o’clock, two or three tables were filled in succession by hungry guests, the men first served, the females next, and then the children. Bountiful were the supplies of meat, chickens, eggs, corn-dodgers, and sweet potatoes, with pickled beets, cucumbers, and divers other condiments; enough to supply a whole settlement, including the dogs.

It would have been the season of winter in a northern climate, but it was then the opening of spring, in the early part of February; the weather was pleasant and not disagreeably warm. After the first table was through, Mr. Clark gave our friend Wells a jog of the elbow, and they walked together into the forest to a retired place. Mrs. Wells saw the movement, tried to partake of the refreshment at the second table, but her appetite failed. She was too deeply affected to speak, and with another female who belonged to the same society, was seen moving pensively in another direction, towards the thick forest. We will not intrude. Her husband, whom, under all the rough exterior of unpolished nature, she truly loved, was in a most critical situation. She had conversed with him, kindly and affectionately, about his eternal interests, when he seemed in a mood to listen; she had told him incidents of her own experience; her agony of distress and the efficacy of Mr. Clark’s prayers on her behalf. He had offered no objection to her joining society, though she knew he disliked the Methodists before she joined, and seldom attended the meetings since the circuit had been established. For the first time within the period of their acquaintance, he was anxious about his soul;—she knew it, felt it, and who will blame her if she and her female companion prayed for him audibly and fervently, while Father Clark had him on his knees in another direction, where no eye but the eye of God was upon them, and no other ear was listening.

Towards the setting sun, and as the people began to collect for the night meeting, Mr. Clark and his friend Wells were seen coming out of the woods, arm in arm, engaged in conversation. Mr. Wells seemed cheerful, if not happy, while the countenance of Mr. Clark was lighted up with a heavenly smile. From that day Samuel Wells was an altered man.

The meeting continued over the Sabbath, during which several others gave evidence of a change of heart and life, and when the newly appointed preacher from the Conference made his appearance at this remote station on the circuit, the following week, he found a revival in progress, and that his old acquaintance who had left the “connexion,” had been at work in the Lord’s harvest, and the Methodist society had sustained no damage by his independent labors.

Mr. Clark returned to the ferry with his friends, the Wells family, but there was enough of rejoicing and friendly conversation to occupy him that day. Besides, he must not think of departing on his journey before his clothes were in order, and everything ready; so mother Wells argued.

And there was another duty to perform which no itinerant, or faithful pastor, will neglect. Religious meditation, and especially prayer in the hearing of others, was a new business to Mr. Wells, and it required just such a man as Father Clark to encourage, instruct and lead him into the practice of household religion. Though his speech was somewhat incoherent, and a tremor shook his brawny limbs, in making the first attempt in presence of the preacher, his wife and children; he had decision enough to go forward, and soon acquired a gift that was profitable in the society and class-meetings. And now there was another serious difficulty. He had no Bible in his house; only a torn and shattered Testament, which his wife had read over and over, on the dreary Sabbaths she had passed with her family. Her husband had promised on two occasions, when he visited Charleston and sold his tobacco, to buy one. But on one journey he had made inquiry at several stores and found none; the other time “getting a little overtaken,” as he called it, he had forgotten the business, though he did not fail to bring his wife a new calico dress, and several other luxuries she had not requested. The idea of Bible Societies, and special efforts to supply the destitute with the Word of God, had entered into the mind of no one. Nor could such books be found for sale in any of the interior settlements of the South or West.

Father Clark had a neat pocket Bible, which he obtained in London, and which was his daily companion. He was now in a strait betwixt the conflicting claims of duty. Generosity and sympathy spoke loudly to his heart to give this family his Bible. Conscience and reason seemed to say, “You cannot spare this book. How can a preacher do without a Bible?” After a season of prayer on the subject, faith turned the scale, “Leave the Bible, and trust in the Lord for another;” and so it was decided, and he never regretted it.

The parting scene was affecting. Mr. Wells and his wife both wept like children, and begged him not to forget them in his prayers, and if he ever came that way again to make their house his home. The whole family walked with him to the river bank, and Mr. Wells and his two eldest sons worked the ferry-boat over the river. As they turned into a slight bend in the river, they could see mother Wells still sitting on the bank, with her handkerchief to her eyes, deeply affected that she should see her preacher’s face, and hear his voice no more; yet, devoutly thankful that the Lord had sent him that way as the instrument of salvation to her house.

The boat was tied to the shore, and the old man and his two sons walked with the preacher through the low bottom-land that lined the bank of the Savannah river, to the bluffs and up-lands of South Carolina. As they were about to part, the preacher kneeled down and prayed with them, and especially mentioned the young lads, that they might be like young Timothy, and serve the Lord from their youth. Mr. Clark was now seen slowly but cheerfully ascending the sloping hills, that led towards Greenville district, while in silence the father and sons returned to their home.

Leaving father Clark to pursue his journey towards the mountain range in the north-west, we will continue a while on the banks of the Savannah, to learn a little of the future history of the Wells family.