He closed the book and looked round with rapt luminous eyes. “That is me,” sez he, “that is my experience.”
“Amen! amen!” shouted the brethren. The little refined lookin’ woman in the blue dress started this verse and sung it through almost alone, in a clear sweet voice:
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“I am but a traveller here, Heaven is my home. Earth’s but a desert drear, Heaven is my home. Time’s cold and chilling blast, soon will be over past, I shall reach home at last, Heaven is my home.” |
“Amen! amen! Now let us hear from another.” And one after another rose and told of the goodness of God and what He had done for them. The sweet earnest hims floated out ever and anon and over the place seemed to brood a Presence that boyed our sperits up as on wings, and I felt that we wuz there with one accord, and my soul seemed lifted up fur 342 above Jonesville and Josiah, and all earthly troubles.
All to once a woman rose with a light on her face as if she wuz lookin’ on sunthin’ fur above this earth. She delivered a eloquent exhortation in words of praise and ecstasy. More and more earnest and eloquent she grew and lifted up from earthly influences. At last she lifted her hands and stepped out with a swayin’ motion of her body, as if keepin’ step to some onhearn melody that ears stuffed with the cotton of worldliness and onbelief wuzn’t fine enough to ketch, and finally her feet begun to keep step with that mysterious music, that for all I know might have been soundin’ down from the ramparts of the New Jerusalem. Round and round she slowly swayed and stepped. Wuz it to the rythm of that invisible music?
There wuz a look on her pure face as if she wuz hearin’ sunthin’ we didn’t. I wuz riz up and carried away some distance from myself. When still lookin’ up with that rapt luminous face she fell to the ground as prostrate as Saul did on the road to Jerusalem, and lay in that state, so I hearn afterwards, for a day and a night. Jest as she fell that iron gray man yelled out, “Bless the Lord!” 343
And I sez, bein’ all wrought up, “Don’t you know when to say that, and when not to? She might have broke her nose.” He looked queer.
In a few minutes I see a stir round the speakers’ stand, and knew the speaker of the day, the great revivalist from the West, had come. And anon I see a tall noble figger passin’ through the crowd that made way for it reverentially. And lo and behold! I see as I ketched a glimpse of his profile that it wuz the minister I had hearn at Thousand Island Park. The same sweet smile rested on his face as he looked round on his brethren and the crowd before him, some like a benediction, only more tender like, and a light seemed to be shinin’ through his countenance, ketched from some Divine power.
It wuz the same face I had framed that summer day in the Tabernacle at T. I. Park, and hung up in my mind right by the side of Isaiah and St. Paul. Yes, I see agin the broad white forward with the brown hair mixed with gray thrown back from it kinder careless, his eyes had the same sweet sad expression, soft, yet deep lookin’, and pitiful, as if he wuz sorry for us and would love to teach us the secret he had found of how to overcome the world and its sins and sorrows. 344
His prayer had the same power of lifting us up fur above the world and settin’ down our naked souls in the presence of Him who searcheth the heart, searchin’ and probin’ to our consciences, and yet consolin’, puttin’ us in mind of that text, “As a father pitieth his children” and yet wants ’em to mind. It wuz a prayer for help and as if we would git it.