What he said had a holy influence and burned its way into the hearts of the most hardened of his hearers. After he had been talking many began to weep softly, then rose to their feet and with eyes and hands upraised towards heaven prayed in a low voice for forgiveness; the more [pg 296] excitable, or as some said, those who most needed pardon, walked down the aisle, which was roped off through the center, to a small space just in front of the pavilion and were there taken with “the jerks.”
A man known as Red Jenkins, one of the toughest and most notorious characters in that section of the state, and who had been tried several times for murder (the charge was killing and robbing travelers who stopped at his station), but had never been convicted—though each jury, had it been in their power, would have rendered the Scotch verdict—had for several years been badly crippled by rheumatism and hobbled about from settlement to settlement on crutches. On the first night of the pavilion meetings he staggered forward and was seized by violent paroxysms, at the end of which he lay as one dead.
Calvin Campbell came down from the platform, tossed Jenkins’ crutches into the fire and lifting the man laid him on the floor of the pavilion. In a little while he arose, and walking down the aisle, resumed his former seat. When told about his crutches he replied: “I do not need them now; my body was bent and shriveled to accommodate a crooked, shrunken soul.”
Another night, just as the meeting was beginning, a young girl running behind the pavilion, fearful that some one would take her seat near her mother, was jostled and thrown into the edge of one of the fires. Her homespun dress blazed up, and enveloped in the flames she ran to the edge of the pavilion, where she was caught by Calvin Campbell and wrapped in the folds of his great coat. He laid her as one dead on the floor. The crowd began to gather around, but he said: “Take your seats, the girl is not dead, but has swooned. While she lies thus, we will ask God, who shields innocence from harm and who takes care of his lambs, to make her whole.”
[pg 297] While all stood in silent, prayerful reverence, he asked God to restore the girl sound in body and cleansed of sin to her mother. All, even the wicked and curious, joined in this prayer.
When it was finished, without so much as looking towards the girl, he began the regular service with song; and as there were less than a dozen books among them, he read the lines aloud.
At its close the girl sat up, wrapped about in the great coat and smiled at her mother. Turning to her he said: “Little one, keep the coat about you and go sit with your mother.”
He preached that night upon the power and purpose of prayer and began by saying: “Prayer is the only way in which a sinner can ask God for pardon and in which a saint can commune with his Saviour. It is man’s way of talking with God and God’s way of hearing what men have to say. Prayer is the powder of the Christian soldier and by it victories are won for the Cross. * * *” There were many conversions that night.
The meetings were continued until the end of the week. At the closing services the audience asked that each year at the same place and season open air union services be held. So in the summer of 1800, a great camp meeting was held and the pavilion was used as the rostrum. This was the first camp meeting ever held in Christendom and the practice was continued for many years at the Gasper River Meeting House and other places in Kentucky.
The hallowing influence of “The Great Awakening” thus started, spread to other communities and eventually throughout the state and into northwestern Tennessee. Similar meetings were held by other preachers, at Masterson’s Station in Fayette County, Clark’s Station in [pg 298] Mercer, Ferguson and Chaplin chapels in Nelson, Level Woods (now Larue county), Brick Chapel in Shelby, Ebenezer in Clark, Grassy Lick in Montgomery, Muddy Creek and Foxtown in Madison, Mount Gerizim in Harrison, Thomas Meeting House in Washington (now Marion), Sandusky Station, now Pleasant Run in Marion, and Cane Ridge in Bourbon county.