California Sketches, New Series

by O. P. Fitzgerald

He was sent to San Francisco. He was one of a company of preachers who have successively had charge of the Southern Methodist Church in that wondrous city inside the Golden Gate—Boring, Evans, Fisher, Fitzgerald, Gober, Brown, Bailey, Wood, Miller, Ball, Hoss, Chamberlin, Mahon, Tuggle, Simmons, Henderson. There was an almost unlimited diversity of temperament, culture, and gifts among these men; but they all had a similar experience in this, that San Francisco gave them new revelations of human nature and of themselves. Some went away crippled and scarred, some sad, some broken; but perhaps in the Great Day it may be found that for each and all there was a hidden blessing in the heart-throes of a service that seemed to demand that they should sow in bitter tears, and know no joyful reaping this side of the grave. O my brothers, who have felt the fires of that furnace heated seven times hotter than usual, shall we not in the resting-place beyond the river realize that these fires burned out of us the dross that we did not know was in our souls? The bird that comes out of the tempest with broken wing may henceforth take a lowlier flight, but will be safer because it ventures no more into the region of storms.

Fisher did not succeed in San Francisco, because he could not get a hearing. A little handful would meet him on Sunday mornings in one of the upper-rooms of the old City Hall, and listen to sermons that sent them away in a religious glow, but he had no leverage for getting at the masses. He was no adept in the methods by which the modern sensational preacher compels the attention of the novelty-loving crowds in our cities. An evangelist in every fiber of his being, he chafed under the limitations of his charge in San Francisco, and from time to time he would make a dash into the country, where, at camp-meetings and on other special occasions, he preached the gospel with a power that broke many a sinner's heart, and with a persuasiveness that brought many a wanderer back to the Good Shepherd's fold. His bodily energy, like his religious zeal, was unflagging. It seemed little less than a miracle that he could, day after day, make such vast expenditure of nervous energy without exhaustion. He put all his strength into every sermon and exhortation, whether addressed to admiring and weeping thousands at a great camp-meeting, or to a dozen or less "standbys" at the Saturday-morning service of a quarterly-meeting.

He had his trials and crosses. Those who knew him intimately learned to expect his mightiest pulpit efforts when the shadow on his face and the unconscious sigh showed that he was passing through the waters and crying to God out of the depths. In such experiences, the strong man is revealed and gathers new strength; the weak one goes under. But his strength was more than mere natural force of will, it was the strength of a mighty faith in God—that unseen force by which the saints work righteousness, subdue kingdoms, escape the violence of fire, and stop the mouths of lions.

As a flame of fire, Fisher itinerated all over California and Oregon, kindling a blaze of revival in almost every place he touched. He was mighty in the Scriptures, and seemed to know the Book by heart. His was no rose-water theology. He believed in a hell, and pictured it in Bible language with a vividness and awfulness that thrilled the stoutest sinner's heart; he believed in heaven, and spoke of it in such a way that it seemed that with him faith had already changed to sight. The gates of pearl, the crystal river, the shining ranks of the white-robed throngs, their songs swelling as the sound of many waters, the holy love and rapture of the glorified hosts of the redeemed, were made to pass in panoramic procession before the listening multitudes until the heaven he pictured seemed to be a present reality. He lived in the atmosphere of the supernatural; the spirit-world was to him most real.

"I have been out of the body," he said to me one day. The words were spoken softly, and his countenance, always grave in its aspect, deepened in its solemnity of expression as he spoke.

"How was that?" I inquired.

"It was in Texas. I was returning from a quarterly-meeting where I had preached one Sunday morning with great liberty and with unusual effect. The horses attached to my vehicle became frightened, and ran away. They were wholly beyond control, plunging down the road at a fearful speed, when, by a slight turn to one side, the wheel struck a large log. There was a concussion, and then a blank. The next thing I knew I was floating in the air above the road. I saw every thing as plainly as I see your face at this moment. There lay my body in the road, there lay the log, and there were the trees, the fence, the fields, and every thing, perfectly natural. My motion, which had been upward, was arrested, and as, poised in the air, I looked at my body lying there in the road so still, I felt a strong desire to go back to it, and found myself sinking toward it. The next thing I knew I was lying in the road where I had been thrown out, with a number of friends about me, some holding up my head, others chafing my hands, or looking on with pity or alarm. Yes, I was out of the body for a little, and I know there is a spirit-world."

His voice had sunk into a sort of whisper, and the tears were in his eyes. I was strangely thrilled. Both of us were silent for a time, as if we heard the echoes of voices, and saw the beckonings of shadowy hands from that Other World which sometimes seems so far away, and yet is so near to each one of us.

Surely you heaven, where angels see God's face, Is not so distant as we deem From this low earth. 'Tis but a little space, 'Tis but a veil the winds might blow aside; Yes, this all that us of earth divide From the bright dwellings of the glorified, The land of which I dream.

But it was no dream to this man of mighty faith, the windows of whose soul opened at all times Godward. To him immortality was a demonstrated fact, an experience. He had been out of the body.