Banish doubt, and banish fear;
You, who Christ's salvation prove,
Praise and bless redeeming love.
—Abridged from Legh Richmond.
THE BLIND SLAVE IN THE MINES.
With a companion I had descended a thousand feet perpendicularly, beneath the earth's surface, into one of the coal mines of East Virginia, called the Mid-Lothian pit. As we were wandering through its dark passages—numerous and extensive enough to form a subterranean city—the sound of music at a little distance caught our ears. It ceased upon our approach; but we perceived that it was sacred music, and we heard the concluding sentiment of the hymn, "I shall be in heaven in the morning."
On advancing with our lamps we found the passage closed by a door, in order to give a different direction to the currents of air for the purpose of ventilation; yet this door must be opened occasionally to let the rail-cars pass, loaded with coal. And to accomplish this we found sitting by that door an aged blind slave, whose eyes had been entirely destroyed by a blast of gunpowder many years before, in that mine. There he sat, on a seat cut in the coal, from sunrise to sunset, day after day; his sole business being to open and shut the door when he heard the rail-cars approaching. We requested him to sing again the hymn whose last line we had heard. It was, indeed, lame in expression, and in poetic measure very defective, being in fact one of those productions which we found the pious slaves were in the habit of singing, in part at least, impromptu. But each stanza closed with the sentiment, "I shall be in heaven in the morning."
It was sung with a clear and pleasant voice, and I could see the shrivelled, sightless eyeballs of the old man rolling in their sockets, as if his soul felt the inspiring sentiments; and really the exhibition was one of the most affecting that I have ever witnessed. There he stood, an old man, whose earthly hopes, even at the best, must be very faint—and he was a slave—and he was blind—what could he hope for on earth? He was buried, too, a thousand feet beneath the solid rocks. In the expressive language of Jonah, he had "gone down to the bottom of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about him for ever." There, from month to month, he sat in total darkness.