After the love-feast was a short intermission, during which a luncheon of seed-cakes, comfits and doughnuts were eaten as a preparation for the after service. Elder Ryan, whose warm, emotional Irish nature had been deeply affected by the experiences of the love-feast, preached one of his most spirit-stirring sermons. It was like the peal of a clarion calling to the battle of Armageddon the warriors of God against the powers of darkness. He was interrupted, but not the least disconcerted, by exclamations of "Amen!" "Hallelujah!" "Praise the Lord!" They seemed rather to give wings to his eloquence, for soaring in still loftier flights of eloquence.
After the sermon the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper was administered to those devout worshippers. By these sacred ordinances, amid the carking cares and tribulations of the present life, were kept in view the far more important realities of the life that is to come, and the souls of the people were enbraved and strengthened for the conflicts, both literal and figurative, to which they were called.
CHAPTER XVI
THE PROTRACTED MEETING.
The day after the Quarterly Meeting, Elder Ryan drove to his home if home it could be called, where he spent not one-tenth part of his time—at the Twenty Mile Creek. Neville who travelled thus far with him, thought nothing of the twenty miles walk to the Holms, where he had left his horse.
One of his plans for the spiritual welfare of his scattered flock, was the holding of a series of protracted meetings at the various settlements. One of these was held at the wooden school-house of the little hamlet of Queenston. An old pensioner of the Revolutionary War had gathered a few children together and taught them their catechism, and as much of "the Three R's" as he knew. He was a staunch Churchman, but had a friendly feeling to the Methodists, because Mr. Wesley had been himself a clergyman of the Established Church.
The meeting awakened a deep and wide-spread interest. The awful scenes of carnage and death, of which the little village and its immediate vicinity had been the theatre, seemed to have brought the realities of another world more vividly before the moral consciousness of the community. Moreover there were few families that had not lost some friend or acquaintance, or perchance—
A nearer
One atill, and a dearer
One yet than all other.
Under these chastening influences many hearts were peculiarly open to the reception of divine truth. The gracious invitations of the Gospel, and the warnings and admonitions of the Law, were alike faithfully and affectionately urged by the young preacher. It was a characteristic of the preaching of the times that it had in it a strong back-bone of doctrine. It was very different from the boneless jelly-fish-like preaching we sometimes hear,—vague and indefinite, without a single clear conception from beginning to end.
A very profound impression was made by one sermon especially, on a subject on which Neville seldom preached, but which on this occasion was strangely impressed upon his mind. The text was that sublime Scripture and its context: "And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them."