They were busy men—men of action. They omitted no opportunities to do good. Intervals of rest were few and far between. The modern minister’s vacation was to them unknown. They met their “appointments” with surprising regularity. Neither storm, nor distance, nor weariness thwarted their plans. Their announcements were always made conditionally—“no preventing providence”—but they never calculated for providence to prevent them being on hand at the appointed place and hour. The strain of toil was constant, but their iron resolution, and the work itself, proved a strong tonic. The success of one service was inspiration for the next. Visiting from house to house, exhorting the people to faithful Christian living, distributing religious literature, and preaching week days as well as Sundays made their lives full of heavy tasks, all of which were performed with happy hearts. They possessed the glowing and tireless zeal of the preaching friars of the Middle Ages, and with many of them the clear flame of their zeal was undimmed until the fire was turned to ashes.
They were men of thought as well as action. Their preparation was made in the college of experience, in which they proved themselves apt students. They studied few books and only the best. They cultivated and practised the perilous art of reading on horseback. They pored over books and papers in humble homes by flickering candle or pine-knot light long after the family had retired. It is remarkable what extended knowledge of the English Scriptures, methods of sermonizing, oratorical style and forceful delivery these men acquired. They knew well, and by that surest form of knowledge—the knowledge born of verified experience—all they proclaimed in message to the people. There was freshness of thought, aptness of illustration, and forcefulness of expression that was native to them. The majestic forms of nature in the regions where they toiled inspired in them the sublimest thoughts of God and his eternal truth. The marvelous results of the sermons of such men as Markwood, Glossbrenner, Bachtel, Warner, Nelson, Graham, Howe, Hott, and others proved them great preachers in the highest and truest sense.
They were men of tact as well as thought, and adjusted themselves to the conditions. They preached wherever the people would assemble—in leafy grove, by the river bank, in the humble home, in the log schoolhouse, in the village hall, in the vacant storeroom, and in the unpretentious church-house. They did not always have the exhilarating and inspirational effect of great crowds, but they preached “in demonstration of the Spirit,” kindling the deepest emotions in their hearers, often arousing them to tremendous intensity and causing waves of overpowering feeling to sweep over them. Saints shouted the praises of God and penitents pleaded for mercy. These heralds of the Cross employed none of the familiar devices of modern times for securing crowds and reaching results. There were no specially-prepared and widely-scattered handbills, no local advertising committees, no daily newspapers with flashing headlines and portraits, no great choral or orchestral attractions. What made these fallible men so forceful and successful in winning others? The explanation lies in the fact of their spiritual enduement. They wrought in the name of Christ and under the influence of the Holy Spirit.
In no portion of our Zion have ministers made stronger and more lasting impression upon the people. Whenever present in a home they were the guests of honor. Their strong personalities and noble traits of character, as well as their calling itself, won for them the esteem of old and young. Parents named their children after them, and exhorted their sons to find in them their models for manhood. In thus honoring these noblemen of God they exalted the work of the ministry in the minds of the young, and prepared the way for the Lord to call them into his service. This may account, at least in part, for the great number who have gone into the ministry from these mountain districts.
Let no one fancy that somber shadows rested continually upon the pathway of these ministers. There was a joyous side to their ministerial life. When together as a class, or among their parishioners, their stories and jokes were abundant, spontaneous, and of the purest type. When they met at institutes, camp-meetings, and conferences they enjoyed one round of good cheer and solid comfort. Their services of song drowned all dull cares. Their lives had shadows, but they refreshed themselves in the rifts and glorious sunbursts.
The people to whom these men of God proclaimed the gospel were not, as a rule, rich in material things, but they possessed great hearts, in which love and kindness flowed as pure and refreshing as the streams of water that rippled down the mountain side.
We rejoice that Bishop Weekley has given to the Church this book. Many aged ministers, who once toiled in the Virginias, will live over again the scenes of their lives as they read these pages. Young men will be stimulated to more earnest endeavor as they learn of the hardships and complete consecration of God’s servants in pioneer days. No one will weary in reading this excellent volume. The good Bishop has written in harmony with an established sentiment in book-making—“it is the chief of all perfections in books to be plain and brief.”
W. O. Fries.
Dayton, Ohio.