During the sermon he had something to say about himself. “I’ll be sixty-six years old on de fo’th day uv dis coming July. I set out ter seek de salvation uv my Gord in 1839. I have never been in any school, but I spent some months trying ter learn ter spell. I wuz converted in Marse Sam Hargrove’s terbakur fac’try in dis city, on de 25th day uv July, 1839, and frum dat day I have know’d dat Gord had anintid me wid de Holy Ghost ter preach de Gorspil uv His Son.”
You couldn’t hear Jasper say that and doubt. He seemed to assert a mastery over me from the start as to his sincerity. It was impossible, moreover, to question the honesty of anything he said. He made another remark at the outset which made everybody smile, but it was not a frivolous smile by a long shot. He said he was so ignorant when he first felt he must preach that he thought maybe God wouldn’t want a man to preach who could not read, and that maybe the devil had put that notion into him. Then he stopped, and with a decided smile he said, “I got a notion dat ef de debbul put dis thing in me, den he wuz a bigger fool dan I ever thought he cud be. I don’t think he hav made much by settin’ me out ter preach ef he did fer I done knocked his kingdom hard blows many a day, but arter more dan forty years servin’ my Gord I know who I hev b’lieved. I feel dat wenever I stan’ up in His name, de Lord is wid me.”
After these remarks he gave out his text and started in.
“Ef I don’t prove ter you by de word uv my Gord ter day dat de sun do move, den I ergree never ter preach agin es long es my head is ’bove de clods. I spek ebbry lady an’ gentl’man presunt dis evenin’ ter say wedder wat I say is so or not, arter dey hear wat I hav ter say. I’ll speak out’n de Bibul, an’ I want evrybody ter mark de words dat I giv ’em.”
I found that Jasper had a keen eye for business. He did things according to the book. He had ferreted out of the Bible every passage that bore upon the motions of the sun, and he had them all printed in a sort of tract. A copy of these passages he placed in the hands of every one who could read and wished to follow him. He stumbled considerably over the big words, but he skipped none, and kept along, and when he would read a passage he would ask to be corrected if, in any small degree, he had not read it as it ought to be. He was greatly set on doing clean work, and not seeming to be willing to fool anybody.
After reading a passage, then “the fun” would begin. He would pluck out of it the part that helped his argument, and it was a sight to see him with this passage as if it were a broad sword. He would charge upon his antagonists, shouting and laughing, and whacking them as he went until he would close that part of his work in a storm of eloquence. How he did move the people! He moved with the stride of the conqueror.
I am not skilled in religious reporting and cannot undertake to follow Jasper in that fusillade of comment and criticism with which, for a full hour and a half, he bore down upon his adversaries, crashing and scattering them as he went. A few of his sayings, however, stuck. He drove them into my flesh like fangs, and possibly a concrete show of them may help outsiders towards a conclusion as to what Jasper is after.
His text, so far as I could see, was not within ninety-five millions of miles of the question as to the movement of the sun. It did however suit exactly for that part of his sermon which had to do with the Lord as the defender of His ancient people. He grew vivid in picturing ancient Israel travelling through the great wilderness, and in showing how God delivered them from all their foes.
His wonder as an orator broke out in unmeasured splendour as he portrayed the power of God at the crossing of the Red Sea. A pathetic spectacle were the Hebrew slaves, as they fled out of Egypt pursued by the embattled legions of Pharaoh. As the Lord’s people, as he called them, got hemmed up with the sea in front of them and the great armies charging in the rear, he actually made the people cry in dread and terror lest these refugees should be totally extinguished. The scene was so lifelike and overmastering that shudders swept through the crowd, and women were wild with actual fright. Then when Moses came; when the rod was stretched over the sea and the waters, as if appalled by the presence of the Lord God, began to part and roll back until they left a clear passage between;—why everybody could see it. It was as plain as a great road in the broad daylight, and as the Hebrews, with revived hope, in solid columns, moved across, his people took fire; they literally shouted the children of Israel over. Jasper himself was leading the host, cheering, shouting to them not to be afraid, and telling them that God would bring them safely through. It looked to me as if half of the women were clapping their hands or dancing, and the other half were rolling off the benches in the excess of their rapture, as the last of the children of Israel came trudging out upon the banks.