Capturing a Locomotive: A History of Secret Service in the Late War.

by William Pittenger

CHAPTER XV.

PRISON RELIGION.

The afternoon following the execution of our brave comrades was one of indescribable sorrow, gloom and fear. We knew not how soon we might be compelled to follow in the same path and drink the same bitter cup. As has been before narrated, we had offered at Knoxville to accept the award of the court in one of the cases as the sentence of all, since there was not the slightest difference among us. At that time, however, we were confident of acquittal. Now that confidence had utterly vanished, and no one of our number anticipated anything but speedy death on the scaffold.

But even without the addition of apprehension for ourselves, the parting from our loved friends, whose voices were still ringing in our ears, while they themselves had passed beyond the gates of death into the unknown land of shadows, was enough to rend the stoutest heart. Few words were spoken, but tears and sobs were frequent.

I could not shed a tear. A fierce fever burned in my veins, and my head seemed as if on fire. For hours I scarcely knew where I was, or the loss I had sustained. Every glance around the room, which revealed the vacant place of our friends, would bring our sorrow in a new wave upon us again. Slowly the afternoon wore on in grief too deep for words, and despair too black for hope.

At last some voice suggested prayer. We had no chaplain, and few of us were professedly religious, but the very thought of prayer seemed to bring relief, and was eagerly accepted. We knelt around the bare prison-walls, as so many prisoners have done before, and tried to draw near to God. We felt as if already cut off from the world. Captain Fry first prayed aloud. His voice was broken by sobs, but he did not now pray for the first time, and we felt our faith leaning on his as he poured out strong supplications for that Almighty help we so sorely needed. He prayed that God's love might be revealed to us, and that we might be able to trust the Saviour even on the gallows. When he ceased another took up the thread of petition. After him, another and another followed, until all but two had prayed aloud, and even these were kneeling and sobbing with the rest. As the twilight deepened, our devotional exercises grew more solemn. In the lonely shadow of coming night, with eternity thus tangibly open before us, and standing on its very brink, we prayed with inconceivable fervor. These exercises continued far into the night, and wrought their effect deeply in our hearts. From that night I recognized God's right to my allegiance. I did accept Christ as my Saviour, and determined to confess His name before men, whether I lived or died. This resolution in my own case—and I doubt not the same result was produced in other hearts—restored the fortitude that had been so rudely shaken, and I felt nerved for any fate. Strangely enough, with this resignation to the worst came the glimmer of a hope, unfelt before, that possibly life might yet be spared.

This hour wrought a complete and permanent change in the routine of our prison-life. Games, sports, and stories were no longer our leading pursuits. The cards we had been accustomed to play for pastime only—an old greasy pack obtained from the compassion of some soldier on guard—were thrown out of the window, and that game given up forever. Each morning and each evening we had a prayer-meeting,—not simply a single prayer, but all praying in turn. We asked for and obtained a Bible from the jailer, and read a chapter or more as part of our exercises, and sang hymns, so that our meetings became as much like those we had witnessed in the distant but never forgotten days of freedom as we could make them. There was wonderful pathos in the very rudeness of the singing, for our sweetest voices were silent in death. The remark was often made, "If Ross was only here to lead the singing!" The one who read the Bible lesson was considered the leader of the meeting, and, for a time, we took this position by turns. In place of "Do they miss me at Home?" we sang the more inspiring and helpful "Jesus, Lover of my Soul," and "Rock of Ages." The jailer, the guards, and all who came near the prison noticed the great change.

I had one peculiar difficulty which, to many readers, will appear almost whimsical, but to me was most real. Our hope of ever regaining liberty, or even preserving our lives much longer, was but slight; yet my greatest difficulty in finding satisfactory religious consolation had reference to a possible release. I had been a diligent law student, and had managed to continue the study even in the army and in prison. But now it was impressed upon my mind, with daily increasing force, that I must submit the decision of my future career to God. If I took this matter into my own hands, I could not feel that I was completely true to Him. Underlying this feeling was the further conviction that if I made such a submission of my future profession to God I would be led into the ministry, and the thought of this was very repulsive. Yet the longer the struggle continued the plainer duty became. If I gave myself to Christ, it seemed a necessary consequence that I should accept any work He gave me to do. If I feared that He would guide me in a certain direction, this was sure proof that I was not resigned to His will, and, according to my views, not a true Christian. At last the choice was made,—I resolved to follow my sense of duty, no matter where that should lead,—to the ministry or anywhere else. When this conflict was over there was no great emotional excitement,—only a sense of peace and rest. I could wait calmly in the prison until led forth to die, if such should be my doom, and then go forth out of life feeling that I was loyal to God, and that I should remain His, into whatever worlds the gate of death should open. If, contrary to all probability, the prison-gate should open for my passage back into the free world, from which I seemed almost as effectually separated as if death had already intervened, I promised still to be loyal to Him. This was the essence of the inward change I date from that time. My standard of action before had been pleasure, inclination, the world's notion of honor and morality. Even this had not been held too strictly, as the reader of these pages has discovered. But afterwards, however imperfectly maintained, my standard became the will of God, as revealed in the Bible, and my own sense of duty as enlightened by His Spirit. No great joy, such as is often expressed in conversion, came at first. But it was even better than any joy to feel that I now had a strong arm upon which I could lean,—that there was one person to whom I could go at any time, and who was not indifferent to my fate.

I now read the Bible with a clear purpose, and with a light on its pages that never before beamed there. Its very history was full of new meaning. Its grand beginning, the growth of wandering tribes into great empires, the pathos of the Psalms, the sublimity and eternal hope of the prophecies, and, above all, the life and death of that loving and lowly man who was greater than Psalmist or Prophet,—all these passed before me in the old Atlanta jail, until the place seemed like a new isle of Patmos. I had a strong bent towards scepticism, though I had not yielded to it, and found it hard to exercise simple faith in all the Word of God. But, little by little, my doubts became weaker and my conviction of truth clearer.

For a considerable time the whole of our party took turns in the leadership of our devotions, but finally this work devolved on the writer, and, after some months, the guards and other prisoners began to call me the "preacher," though, as yet, I was a member of no church, unless our prison band can be dignified by that title.