The Saint of the Wilderness - Jess Carr

rockytopva · #**101** 27th May 2012, 02:57 AM

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 15
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Page 324- “It will not alter my course, for that course is so clearly set before me that my sweet Lord Himself holds the torch that lights my way.”
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In the spring Robert came home from an engagement in Montgomery County to find that his son had taken a new job without consulting him.

“You weren’t here, Papa, and I needed the work.”

“I’m partly to blame, Robert,” Eliza confessed. “I don’t think my saying ‘no’ would have mattered anyway, but I didn’t say no.”

“It’s a good job, Papa, better than the one I did here for our little paper. I’m going to be a printer’s devil at the Pearisburg Virginian.”

Eliza gave aid to her son. “Our little Staffordsville paper can’t survive longer, Robert.”

“But it’s a big ride to Pearisburg and you’ve no horse ... and school and everything …” Robert objected.

“Uncle John will give me a horse or help me find a ride with somebody else. I’ll just work on Saturdays until school is out, and when summer comes my wages will really fly high and I can start paying Uncle John and Uncle Dan back regular-“

“So that’s it,” Robert said sorrowfully.

“No, that’s not altogether ‘it,’ dear husband. The boy is smart and industrious and he wants to work and help himself and to pay back some of what we owe my brothers. It’s the right thing to do and it needn’t make you feel any shame.”

“There’s no call to soften it, Mamma. I can’t sit at my desk in school without the other boys, and girls too, pointing at me and saying, ‘Eddie Sheffey’s uncles have to keep him and his mother from starving to death because his daddy is so crazy on religion he won’t ask for money and he won’t come home half the time because of chasing sinners up every hollow’.”

“Eddie! Not in front of your father,” Eliza pleaded.

“Why not? It’s the truth, isn’t it!”

Robert did not even debate the point but tears spilled down his wrinkled cheeks.

“He didn’t mean it, Robert,” Eliza said softly when her husband had gone remorsefully to another room.

“Yes, dear Eliza, he meant it. It is the thing I could expect to hear. But it will not alter my course, for that course is so clearly set before me that my sweet Lord Himself holds the torch that lights my way.”

‘We have made out fine. Now don’t you be worrying about anything, for whatever we need, somebody will provide,” Eliza said.

“Bless them all. I do know about the whispering, but I know about the joys too!”

Robert rode away in June to attend the affairs of his circuit and Eddie took up his full-time job at the newspaper office. The boy had left with a countenance shining with challenge, and Robert admitted for the first time that he himself was growing old. And, for the first time also, he admitted to a bone-deep tiredness; in spite of it, there was something renewing about seeing his son so young, so full of hope and energy, go riding off into the world. How strange that God would let the old siphon strength from the young. It was not the first time he had felt this way. The same feeling had come hundred, and perhaps thousands of times when he had held a newborn baby or a little child, whether in a ramshackle mountain hovel or a rolling plantation farmhouse.

“Yes, Gideon, renewal comes with holding onto another human being, even if he is the smallest squirming thing.”

They rode along back toward Pearisburg again for a service there; and, for a week after that. No engagements would prevent his going to Independence, in Grayson County, to help out an old friend in a series of services.

“It’s been a while since we’ve been to Independence, old friend,” he said to Gideon. “You will like it there when the time comes for us to go. The water is cool and the clover is tasty and green, and, for me, my sweet Lord has provided me with so many dear people – so my pastor friend has told me.”

The twisting road into Pearisburg finally straightened, and the edge of the village came into view. So did the rock on which he had chalk-sketched that commanding line which hopefully had caused many a passer-by to stop and ponder on.

At least the words still stood out boldly in glistening white against a dark gray background. But what was this! Something new had been added in smaller letters that he could read only as he came very close to the rock. He had written WHAT SHALL I DO TO BE SAVED? And under it a man whose occupation was self-evident had added, USE HITE’s PAIN CURE.

“Well, Gideon, the sweet Lord never objected to a little humor, and Eliza tells me that I’m a regular smiley compared to when she married me. Bless her sweet soul, Gideon, she’s all the world to me. Now what was I going to say? Oh yes, we had best not let that medicine salesman get the best of God’s message.”

He dismounted then and added a third line: AND PREPARE TO MEET THY GOD.

rockytopva · #**102** 28th May 2012, 05:47 AM

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 15
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Page 326- Memorial Day devotion - Robert stops at the grave site of his brother James and first wife Elizabeth.

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Two days later after reaching Independence, Robert removed the letter of his host from his pocket and reread the instructions. “Well, Gideon, he says for us to go to the Lundy home, and we’ll do just that.”

When the house was reached he asked to have family prayers. “We’d be blessed; we’ve looked forward to this moment for a long, long time,” the mistress of the house said.

His prayer was long, but his audience showed no impatience and he got up from his sheepskin fulfilled. The smallest child of the household, six or seven years old, ran to him immediately, all timidity banished.

“Brover Sheffey, Mamma and Papa told me you would sit down on a sheep and I wish’d you’d give it to me.”

“Bless your precious little heart, son. One day I’ll give you my sheepskin when it’s worn out, but I don’t have another one right now. My first one was very dear to me, and when it was too old I buried it in a place that I’ll not tell to any man. I’ve gone through three more, but I’ve given them all away – I wish I’d saved one for you.”

The child whimpered in disappointment. Robert paced across the floor, for he was as helpless observing the discomfort of another’s child as he had been with all his own. “I don’t know what to do to pacify him,” he said helplessly.

“Pay no attention to him,” Mrs. Lundy said. “I don’t know what made him come up with that anyway.”

A quick summer rain started and the child rushed to the window.

“Now, Brother Sheffey, I’ll bet you can’t turn off your problems like that,” Marlin Lunday said and pointed to his son, completely absorbed at the window.

Robert gave a thoughtful nod of his head.

“I’m getting chilly,” Martin Lundy said. “I’ll just strike a match to that trash in the fireplace and knock the cold out of the room . . . . Been replacing some of the boards on the front porch before somebody breaks a leg. There’s something like ants that’ve eaten plumb through the old boards.”

The fire blazed and Robert moved closer.

“That’ll warm your outsides, and I’ll get the wife to heat you some cow’s milk to take care of the other side,” Lundy said.

In his host’s absence Robert watched the dance of the flames. Suddenly, from the burning wood, dozens of black ants began to make a fast exit from the hearth. He began scooping them up with a piece of newspaper, and when he had most of them captured he headed for the front door.

“What’s the matter, Brother Sheffey?” Lundy called, glass in hand, from behind him.

“The little ants are about to get burned and I am going to take them to the woodpile.”

“But we’d get rid of them. They’re nothing but a nuisance.”

“The sweet Lord didn’t think so or he wouldn’t have made them. Did you ever think of that?”

No one was more surprised than Robert himself, that, when in the pulpit for the first service, he suddenly cast aside that which he had prepared to say in favor of a sermon on the lowly ant. Perhaps God had even willed it so, when out of the fireplace the crawling things had come to attract his eye and provide his object lesson.

“Some among us would not believe that the lowly ant has for us a spiritual message,” he began. “What? You do not believe me? Then you do not know the Proverbs:

Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest. How long Wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? When wilt thou arise out of thy sleep?”

That night when the service had ended and the converts came in unexpectedly large numbers for an opening service, he marveled not so much at that but rather how God could use I the simplest things to teach the most profound messages. This was still on his mind when he said good night to the pastor and returned to the Lundy home.

“Brother Lundy, the mystery of our divine Lord is an awe-inspiring thing. If we could but grasp it with our bodies and minds would surely explode with joy.”

Robert could tell that Martin Lundy was not seeing the vision his guest was seeing, but he talked on, and his listener sat patiently.

“I preached a sermon on the tumblebug once. Brother Lundy, and brought a dozen souls to Christ. I didn’t invell.t If the lesson of the sermon; the sweet Lord showed it to me, and every word I needed was there. Why, it’s as plain as the nose on your face! Two tumblebugs push a little ball of dirt to and fro, back and forth, with great labor. They travel for miles with this little ball of dirt, and sometimes they come up against a rock or a fallen tree limb and backtrack all the way home. If that’s not like a man being pushed by the devil and pulled by a martyred Christ, I don’t know what is.”

The services at Independence ended on Sunday afternoon, and Robert rode toward Speedwell and Marion. It was the third anniversary of his brother’s death, and a full day’s ride I lay ahead.

”We did not get to place flowers on James’s grave the first year nor the second, Gideon, old friend, but another year will not escape us. And this time we’re going to take time enough to ride every one of my grandchildren upon your back, and if you do a good job of it I’ll slip a lump of sugar into your box.”

Gideon whinnied and shook his head with animal understanding. Stopping by Cripple Creek he picked some wild flowers to put on the grave of his first wife Elizabeth.

With stops at Marion and Cripple Creek behind him, one more stop, at the Wytheville train station, yet remained. He had missed seeing John Robert, his youngest boy by his first marriage, who had ventured to Salem by train in search of a better job. If his son returned on schedule as expected, he would be able to see him for at least a brief while.

rockytopva · #**103** 29th May 2012, 07:00 AM

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 15
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Page 329- The Traveling Salesman
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Arriving at Wytheville station, he hitched Gideon to the public hitching post among a baker’s dozen of other prancing, sweating horses and went inside. This stop was a thrill him, for only once before had he met someone traveling on the belching iron monster that thundered across the countryside.

Gideon still flinched at the sight and sound of a train whenever they, together, encountered one. If the truth be fully known, he also had both a fear and a fascination for the puffing locomotive whose mighty mouth sent sprays of hot cinders into the air and made God’s good earth tremble. Today more than ever he wanted to ride the mechanical beast, for though he had promised himself for years to do so, he never had.

The train schedule, scribbled in chalk in an obviously unsteady hand, indicated that the westbound train from Salem would not arrive for another hour. So be it. He was in no hurry. He positioned his sheepskin on one of the hard benches and sat down. Other passengers waited in the sweltering heat. They all seemed remote and unfriendly. And it gave him a feeling of loneliness.

Presently an unfamiliar rattling sound caught his attention and a gangly pack peddler invaded the train station. Around his body a canvas-like jacket, similar to an oversized cartridge belt, hung loosely, and every pocket seemed to contain a different ware or trinket.

“Amuse yourself while you travel! Here, here!” he called. “Trinkets for sale and corncob pipes with tobacco pouches, or New Testaments to read while you ride! Hurry, hurry before the train is due! Ladies, your attention! I have a few small looking glasses. Primp your best, you may be meeting your next husband on the train!”

The overzealous salesman walked about the waiting room, giving his pitch, until finally he stood in front of Robert. “Old-timer, if I ever saw a man that one of my corncob pipes and a little of the devil’s weed would cheer up, you’re him.”

“I don’t get any pleasure out of breathing anything but the good air or the purest aromas of nature,” Robert said.

“I might have known it,” the peddler said, bending low to Robert’s ear. “I can spot a man who likes a whiff of something really good every time. I’ve got a little homemade peach brandy out back in the bushes,” he said, whispering still lower. “Follow me out back and –“

“I’m not traveling by the train; I’m just waiting for somebody –“

“In that case, my brother, you ought to be reading the Good Book and worrying about your soul while you wait. You see this leather-bound New Testament? Only a dollar, and if I ever saw a man that looks like he needed to be teetotally saved, you’re the man!”

“What makes you say that?” Robert said.

“Why, it’s as plain as day – the hardness of your face, the guilty eyes – and your back looks a little droopy to me, probably been deep in anguish, haven’t you! Insides burned teetotally up with guilt, I’d say. The book says, ‘Though your sins be as scarlet’ – Read it for yourself. Think you’ll find it in Genesis, about page one hundred forty two.”

“It’s in Isaiah, Chapter One, verse eighteen. Since Genesis is the first book of the Bible it couldn’t be on page one hundred forty two, could it? And by the way – how did Genesis get in the New Testament?”

“Yes, sir. If I ever saw a man lost to the ravages of mortal sin – What did you say?”

“I said the scripture you quoted is in Isaiah,” Robert said, Chapter One, verse eighteen.”

“You know any other scriptures, old brother?”

“Yes. ‘The getting of treasures by a lying tongue is a vanity tossed to and fro of them that seek death.’ Proverbs, Chapter Twenty-One, verse six.”

“I don’t believe – I don’t believe I have: anything else to sell you. Good day sir.”

The departing back of the peddler passed jauntily through le door, and Robert could hear the jingle of wares moving farther down the street. When his eyes were refocused on the people sitting about the waiting room a middle-aged man with a scholarly aura about him looked toward him and smiled. Robert stroked his coarse beard in surprise, for he did not recognize the friendly man.

“Don’t we know each other from somewhere?” the stranger said, standing and closing the distance between their two benches.

“Not that I know of.”

“I couldn’t help overhearing that supersalesman giving you his pitch. Don’t take him seriously. If It’ll help any, I see nothing hard about your face at all. The fact is, I see there an infinite kindness that draws me, and I cannot understand it unless we have met before. Is it possible you could be wrong? I feel a strong sense of brotherhood that can’t be explained any other way.”

“I’ve never been introduced to you on any of my circuit rounds that I can remember, but my name is Robert Sayers Sheffey,’ he said, extending a hand.

“So that’s it. At last I have met the renegade Methodist evangelist whose converts march like an army across this land. You are right, we haven’t met, but it seems I have known you all my life and I feel no less a stranger shaking your hand at last. I’m F. G. Richardson, a member and temporary secretary of the Holston conference.”

“I guess that explains part of it. Then there should be I a recognition among all men who serve as soldiers of the cross.”

“Yes, except that we have not been privileged to include you in the full fellowship of our fraternity.”

“We are joined by the common good, Brother Richardson, but when the time comes that I can serve my sweet Lord better by full connection with the conference, I’ll let you know.”

A train whistled in the distance and the passengers began picking up their suitcases. The better part of the afternoon was spent with John Robert, and the sun was low in the west when each of them went their separate ways. No more stops at all could be made if he was to traverse the obstacles of two mountains and get to Bland before night.

Both he and Gideon had gone through the Little Walker and Big Walker mountain ranges so many times across the years that Robert thought that his animal understood the twists and turns of the Raleigh-Grayson turnpike as well as he did.

“Take your head, Gideon, I want to read from the Psalms. Waste no time now.”

rockytopva · #**104** 30th May 2012, 07:03 AM

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 15
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Page 332- Aunt Sis Umberger – Like a nun out of a Clint Eastwood movie
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The blistering heat lingered on even after the sun was half hidden, and Robert mopped his brow frequently as he read. The squeak of the leather saddle and the rolling motion of Gideon’s steady pace began to make him sleepy, and he raised his eyes for a moment. Visible heat waves rose up from the dirt road, and no air seemed to be stirring.

“This is the kind of day to breed a thunderstorm, Gideon, but I think we can get to Bland.”

He was reading again when Gideon stretched his neck and whinnied loudly. The bray of a mule called back, and Robert looked up to see in the distance a form that could have but one identity.

“Nobody in the world can ride a mule sidesaddle with the dignity and regal posture of ‘Aunt Sis’ Umberger, Gideon. Look at that stiff spine and jutting chin, would you! I never spent much time reading the classics, but if she doesn’t have the form of a queen of the Nile I never saw anything more like it. Bless her sweet life, Gideon, she’s served her bless Lord almost as long as I have, though in a different way.”

The queenly woman upon the mouse-gray mule continued along the side road until it intersected with the turnpike.

“Be glad to have you ride over the mountain with us!” Robert called.

“Not goin’ over both mountains. I’m turning off halfway up the first one. There’s too many babies comin’ this week. I can’t get around fast enough.”

“Well, maybe you’ll get a rest by the time the cool weather comes.”

She mopped her brow with a sleeve-covered arm and blew a wisp of graying hair from in front of her eyes. “What are you talking about? You don’t know much about the baby business! Have you forgotten what a bad winter we come through? You think the sorry menfolk of Wythe County was layin’ around the barn whittlin’ during them snowdrifts and zero weather? If you think they was, you follow me around nine months from January, February, and March. That’s not to mention the scoundrels that didn’t have enough to do with spring chores and run me back out in the dead of winter.”

Robert tried to suppress a smile. “I know you have a thankless task sometimes, but look at all the good our sweet Lord has let you witness to.”

She ignored this. “Childbirthin’s not exactly like having the hiccups, much as some menfolks would like to think so. Why, if one man could ever have a baby and tell his kind about it there wouldn’t be more than one urchin in every household, you can bet on that!”

”Do the best you can, Miss Umberger!” he called as she turned from the main road. “Sometimes the Lord works His wonders through the humblest of His flock.”

rockytopva · #**105** 31st May 2012, 06:54 AM

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 15
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Page 333- Robert gives up his faithful Gideon
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The almost eerie wilderness between the two mountain ranges was negotiated and they started up the last mountain as dusk began to fall. Gideon whinnied again, but this time Robert had seen what provoked the warning call of his animal.

“What do you make of it, Gideon? Looks to me like that family is in trouble.”

Closer up, the problem became clear. A loaded wagon stood by the side of the road, and one horse of the team lay dead. About this animal stood a man and four children, and when Robert dismounted, two more little ones craned their necks from beneath the household goods. The wife and mother was unseen until she moved from the back of the wagon and lifted the patchwork quilt on which she and her infant had been resting.

“What do you think happened?” Robert asked.

“I can’t tell you that, mister,” the pleasant-faced man said. “The animal just dropped dead like he’d been shot. It’s been so hot. Maybe that’s it.”

“Do you live around here?”

“No, we left Ada, West Virginia, and were goin’ to North Carolina.”

“Keep heart now,” Robert said. “We’re a long way between villages, but somebody in one direction or the other should have a horse for sale.”

The stranded man – whose mood previously had been almost jolly under the circumstances – now took on a look of defeat, and his wife’s gaze shifted to the ground.

“It won’t do no good to find a horse dealer. I don’t have but four dollars and a few brownies. That’s the reason we’re goin’ south. Maybe things will be better there.”

Robert felt in his own pocket before he remembered that the collection he received at Independence had been given back to the church treasurer for application toward the debt on the new church.

The hopelessness of their situation seemed to silence the entire family of travelers and Robert wandered from them to the shoulder of the road. He sat on his heels and rested his elbows on folded knees until guidance and inspiration filled his heart and head to overflowing.

“My dear Lord, would You require so much?” he whispered.

“What did you say?” the man asked.

“Unhitch your animal and drag the dead one off the road and down into the hollow. You will need the harness to put on my animal.”

“Your horse? But we haven’t any money to pay. And how would we get him back?”

“You need no money to pay. My Lord has told me that we are all of one family and what each of us has belongs to the other. This is your hour of need and all of the earth and the fullness thereof is the Lord’s. Take God’s animal and be kind to him. In the same way the Lord has called me to befriend you, so will He call upon another to befriend me.”

The harness of the dead horse fitted Gideon to near perfection, but he pranced discontentedly in the confines of his work suit.

Robert outlined his horse’s feeding instructions to his new owner and asked to be alone with his animal before they should all part company. Little heads peered around the rear of the all part company. Little heads peered around the rear of the wagon long before he had finished his farewell, but he delayed no longer and bade them leave.

“But how will you get back to your place?” both the man and woman inquired belatedly.

He shouldered his saddle and bridle for the long walk to Bland and made light of his predicament. “If a black bear gnaws at my heels I’ll feed him the saddle first – then he should be too well filled to growl for dessert.” The humor of his voice belied the welling up in his eyes.

The wagon started a crawling, turtle-like motion of creaking weight and groaning wheels.

“God be with you, my friends!” he called before his throat seemed to close. Lips that had shortly before brushed against the bone-hard cheek of a much-loved animal began to tremble. Gideon bucked in his harness as the wagon moved along and fitfully swayed his head to the right and left in display of his rebellion.

Robert took one final look. The animal flung his head so violently to the side that his neck nearly paralleled his body, and one screaming whinny echoed through the trees.

Robert forced his vision northward toward Bland. “Goodbye, dear friend. Our sweet Lord does indeed require much.”

Long after dark Robert trudged, exhausted, into the little village of Bland. Only the saddle, carried at times upon his head, kept the smallest part of him dry from the torrents of water that seemed to have been dumped from the heavens during the last two miles of his trek.

The crossroads trading store was open and he could see the faceless forms of men sitting on the open porch and outlined by the lamplit windows. The men talked in mumbling, low tones as he approached, but he could identify no one by voice. With a sigh of weariness, he cast the burden from his back upon the store porch and sat down to rest.

“Brother Sheffey – is that you?” a voice called from the store porch.

‘’The sweet angels are not out tonight. It is me in the flesh.”

rockytopva · #**106** 1st June 2012, 11:11 AM

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 15
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Page 336- Robert gives up his faithful Gideon
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“Brother Sheffey – is that you?” a voice called from the store porch.

‘’The sweet angels are not out tonight. It is me in the flesh.”

“Did lightning strike him dead?” an unidentified voice inquired. “That’d really be something if the lightning struck your horse dead.”

Robert told Harmon Newberry and the others the background of his horseless condition. They all listened patiently until he finished, and, for good measure, added a short sermon.

Then Harmon Newberry said, “You’ve got no worries about another horse. There’s a drove of unbroken western horses here in Bland right now. They came in by rail car to Wytheville yesterday, and one of my men helped the auctioneers drive them over the mountain. They’re slick, fat, and frisky, and the auction block is going to be busy tomorrow. Come on home with me now and I’ll give you a bed and some beans … and so you’ll sleep better, I’ll see that you get the best horse in the bunch tomorrow.”

Before Robert could show his gratitude a man named Nye Finley stepped to his side and said, “And I’ll pay half the bill.”

The next morning at the auction square, Finley was already waiting when Robert and Harmon walked over to the split-rail enclosure. Finley retracted his propped-up foot from the second rail and pointed to the horse he had judged the best.

Robert chose otherwise, and Harmon backed his judgment. When the large bay horse stood before the auctioneer Harmon and Nye Finley were not alone in the bidding; they were alone, however, when the hammer crashed down and “Sold!” reverberated around the ring.

“Well, he’s yours, Brother Sheffey,” Harmon said. “I’ll get one of my men to break him for you. None of these horses has ever been ridden before. In the meantime I’ll loan you a horse to ride.”

Robert shook hands with both men and said, “May the Lord bless you both for your kindness and listening hearts to His will.”

They all watched the buying and bidding continue, but Robert was soon anxious to go.

“Would you get my saddle and bridle?” Robert asked Harmon.

“You didn’t understand me, Brother Sheffey; I said I’d loan you a horse when we go home for dinner. You can’t ride your new horse until he’s been broken.”

But Robert insisted. When the saddle and bridle were brought and put on the new animal, it pranced wildly. Robert placed his hand upon the animal’s nose and rubbed his own cheek against the larger, coarser one of the animal. Only then was he conscious that silence prevailed all about him; that to every bystander and auctioneer it was obvious what he was attempting to do. Quickly he closed his eyes and muttered under his breath a prayer. Nye Finley held the bridle rein with the same frozen stance that stilled his voice. Robert mounted and asked Finley to relinquish his hold on the horse’s bridle.

For the space of a long moment the horse did nothing. Then slowly, deliberately, the animal turned his head backward and looked at the fixture upon his back. He stared still longer at the little man upon him., then straightened his head and gave a contemptuous snort.

“Give us a little room now!” Robert commanded as he started from the auction square.

‘’You’ll kill yourself, Brother Sheffey!” Hannon Newberry called frantically.

Robert leaned forward and patted the animal’s neck. “By all rights, new friend, I should call you Gideon II, but there’s no use in being fancy and the Lord has rid you of your fanciness already. I will just call you Gideon. The same as always,” he whispered.

The way was clear for the strutting animal now – all the way out to the turnpike road.

“I think it’s all right now, Brother Newberry – Brother Finley. Let’s be easy now – move along, Gideon. We’ve a lifetime to spend together, big fellow –no hurry. Take your time. Take your time.”

“Where do you want us to bury you?” One of the auctioneers called.

“That time has not yet come, my brother,” Robert shot back, “Leastways, I hope not. I’ve got a preaching engagement at the east end of the county, at Mount Zion church.”

“That’s the place you ought to be then, I reckon” the still-dumfounded auctioneer called back. ‘’You’ve got to be a saint or the worst kind of fool to try what you’re trying.”

“Good-by, Brother Newberry!” Robert called at last. “The auctioneer may be right, but if he isn’t I’ll be by the waters of Walker’s Creek at nightfall and eating from the table of Aunt Julia Bogle.”

As long as he stayed in sight of the auction ring, figures there were still motionless and the vibrato outpourings of the auctioneer still silenced. “Why should they be amazed, new friend,” he said to Gideon. “Isn’t it a simple thing to know that the same sweet Lord who holds dominion over them also holds dominion over the creation and actions of His animal kingdom as well? It is the simplest of truths, new friend, and perhaps it is well that they think upon it until they have provided their own answer.”

By the time he had reached Aunt Julia Bogle’s house near the Giles-Bland County line, Robert was sure that Gideon II would soon be an obedient and gentle friend. The animal had not been completely mastered yet, but before long Robert would be riding upon a disciplined back so gentle and trustworthy that the Psalms could be read with no fear of less important things.

“And now, new friend, I will turn you into Aunt Julia’s pasture lot, abundant in clover and good limestone water. Look around now. We will be here often and just as surely as I eat Aunt Julia’s good honey and bread you will find yourself in a garden of grass.”

He rested the next day and prepared his sermon during the evening hours. He loved to preach at Mount Zion church, and he loved the people that he preached to even more. Their kindness never seemed to waver as it did on occasion in other localities. And here too was a hunger not just for the Word but for Christian fellowship of the purest strain.

“I told my beloved Eliza once that her girlhood home was as dear to me as the home of Mary and Martha and Lazarus, true, but we can’t go back to our younger years, and now I must say that this home has taken on that meaning for me.”

Tears came to Julia Bogle’s eyes, and she managed only a muffled, “Bless you … and thank you.” In this sensitive woman, so generous with unlimited love and unselfishness, he expected no more acknowledgment than that. Perhaps that’s why he loved her so – for her unobtrusive presence, the busy hands that rushed to serve another first, and the sense of loss that reflected in her kindly face when fellowship of any sort needed to be broken because of too rapidly passing hours.”

“Brother Sheffey, you have just given my home a new name,” Julia said. “Now we will hereafter call it the Preacher’s House.”

The church on Sunday was packed and many stood at the open windows. He opened the service with impromptu remarks to the effect that “the blessed Book says, he who is first shall be last, and he who is last shall be first. I’m thinking as the sweat runs down my neck and under my shirt collar that the latecomers are better off outside in the shade, looking in.”

In spite of the swelter of a hot June day, he gave them his message, and it was two hours later before he stepped down from the stained-walnut pulpit and wandered into the oak-shaded churchyard.

“Well, you said in there that we are all strangers in the world – and short-lived ones, at that – so where you gonna find anybody that knows you, so you can go home to dinner with him?” a Brother Warner chided.

The cluster of old and young around him laughed, and the sound of it was good.

“I’m going to disappoint you all. Your good brother Aurelius Vest has asked me home with him. Pray for me now until we’re together again – and pray for our loyal old friend. Mr. Barbee, who couldn’t be with us today. I’ll stop on my way down the valley and rub the rheumatism from his aching old joints. He will cry a little, but I’ll tell him that you all love him and he’ll be all right. Don’t you worry any now. I’ll borrow some of Aurelius’s pine-oil-rheumatism-chaser to rub in, and by next service time Brother Barbee will be sitting in the front pew.”

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And here is a story I got from the Internet... Or I think it was from the book "Brother Sheffey"...
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Robert believed that the Lord controlled the actions of animals as well as men, and in verification and illustration thereof the following story is told by a gentleman living a few miles south of Pearisburg, Virginia. Mr. Sheffey stopped at his house over night, and by Mr. Sheffey's direction Gideon was turned on pasture. Mr. Sheffey having an appointment for the next day, and anxious to get off early requested the gentleman to have his horse ready for him. The man went out very early to get Gideon which he was unable to do, even summoning help, Gideon would not allow himself to be caught, nor would he be driven into the stable yard or lot. Finally the man gave up the effort to secure the horse, went to the house and informed Mr. Sheffey of the situation, and he went out with the man into the field where the horse was grazing, and requested the man to wait until he told the Lord about it. Down upon his knees he went and told the Lord of the inability of the man to bridle Gideon and requested that He put it into the mind of his horse to stand and be bridled, and on rising from his knees he said to the man "you can now bridle the horse," which he immediately did.

rockytopva · #**107** 2nd June 2012, 09:46 AM

The Saint of the Wilderness between Chapters 15 and 16
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The Anatomy of the Camp Meeting
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The name of my denomination is Pentecostal Holiness, which is basically a child of the Methodist church. When I was a teenager the old timers use to encourage me to go to revivals and camp meetings. In our church, much like the Cripple Creek camp meetings, the men would sit on the left side and the women on the right, on up until the third or the fourth pew. And when we would come to prayer the men would pray on the left side and the woman the right. Nobody knows why, it is just a tradition handed down through the generations. But, as in the last days of Sheffey, so our denomination is taking the Laodicean trek from hot --> lukewarm --> cold.

I would imagine that Robert Sheffey was encouraged to stay in the revivals when he got saved as a teenager. This is what helped make the saint. As he would go to those camp meetings and revivals he grew as a Christian and turned out to be a spiritual dynamic.

The Methodist experiences as handed down from John Wesley and the Holy Club…
1. Justification – The experience of faith
2. Salvation – The experience of receiving Jesus in the heart
3. Sanctification – Acquiring the sweet spirit
4. The Witness of the Spirit – Pentecostals would claim this with the speaking of tongues.

The first place these Methods were practiced was in Wesley’s open air meetings, for the Anglican Church had rejected such practices in general. Here in America these open air meetings turned into camp meetings. In the early years they would count how many souls came to Jesus for salvation and how many were sanctified. A story of an old timer seeking sanctification was that he became angry at his horse for not plowing straight rows and in turn began to whip his horse. His wife then yells out the door “Not yet honey! Not yet!” When one gets sanctified the first ones to know it will be the family pets. Instead of hitting them you will rub up to them and show them a little love.

Over the years the Methodist terms began to reshape into…
1. Believing – On the Lord Jesus Christ and the many promises of God.
2. Professing – Jesus as Lord!
3. Receiving – Jesus and true sanctification in the heart
4. Experiencing- Greater spiritual blessings in revivals and camp meetings.

And when all was kosher with the pastors it was said that the people “had got it in a good way.” And when that was the case, as the scripture says, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” - 2 Cor 5:17

I regret that Jess Carr did not get more detailed in the revivals and camp meetings Robert Sheffey would attend. As every account I have ever read of this saint was that he was a man of many ‘eccentricities’ I can only imagine how animated he would get during these services.

But, there again, if were to make this devotional focus on the shouting, falling out in the Spirit, getting drunk in the Spirit (which people would have laugh light heartedly in the Spirit), running the aisles, etc… We may paint a picture of a people who were as sounding brass or as a tinkling cymbal. So the character issues the most important, as so emphasized in the book.

Now we have the story of Robert Sheffey… A man who had experienced the Methodist methods, both inwardly and outwardly. So though Jess Carr did not focus on the outward eccentricities of the man, this is forgiven as he had captured the spiritual inward eccentricities, which are the more important.

Ephesians 5:3 says “But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints;” and 1 Thessalonians 4:3 declares “For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication:” If there is yet another beauty on those Methodist who claimed Sanctification, it is that there were no accounts of fornication among them.

Again, there are two major camp meetings in the life of Robert Sheffey. One was the Asbury Camp Meetings in Cripple Creek, VA, in which Jess Carr did not mention at all. And the other is the Wabash Camp Meetings in Giles County, VA, which he covers in greater detail.

A John Newland donated land for the "Asbury Camp Ground" in 1743 in the Cripple Creek area of Wythe County. "...This is a place, where for many years, the religious services known as camp meetings were held,...It is a grassy plot of ground located at the foot of a large wooded hill. Cripple Creek flows by it, hence there was a bountiful water supply for the many horses used in bringing the people to the meeting. A clear, sparkling spring, flowing from under the hill, known as The Camp Ground spring furnished water for the thirsty people...”

I have read an obituary on a Ms McTeer that says she was an active member of the Methodist Church. If one could locate the memorandum that she speaks of in the following obituary, it would be hard to tell of the beauties long ago forgotten of the Cripple Creek Camp meetings.

FRANCES STUART McTEER, 1806-1882:
Frances Stuart McTEER departed this life in Wytheville, Va., Feb. 27, 1882, at 2 o’clock P.M., and was buried in Wytheville Cemetery Feb. 28, 1882. Sister McTEER was born on Cripple Creek, Dec. 2, 1806, and was 75 years old when she died. Her parents gave her advantages of education and early culture which were improved and kept up through life, so that she was one of the most intelligent and cultivated women in the country, and her association was much sought and enjoyed. On March 2, 1857, she was married to Rev. J. M. McTEER, of the Holston Conference, with whom she lived happily until the close of life. Sister McTEER made a profession of religion and joined the Methodist Church at Asbury Camp-ground in Wythe County, Va., August, 1840; and this place and time was ever held sacred by her, and she never missed but one camp-meeting at that place in 42 years, and this was on account of sickness. She also kept a memorandum of the sermons she had heard preached, and by whom. Her entry book closes with sermons preached at the camp-meeting last September. She kept her membership on the Wytheville Circuit and seemed to feel a peculiar interest in the members of the Church and preachers of that circuit. From the time of her conversion to the close of her life she lived a consistent Christian. Her house was immediately open for the traveling minister, and in her parlor at Speedwell the Methodist preachers preached and held class-meetings until the church was built at that place. For the last 25 years she has encouraged her husband in faithfully preaching the gospel, and it was her greatest desire that he might go out and preach Christ again as in other days. She was often called upon in the congregation, and her prayers were attended with power. She was one who surely reflected the image of Jesus, and the light of her influence will linger for years yet to come. Wytheville society has lost a delightful charm, and Wytheville Circuit one of its most useful members; but we expect to see her again, for she sleeps in Jesus. --- B. F. Nuckolls

And for more on the Camp Meetings let’s turn to the Methodist Quarterly Review.
There was in Wythe County, going from Cripple Creek to Asbury where another camp ground was erected. Here in the earlier days Fulton Gannaway and Catlett swayed the great audiences and at a much later day the polished erudite Wiley and the rugged and impassioned McTeer. Now the tents are all gone and wandering herds are grazing where the trumpet called the people to worship. One feature of the worship sealed the preaching of those early times and that was the earnest spiritual singing. Pathos was put into the very words in lining the hymns and the power brought out in the soul stirring spirit with which the people took up the words and praised the Lord. Sermons melted down the audiences under deep pungent conviction. Then the singing which followed was like the voice of many waters, conversions were sudden clear and powerful, shouts of praise made the hills ring in praise to God who could bring sinners from darkness to light. It is to be regretted that so few dates and records can be found of what was done in those days. Many of the forefathers did not read and much has been lost pertaining to the records of these meetings.

There are few misfortunes to a District greater of its kind, than a miserable failure of a Camp Meeting. Let us never attempt to draw out the forces of Zion for one of these tremendous onsets upon the powers of darkness, while there is distraction in our councils, and faintness in the heart of officers and men.

There is no such thing as mediocrity in a Camp Meeting. To escape contempt, it must be the greatest assemblage and the most thrilling occasion of religious worship known to the church.

Let the preachers show that they, and, so far as possible, their families also, are identified with the meeting about to be held; let them announce it from Sabbath to Sabbath with emphasis; let them pray publicly and earnestly, as well as privately, for the blessing of God upon the coming occasion; let them exhort the people to pray for it also, whether they intend to go or not; and finally, let a special prayer meeting be held on the evening before starting for the meeting, if it be practicable. These measures, taken with the proper spirit, will bring the blessing of God in a baptism of power upon preacher and people; and they will generally inspire large numbers, both out of the church and in, with a determination to attend, who had else scarcely thought of the thing. Every member of the church can do something to add to the interest of the coming occasion; and that whether they can go themselves or not.

All members of the church who cannot be present themselves, should plead with God daily and earnestly for his blessing upon the meeting. And if there are any who can only attend a single day, going in the proper spirit, they will doubtless find it highly profitable. Thus every member of the church can contribute something to the interests of this extraordinary means of grace; and if this were done in a single instance, results incalculably great and glorious would doubtless follow.

The spirit with which individuals and societies attend Camp Meeting has much to do with their own profit, and with the general success of the meeting. Remember from the first, the object is wholly a spiritual one. Salvation ⎯ present salvation. Purity for the church and pardon for sinners. These are the ends aimed at on the Camp ground. They are co-ordinate in God’s method. What is done for one is done for the other. Therefore fix on these. Cry to God for the anointing spirit upon your own soul, and labor and pray with what grace you have, and what you can get, for the salvation of the lost around you.

On the Camp ground, as in the army, and for similar reasons, there must be a general Head. The circumstances must be extraordinary indeed, to render it at all proper that that office should devolve on any other than the Presiding Elder of the District: but woe to the Camp Meeting, and to the luckless Methodists on the ground, if the said Presiding Elder should happen to be a lily-fingered gentleman, who will handle the whole thing at arms’ length, and with his finger-ends, instead of putting himself where he belongs, in the very fore-front of the hottest battle. Of course, he should oversee the preparation of the ground, and be present, and order all the services, from first to last, if his health permit. He may very properly associate with himself such brethren as he sees fit, as advisers, but should be ready, at all times, to give direction to the movements of the emcampment.

Rules of order, however, should be as lenient as may consist with a due attention to propriety, but such as are made should be insisted on with great firmness. It is well to have the “rules of order” printed, and posted in conspicuous places, and the attention of the congregation directed to them, that no one may be ignorant of them.

Everything depends upon the due union of firmness with discretion. Government should be so exercised as to demonstrate to all concerned that order will be maintained at all events, and at the same time there should be such moderation as to enlist both the judgment and the sympathies of community in favor of the measures pursued. It is an interesting fact, that when once a meeting has been properly and thoroughly governed in any place, there is seldom any difficulty in that place afterwards. As to the order of exercise and of domestic arrangements, I have generally noticed that the following have worked well:

1. Rise at five, or half-past five in the morning
2. Family prayer and breakfast from half-past six to half-past seven.
3. General prayer meeting at the altar, led by several ministers appointed by the Presiding Elder, at half-past eight, A. M.
4. Preaching at half-past ten, followed by prayer meeting to twelve, M.
5. Dine at half-past twelve, P. M.
6. Preaching at two, or half-past two, P. M., followed by prayer at the altar till five.
7. Tea at six, P. M.
8. Preaching at half-past seven, followed by prayer meeting at the altar (known as the after service).

rockytopva · #**108** 4th June 2012, 07:23 AM

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 16
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Page 341-344- Eddie’s new job
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In the fall of 1883 Robert concluded one of the most extensive evangelistic campaigns of his career. The age of sixty-three hardly seemed a stage of life to be taking on so much new territory, Eliza had argued, but he went, nonetheless, and came back triumphant.

“Eliza, the Lord be praised! I knew it was going to be a good trip the day we finished the service at Oldtown in Grayson County. We kept moving south and west after that and made a circle of three hundred miles, I’d judge. There were many conversions and a few churches started.”

“I’ve missed you, Robert. You’ve been gone over a month on this trip, and Eddie and I have been worried, to say the least … “

“What need to worry? Everywhere I met God’s children, and it was no different than our own little church here at Staffordsville. There are no strangers, and certainly no harmdoers to a carrier of the Word.”

Eddie stabled his father’s horse and returned to the house with a glow of excitement in his blue eyes. The youth was now a head taller than his father and reflected the lean masculinity so prevalent on the Stafford side of his parentage. The boy’s handsome face had the same look of bright expectancy so characteristic in his mother, and it was with the full impact of this engaging personality that he approached his father.

“Papa, has Mamma told you about me yet?”

“No, but if the sweet Lord has blessed you life he has me over the past few weeks – why, we’ve been into North Carolina at Skull Camp and as far west as Blountville, Tennessee. Came home by way of Scott County in western Virginia -.”

“But Papa, you must stop and hear me first – mine won’t take so long,” Eddie said.

“’Tell me, then,” Robert said, “but I’m suspicious already, for you and your mother have both bright and secretive countenances.”

“Papa, I have been offered a job in the city of Lynchburg, and I will earn almost twice the amount of wages I’m earning now.”
“That’s nearly a hundred miles away from home _,” Robert began.

“Hear the boy out, Robert. Don’t be sure it’s not a gift of Providence – it’s worked out almost like that.”

“About the time you left on your trip, Papa, a drummer I saw in Pearisburg told me of a job with the Nowlin Brothers grocery company. I wrote to them, and he vouched for me -. Well, they’re willing to give me a chance on the job.”

“Eddie would work six months on trial and then the position would be his, if the company liked his work,” Eliza added.

“But, son, you’re only seventeen years old, and it’s not like I had a brother there to look after –“

“Papa, it’s been like I was on my own since I was fifteen. The drummer says this work will lead to a white-collar job and a whole lot bigger responsibilities.”

The boy gave all the additional verbal ammunition he had, Robert suspected, and it was rehearsed to perfection.

“I make no decisions in this life without talking to the Lord about it first. You know that, son, and I hope if it be His will, as well as that of your blessed mother, I can add my blessing also.”

In every private moment they had together it was evident that Eliza favored her son in the matter.

“There should be no cause to ponder the matter for even a week,” Eliza said. “The boy has a healthy ambition and a good business head. All of his uncles think so.”

“That’s part of the reason for his wanting the job? The need he feels to pay back his uncles for the help they have given us?”

“Yes, Robert, but there’s nothing wrong in that. I can’t disagree with you that God privileges many to help us wnile you’re out laboring for Him – nor can I disagree that being God’s helper is reward enough without the expectation of being paid back, in some cases. But it doesn’t always work that way, dear husband, and when it does, it should always· be a voluntary act on the part of the giver.”

“You keep me humble, dear Eliza, and in touch with temporal man --”

“Look at it this way: if Eddie feels the need to pay back much of the financial help my brothers have extended me, this very desire can be the seed of his ambition and an important stepping-stone in his character growth.”

“I’d have to concede that’s true,” Robert said.

“I’m proud of him. Robert. We’ve raised a fine son. I know he’s young, but I sense a rightness in what he is asking of us,”

“Well, maybe it will work out all right. My brothers-in-law might even smile at me more often under the new arrangement,” Robert said jovially.

“And you know the answer to that too,” Eliza said. “There might have been a day they thought ill of you for giving preference to your work rather than your family, but that day is no more. The tree shall be known by its fruits,’ or something like that …. “

Somehow there was a joy in losing to Eliza. At least he would let her think so.

With his parents’ blessing, Eddie took up residence in the Virginia city of Lynchburg by Thanksgiving of that year. In early December, Robert rode off, leaving Eliza alone for the first time in her entire life. The same sparkle in her eyes which had been his buoyant send-off across the years bade him farewell again, but he could not help noticing that this sparkle was obscured by the faintest mist.

Montcalm, West Virginia, was his destination and there he would be for a week of revival services. It would be hard not to take detours all along the journey, for almost every ridge and hollow were familiar ground to which, at some time across the years, he had carried the message of the Christian gospel and witnessed the first fruits of the miraculous power of its doctrine. But his blessing had not ended there: in some families he had assisted in the conversion of three generations from the same household.

rockytopva · #**109** 5th June 2012, 07:18 AM

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 16
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Page 344- I am reading "Birth of a Book" or the day to day writing of the Saint of the Wilderness by Jess Carr. Robert's children served the Lord all their days. Eddie Sheffey had a son who would serve as a missionary in Africa. Jess Carr credits Robert with winning about 25,000 souls to the Lord in his lifetime. And this after not saying a word about the Cripple Creek revivals / camp meetings.

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It was a pleasant December day when he reached the small West Virginia village and he rode to the home of the Ellis Bailey family, with whom he had been invited to stay.

“The Lord has certainly smiled on us this year,” Ellis Bailey greeted him. “The weather is little worse than early fall, and the extra room on the schoolhouse gives us more space than we’ve ever had before.”

Robert felt uplifted by the enthusiasm of his friend. And with a happy heart he sat at the generously laden table and there held a devotional service before anyone took the first bite of food. There was no less enthusiasm demonstrated when he finished the final prayer and piled spoon upon spoon of honey on the freshly made bread.

”Brother Sheffey, why do you eat so much honey all the time? Every time you’re here you put honey on your bread and even on your vegetables,” the youngest of the children present asked.

“Bless your little heart, child. No one across all these years has asked me that.”

He took another bite of the honey and bread and let it roll across his tongue before attempting to answer her. His dancing white whiskers soon slowed from chewing and he patted the girl’s hand.

“Child, a long time ago I had a taste for sweet things, like all children; but I love honey in particular, for it is a balm to my soul of another kind also. When I was growing up I used to drink a lot of whiskey and brandy, and when I came to love my sweet Lord so much, I could still taste the ungodly nectar in my mouth even years after I no longer touched it. The honey in my mouth takes the old taste away and helps me give testimony.”

This one answer seemed to give birth to other questions that, before long, were coming in all directions from his host family and other guests who honored him with their presence each time he came into the community.

“The most unusual worship service I’ve ever had, you say? That won’t take much thinking on,” Robert said, stroking his white beard. “I can’t remember the year it happened for sure but I’d say about eighteen-sixty. It’s funny how the sweet Lord shows us a need sometimes by the oddest sequence of events.”

“Where were you at the time?” one of the guests asked.

“I was traveling through Tazewell County and I stopped at a plantation home and asked if there was food enough for me to share. The lady of the house smelled of perfume and her hands showed the whiteness and tenderness of disuse, but she started telling me all the food she didn’t have. It was in the final weeks of winter before garden time and she kept complaining that she didn’t have fresh asparagus and snap beans and that she was sure I wouldn’t like dried apples rather than fresh applesauce.”

“And did you finally eat there anyway?”

“No, I didn’t,” Robert answered his hostess. “She did not seem thankful at all for all the food she did have, and I rode away up the road a piece, and went into a house that I later found out was the plantation owner’s tenant house and ate there. The tenant family didn’t have anything except potatoes, but when the woman of that shack asked me in, she was more thankful for those potatoes than any king has ever been over his banquet table.”

“Did you ever go back to the plantation?” one of the children asked.

“No, and I found out later I wouldn’t be welcome. But anyway, I’m getting away from the experience I wanted to tell you all about. The woman at the house where I did eat had a husband and several children. Her man had never accepted Christ – and had no intention to, she said, until a goiter he had on his neck grew bigger and bigger, so he could hardly breathe. If you could have heard him wheeze you’d have thought what he was thinking: it was doubtful whether he could live out the winter.”

“In any event, the sinner wanted to be baptized before he was to trod through the great beyond. The rest of his family were Baptists, and when he said baptized he didn’t mean sprinkled on the head: he meant under the water.”

“But how could you submerge him in the cold of winter?” Ellis Bailey said.

“That was part of the problem,” Robert replied. “The man insisted on immersion, and he seemed to have no doubt that he would die before spring so there was no putting him off, in spite of the fact that there was ice frozen over the creek from one bank to the other.”

“You could have cut a hole in the ice with an ax,” an older child said.

“That’s what we did finally do – but not right then. We hoped it would warm up a little the next day and make it easier on the poor brother. That night two old Indians who lived nearby brought the family some deer meat and were told by the sick mail of his conversion. I’ve never heard a more touching testimony, and right under my nose the man converted those two Indians and they too wanted to ‘go down with the fish and be clean for the Great Spirit.’ I couldn’t understand the Indians well, but I was convinced of their sincerity and knowledge of what they were doing. The Lord be praised. We all knelt there on the floor together with our arms around each other and the sick man’s wife and children crying over him so happily. The Lord may never show me for certain, but those old Indians were just as much a part of that fellowship as any man who ever stood at the altar.”

“Did you baptize them all together?” an anxious child tried to speed him along.

“Yes, but Jet’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Robert said. “We agreed that the baptisms would take place the next afternoon at the creek below the house, and the Indians promised they’d be there. They not only showed up on time but each one had his squaw, and one of them brought his two daughters. We chopped a hole in the ice about the size of a washtub and baptized the white man first. He wouldn’t go back to the house – he wanted to honor his red brothers with his presence – but we wrapped him good in a quilt. The strangest thing of all happened when I baptized the first old Indian. I let him down through the hole in the ice while holding onto his hands in the same manner I’d submerged the white man. When I got the Indian under, hands and all, he wrestled free from me and disappeared from view under the ice. I was beside myself to know what to do, and I’d about made up my mind that trying to save him was futile. However, I grabbed the ax and started chopping a bigger hole to find him and effect a rescue. The white man, his family, and I seemed the only ones upset, for the Indian families showed no fear or excitement.”

“I’ll bet the old Indian thought it was time to die, and be figured that going through the hole in the ice to the Great Father was as good a direction as any,” Ellis Bailey said, half seriously.

“No, they don’t think like that,” Robert said, ‘’but you’re nearer right than you think. As I chopped away at the ice I heard a gurgling sound to my rear and the head and body of the old Indian popped up out of the water behind me. I couldn’t understand his chattering words but the tenant family said he was asking me if he had stayed down long enough to please the Great Father. I still didn’t understand, until they explained to me that the Indian had thought the longer he could stay under the water the better baptized he was, I, and that it would be more pleasing to our sweet Lord that way. Well, we got them all to understand that endurance had nothing to do with it and baptized the rest of them quickly and wrapped them in blankets they had brought. It was a grand and glorious day to bring seven new sheep into the fold, and not a one of them suffered any sickness from the cold!”

The next evening at the appointed hour the Bailey family and a handful of friends accompanied Robert to the school building for the opening night of the revival. A half hour after the announced starting time, only two additional people had come. Robert, in his sadness, asked those present if they would join him in prayer and then go out with him to visit some of the people whose hearts had obviously hardened since his last visit.

The reception each received and reported was on was a remote one.

“Why have they grown so cold?” Robert pleaded for enlightenment.

Not one could tell him for sure – other than to guess the recent prosperity of the area had something to do with it and he insisted that the school doors be opened again the following night anyway. But the result then was no different. Robert stood before the improvised altar and pulpit with tears streaming down his face. He looked out over the handful of loyal friends without really seeing them, for his heart was so heavy and his eyes burning with disappointment. He spoke more to himself than to his meager audience, but they came closer to listen.

“It is an abomination to the Lord, their disobedience,” he whispered intensely. “A great calamity will befall this community. I will pray God’s wrath upon these people who turn from their Creator. Deliver my sheepskin to me, Brother Bailey, and depart from me – all of you – and I will join you for family prayer at home when I have finished.”

At daylight the next morning, with a winter fog obscuring the rays of the morning sun, he and Gideon left the village.

“It’s a sad day, Gideon, but somewhere else our sweet Lord will have a job for us. Perhaps we shall never know whether our prayers were heard or whether they are in accord with our Father’s will. But woe unto these people if their disobedience is untimely in heaven.”

Not until the year of 1885 did he hear of the smallpox epidemic that had a few months earlier engulfed the village, taking entire families in its terrible wake. For days upon days, he was told, stricken people had lain undiscovered until the spreading stench of the village became so widespread that travelers would detour for miles. He told Eliza about the background of the matter, but he found his real peace alone down the hill from their home, by the waters of Walker’s Creek. When the power of God seemed especially manifest, he felt both an inward peace and an awesome fear at exactly the same time. He sat on a creek rock near the edge of the stream, with some of the villagers watching him, and raised his eyes to the heavens.

“Dear Father, we will never know, for it will not be Thy will that we know, whether this scourge has come because Thy servant asked it in Thy name. Whatever the true answer may be, let this and all things be to Thy honor and glory, that we, Thy people, may not shut out the presence of Thy Holy Spirit ever again.”

rockytopva · #**110** 6th June 2012, 10:19 PM

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 16
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Page 349-350- The Camp Meetings
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In the four years to follow, the spirit of religious revival, and particularly the camp-meeting variety, seemed to be dying away. Robert witnessed this with a heavy heart, but fought back with an increase in personal activity to do his share in trying to overcome such spiritual apathy. The people alone could not be blamed, he learned, for some presiding elders and some conference officials in league with them had spoken openly against the continuance of camp meetings. How blasphemous they were in even suggesting that the church had now come out of the mountains and it was time both dignity and piety joined hands for the ultimate good of the whole church! Couldn’t they see that a love of education and culture was becoming the fraud of the age! The very word “dignity” was an abomination in the sight of God! Nothing on earth was really important except the extension of God’s kingdom by loving one’s neighbor and meditating on God’s Holy Word both day and night.

“Eliza, if the camp meetings are ever done away with, may the wrath of God fall heavy upon our heads,” he said tearfully. “So many have been reached in this way, and how much poorer will heaven be if we miss one soul who might come out of the mountains repentant, only to find the log pews empty and the altar rotted away.”

“The world is changing, dear Robert. It is not the same world you knew fifty years ago. Haven’t you been telling me that many of the mountain cabins and the trappers’ camps that you served so many years ago now stand deserted?”

“Yes. The people have moved from hacked-out clearings and ridges to cleared fields and white houses below. They’re different generation, but it will be a pity if they do not remember their humbler beginnings.”

“Perhaps we can’t prevent change. Maybe we shouldn’t try. We might even be acting contrary to God’s will.”

He did not often find fault with the dear wife, whose aging eyes seemed to get kinder with the passing of the years, but such statements left him shaken and sad.

“If I must do it by myself, Eliza, I will keep the camp meetings so full that not one man who dares to call himself a servant of God will raise one finger to do away with them.”

In July of 1890 Robert prepared to set out, more than one month ahead of the scheduled Wabash camp meeting, and do the thing he had vowed to do. He would take care of his circuit, but after each engagement he would comb the hills and hollows. Then, when the last week in August came, there would be the equal of a long wagon train from every conceivable direction to the Wabash camp ground. But he would do more than that. When his travels took him too far out of range, he would, send wagon trains of God-seekers to other camp meetings both within and without the state.

“Help me get my affairs in order, Eliza. I am off at daylight.”

Together they went through his mail, Eliza commenting now and then, and making note of his special instructions. I When she was done, he told her that he was tired and asked that she sit down on the wicker couch so he might lie there and rest his head in her lap.

“Sing to me, Eliza, for in the morning I Will be gone.” He closed his eyes, and from her body, grown heavier with age, the strains of her voice with new mellowness reached the depths of his soul: Twilight is stealing over …

His plan was to make a complete tour of his regular itinerary, which consisted now of fourteen counties. First he would go to Mercer County and work his way northeast until I all his West Virginia territory was covered sufficiently well to spread the word. From there he would make a circle to the easternmost counties in the Virginia territory, and, afterward, work west.

“Well, Gideon, Bluefield will be our starting point,” he murmured to the animal as they passed through the village of Narrows and turned up Wolf Creek. Quite contrary to his usual practice, he made no stops along the creek, for he would spend more time with these good people later.

Suddenly he did stop Gideon and dismounted. After he had removed his hat and begun the task for which he had stopped, a man he recognized as a lawyer by the name of Staples reined to a halt beside him.

“Brother Bob, what in the world are you doing? The way you passed me up and some of your other old friends along the creek, we thought you must be in a hurry, and here you are dipping up water from a mud puddle in what looks like a brand-new hat?”

“It’s the little tadpoles, Brother Staples. You see, the water has receded and they are isolated. The hot sun will have them cooked like stewed chicken in a puddle as shallow as that.”

Robert continued his task until all the tadpoles had been moved to less isolated, though still shallow, water. As a final act of tidying up he rinsed his hat in the waters of Wolf Creek.

“Brother Staples, it’s a Lord’s blessing that you happened by, and I want you to ride along with me. You are going to Bland to court, no doubt, and I want you to advertise the Wabash camp meetings everywhere you go. Do better than that, even. Catch the people inside and outside the courthouse and implore the judge to do the same and tell the people there are those among us who would do away with the camp meetings, and we must fight them with all of God’s might!”

The other man promised he would, but there was lack of conviction and enthusiasm in his voice. When the two men parted company at Rocky Gap, Robert felt that a bad omen might arise from his solicitation.

“Gideon, can it possibly be that all the world is right and I am wrong? Has my sweet Lord changed His face and I alone cannot see it?”

On August eighteenth his circle ended at the Bethany church on Pilgrims Knob in Buchanan County. Even there, so distantly removed from the Wabash camp grounds in Giles County, he found eager hearts awaiting the days until the camp meeting began.

From there he rode straight toward home, for the camp meetings were scheduled to start August twenty-third; and by August twentieth be was back at Staffordsville. The wait to see the fruits of his labor was a short one. The thrill of this occasion had never failed, and every year the sheer joy and challenge of it seemed to grow in magnitude. Periodically for fifty years he had attended these meetings, and for twenty- , five of those years he had been, by the grace of God, a corner stone. Two dozen other ministers had been faithful workers as well, and their joint efforts and dedication, second only to a genuine spiritual hunger and need of fellowship on the part of the people, told the real story of the camp ground’s success.