The Saint of the Wilderness - Jess Carr

rockytopva · #**111** 7th June 2012, 11:17 PM

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 16
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Page 352-356- The Wabash Camp Meetings
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The Wabash camp ground lay only three or four miles southwest of Staffordsville, and Robert wanted to be there two days early, as was the custom, to help with the numerous arrangements. Eliza would come with members of her family on the opening day, and this year Eddie would be home visiting, to worship with his mother and kin. Eighteen to twenty preachers, both local and regional, would be in attendance; the local ministers were always expected to make ready the tents of the brethren traveling from a distance.

Robert hoped that eighteen or twenty preachers would be enough for the five-day meeting. He could recall two or three years in the past when more than that number had worked themselves to exhaustion during the spontaneous outpouring of faith.

When he reached the Pulaski-Giles turnpike leading to the camp grounds he looked with amazement upon the endless train of human and animal flesh. They also were two days early, and there would be droves who had come even sooner and who already would have set up camp for the duration of the meeting. The toll gates along the turnpike would have their coffers full this day, and nobody knew any better than he did how much the money was needed for road maintenance. The churning wheels and animal hooves turned the hard clay and creek gravel to powdery dust. The young women walked along barefooted, carrying perhaps their only pair of shoes, keeping them clean and unscarred to wear at the meetings. There was a time he might have frowned upon this little vanity, but time and God’s love had mellowed him. He had seen many happy and fruitful marriages result from the courtship phase as well as the worship phase of the camp meetings.

Eliza also had helped to enlighten him on this delicate subject. “Is there any better place for the young to discover the young and to fall in love than in our Lord’s holy presence?” she had said.

How right she had been, he thought, riding along and passing children and grandchildren by the score who had been the offspring of camp-inspired marriages, and the generation after generation of converts who kept the fires of the camp grounds alive year after year.

He went past what he knew would be the last melon and candy wagons. They were doing a brisk business, as was the picture-taking wagon, covered in black canvass. None of the hucksters would be permitted nearer than two miles to the camp ground, he knew, for he had helped to make such rules. For any who chose to abridge such rules the camp officials had also made provisions each year to appoint camp constables to augment the county sheriff and his deputies who normally kept an eye on fringe activities. Such surveillance had been fruitful on a number of occasions when profit-minded mountaineers came to camp with knee-deep straw in their wagons, which provided a cover for the squeezings of corn and the stronger-than-cider apple juice. The constables did a good job of peacekeeping and noise suppression, but the one thing they reported being unable to stop was the horse trading that flourished at the very edge of the camp grounds.

A few of the women each year had been not unjustly accused of “fashion parades,” for he had witnessed this himself. He had preached against it also, for if the camp meetings succeeded as God would have them do, excess attention to what other women wore and the fashions of the day defeated that purpose.

The camp ground proper lay to the northeast of the turnpike road. It covered the space of five or six acres offering a variety of terrain from flat land to grassy knolls, with both open space and some ground well shaded with white oak and poplar. The area was a complementary annex to the little village of Wabash. (Still further back in history, the name of the village had come from an early settler, who started a “Wagon journey to join his son on the Wabash River in Indiana and broke down on the present village spot. Having to spend the winter there, he named the place Wabash.)

In physical appearance, Robert had often marveled at how much the campsite looked like the most perfect nature-carved amphitheater. It was a place where he could almost whisper from the top of one grassy knoll and be assured that his voice would carry without loss of volume or tone to the more distant hills.

The scene that had been so vividly in his mind now appeared before him in reality. He relinquished Gideon to one of the stable boys, admonishing him to listen carefully to his instructions for the animal’s feeding before turning him out into the pasture meadows along with the animals of all the other camp participants. Nowhere was the grass greener and thicker than the silt-rich bottoms of Wabash; the bubbling fresh-water springs fed with abundance both man and beast.

He had hardly dismounted when hordes of little children who were offspring of the early arrivals rushed to be the first to hold his hand or coattail as he made his way along the dusty road to the preachers’ tent.

“Brother Bob, it’s going to be the biggest crowd we’ve ever had this year!” an elderly resident called. “Wouldn’t surprise me none if we had four or five thousand.”

“God be praised if you are right, Brother Frank. Pray for the meeting now. I’ll see you a little later.”

The preachers’ tent was a large but temporary cloth edifice placed near the worship shed for the benefit of all participating preachers, and used as sleeping and eating quarters as well as a quiet place for sermon preparation, prayer, and meditation. The worship shed – or simply shed, as it was more commonly called – was precisely what the word implied. It was simply a huge wood-shingled roof supported by vertical log posts. Neither the sides nor the ends of the building were enclosed. The openness was welcome during the summer months, and even if the nights turned cool, he had witnessed the heat of religious fervor so great that the ventilation was greatly appreciated. Thick oak slabs with pole backs provided seating, and sawdust or straw lined the aisles.

Robert placed his own belongings within the preachers’ tent but did not stay inside. He loved the activity of seeing the camp come to life and the hustle and bustle of joyous people already filled with the spirit and eagerly awaiting what was to come. Some had set up their homemade tents as much as a week early. It was not necessary that they all stay in tents, though, for the village of Wabash had grown enough over the years to provide, now, a small hotel and two inns. Although the inns were annexed to the homes of permanent residents, they commanded an eager clientele from the cities of Roanoke, Lynchburg, and West Virginia cities to the north, who came by train as far as they could and the rest of the way by hack.

Most of the families of the region set up tents year after year, or occupied the numerous cabins that sat at the far fringes of the camp ground. Some occupied the same cabin or campsite year after year and provided food and lodging for distant travelers and or relatives. The camp cook took care of the needs of the preachers and visiting dignitaries, who had I been by no means infrequent across the years. Wabash camp ground had been host to the most eloquent orators and highest ranking personages the Holston conference – and those of her sister conference as well – had to offer. It was not unusual at all to have speakers from four or five conferences at one time.

Just as Robert started to leave the preachers’ tent and make his customary journey to the top of the hill, Reverend Tyler Frazier, a county minister he knew, arrived with his own belongings. “Brother Frazier, I was just ready to go to the hill for my prayers about the meeting. Would you join me?”

The other agreed but begged time to spread his bed linen for airing, and Robert waited patiently. There was increasingly more to see. Children busily traversed the footpath to his left, carrying bucket after bucket of cool water from the bubbling spring in the distance to their family cabin or tent. Without looking in, Robert felt that he could visualize the activity inside the family enclosures. In the cabins the men would be preparing bedrolls in the loft and the women would be hanging sheets as partitions for dressing areas within the cabins. Other family members would be unpacking wagonloads of ant-proof locker boxes of meats and vegetables. Which would feed all of their family and twice as many more.

The packing would not have been so hurried that the family’s dog-eared Bible was forgotten, nor would they neglect the camp custom of greeting other participants with short Bible verses, long ago committed to memory.

“I am ready, Brother Bob!” Tyler Frazier called from inside.

A young woman walked by Robert and greeted him with, “’Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

“’He that believeth in Me, though he were dead yet shall he live,” Robert returned the greeting.

The two men walked away from the tent together, Tyler Frazier’s arm upon Robert’s back. “Brother Bob, you don’t seem so talkative today.”

“I’m doing too much thinking, I suppose. I look about me at the precious joy of human fellowship and the raptured faces of those who know they are as close to God in this place as they’ll ever approach Him in this world, and I wonder what the hearts of those who want to bring it all to a close must really be like? God forbid that they do away with such joyous times I”

“We won’t let them do it,” Tyler Frazier said with an affectionate pat on the back of his elder.

On the crest of the hill they knelt and prayed together, first one aloud and then the other, until they had implored all the forces of heaven to invade the hearts of the unsaved and send them home victorious and reborn.

“Let’s not hurry back down,” Robert said, arising. “I need to stretch and rest a minute. This old earthly body has been around for seventy years, and it balks on me now and then.”

Tyler Frazier helped his elder be seated again and sat beside him. “Brother Bob, I remember a few years ago you prayed here at the camp meeting for our Father to ‘make this world a little heaven to go to big heaven in.’ I’ve never I forgotten that, and I’m reminded of it as I sit here looking I down over this beautiful valley. As far as I’m concerned, this is as near to heaven as any spot we’ll ever see.”

“Amen. And it gets prettier every year. I first saw this camp ground in eighteen-forty and there was little here. Look at the village now. I am told Brother Cecil’s gristmill rum day and night, and there are three or four stores and black smith shops, not to mention an iron foundry, casket shop, sawmill, harness shop and stave mill. Look all about you, Brother Frazier. Could there be a more perfect and peaceful place to live and die?”

They walked down the opposite side of the hill, past the Wabash Academy, where within weeks high-pitched voices would echo about tile classrooms. From there they could see only the top of the gigantic waterwheel that was the power source of the mill complex, but the splashing water from the millrace could be heard with stair-stepping splatterings, as earthward over the wheel the water fell. The big wheel squeaked as it turned, and Robert opined that, rather than being an annoyance, it had probably become a welcome melody throughout the valley and would be missed when it did stop for the Sabbath day.

rockytopva · #**112** 9th June 2012, 07:15 PM

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 16
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Introducing Tyler Frazier... A close associate of Robert Sheffey
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Frazier, Jacob Tyler: Born Nov. 22, 1840, in Giles County, Va. Son of George A. and Sallie Dillon Frazier, brother of Rev. A. J. Frazier, Rev. George Frazier, and grandfather of Rev. Tyler Frazier III. "He had only three months in school; yet he was an educated man." His incessant reading of the King James version of the Bible purified and enriched his English. Few men ever attain such powers of expression as he possessed. He enlisted in the Confederate Army and was with Lee at the surrender. Although only twenty years old he was made Chaplain. His comrades fondly called him the "barefooted preacher." He learned at that time the art of preaching and of leading men to the great decision of life. At the close of the war he entered the itinerant ministry. Admitted 1865, he was effective for fifty-four consecutive years. "He served in every capacity of the regular ministry, on missions, circuits, stations and districts and was successful in all."

He served in nearly every part of Holston Conference and for years "was the most widely known and admired preacher in the Conference." He stirred people to their profoundest depths. At the Centennial of Holston Conference, celebrated at Knoxville in 1924, he spoke on the "Old-Time Circuit Rider." He was then eighty-four years old. Owing to infirmities he began speaking sitting in a chair. When in the full tide of his eloquence he forgot his infirmities and rose to his feet the congregation felt as if they had been lifted to the mountain heights. Rarely is it given to men to move a congregation as he moved us that night.

He was twice married: (1) Miss Maria Virginia Taylor of Tazewell County, Va. They had eight children. (2) Miss Fannie D. McBroom, Abingdon, Va. He was gifted in body as well as in mind and emotional dynamic. Broad shouldered and with powerful limbs, he gave the impression of tremendous power, but the agility of youth was retained almost to the end of his long life. I asked him once, if the story that he was able, when a youth, to stand by the side of a horse sixteen hands high and, without touching the horse with his hands, spring, flat-footed, onto the horse's back, was true? He assured me that he had often done so. Every part of his body was responsive to the flow of his eloquence - indeed was a part of it. There was never the slightest stage play. To him preaching was proclaiming the gospel, by the power of the Holy Spirit, for the salvation of men. Perhaps more people were led to Christ by his preaching than that of any other man of the generation to which he belonged in Holston Conference.

After fifty-four years of effective work he superannuated in 1919, but he continued to preach to the end. He preached to his neighbors in the church at Chilhowie, Va., on his ninety-first birthday. During that last year there were times when his mind limped badly, but never when he preached. He became a superannuate in 1919, and lived in his own home at Chilhowie, Va., for the remaining thirteen years of his life. He died in his ninety-second year, on Feb. 23, 1932, having been a member of Holston Conference for sixty-seven years. He was buried at Chilhowie, Va.

rockytopva · #**113** 10th June 2012, 03:01 PM

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 16
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The Uniqueness of the Methodist Camp Meeting and revival
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1. They were entertaining.
2. Everyone got involved.
3. Salvation was emphasized.
4. Sanctification was taught as an experience
5. The preaching was encouraging.
6. This is something for every denomination or non-denomination.

1. The Methodist Camp Meetings and revivals were entertaining: The first unique feature of the Methodist Camp meeting was that the meetings were entertaining. Back in the old rural southeast there was simply little going as far as entertainment. The revivals of the time were our entertainment. I can remember my Grandmother telling me that my Pentecostal Holiness (a child of the Methodist faith) Grandfather would attend the churches revivals into the wee hours of the morning and that he would have no trouble rising for work just a few hours later. And what can be more entertaining than seeing people delivered and set free? The first priority of the Camp Meetings is that they had to be an experience! A lasting experience!

2. Everyone Got Involved: The next unique feature to the Methodist Camp meetings was that everyone got involved. These were not conferences, but revivals. People did not simply sit there blank and expressionless. They would smile, laugh, shout, Amen the preacher, etc. When the preaching and the music were good the services would erupt in a floodtide and everyone would be blessed. An old nursery rhyme went...

Pussy-cat, pussy-cat, where have you been?
I've been to London to visit the Queen!
Pussy-cat, pussy-cat, what did you there?
I frightened a little mouse under her chair.

The old pussy cat visited London for other purposes than to visit the Queen and the splendors of London. This was not true for the true Methodist. They did not go to these meetings to look for the little mice (faults) in people; they were there to worship the Lord. The camp-meetings served to provide the mostly solitary frontier people with a greater sense of community they lacked in their day-to-day lives.

3. Salvation was emphasized: Smith Wigglesworth once said that he would rather see one soul saved then ten thousand healed of bodily ailments. This is the heart of a true Methodist. At the end of each meeting and before the after service souls were invited to the straw for salvation.

4. Sanctification was taught as an experience: I was brought up Baptist where I was sure that only the people of that faith were truly saved and that all Roman Catholics were going to hell and that speaking of tongues was of the devil. I honestly believed that.

When I was seventeen I went to visit my Grandmother here in Virginia. The Pentecostal services were very animated. As the people showed the fruit of the Spirit I fell in with them. One night during the alter service the elders came behind me to pray for me. There were tears dripping down their cheeks spilling onto my shoulders and plenty of love and hugs after the service. That night I was reading the book “Run Baby Run” by Nikki Cruz in which a voice told me to put the book down. After a little while I put the book down in which the Spirit of the Lord was all around me… “Where is all that hatred, stress, and strife?” The Spirit said. In which, after examining my heart, in my Grandmothers clothes line fresh bed sheets, and with the Katy dids chirping in the background, I had realized that I had experienced the same thing those people did at the church... Which was true sanctification.

But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. – Galatians 3:25

When one experiences true spiritual sanctification one needs not a lot of doctrine. One avoids evil as he has a heart to do righteousness. And that righteousness is a well of life into ones soul. But I must say, as long as the soul is clean one can continue to confess sanctification, as long as ones soul is not ‘muddied’ by the things of the world.

The Wesleyan Methods…

1. Justification – Faith Believing – On the Lord Jesus Christ and the many promises of God.
2. Salvation – Professing Jesus as Lord!
3. Sanctification - Receiving Jesus and true sanctification in the heart
4. Witness of the Spirit - Experiencing greater spiritual blessing. Often experienced in the ‘after service.’

5. The Preaching was Encouraging: As sanctified souls are not dirty there is no need to dwell on the clothesline, nor in examining the jewelry, nor in a person’s make-up. The Spirit himself will lead the sheep’s paths to righteousness. The preaching that drew the most response were encouraging sermons. Encouraging men to salvation, the clean life of sanctification, and to the Celestial City. Even in the preaching of hell fire, it was done in positive means as to win souls to Calvary. As said earlier in this devotional… 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. The preachers of camp meetings must be eloquent, dynamic type guys. And finally, the encouragement was to love all men, even those stained with the evils of sin. We are to hate the sin... But most importantly we are to love the sinner.

6. Any Church can experience these things. - I have heard of a Catholic congregation needing a place of worship, so a Lutheran congregation let them have a time of service in their church. This would have been unheard of hundreds of years ago.

If enough churches come together in agreement of revival, and are there to love people, and to take the time to coordinate such an event, and to let the Spirit have his own unique way, I believe that revival can happen to any church, and in any denomination, and in any town. Thus the intentions of John Wesley was not to create another denomination, but to bring a revival on planet Earth.

rockytopva · #**114** 11th June 2012, 06:59 AM

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 16
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Page 357-362- The Wabash Camp Meetings
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They returned by way of Dr. Anderson’s residence and paid their respects but were not allowed to leave until the good doctor had shown them his latest telephone equipment. Robert looked with interest at the thing called a switchboard but could not understand how it operated. Dr. Anderson spoke with pride of how he had installed it himself – even making part of it with his own hands – and said that he hoped to run lines in every direction from Wabash.

At the post office they encountered Reverend William Bailey, who would be another occupant of the preachers’ tent. With him they returned to their temporary quarters to find the place invaded by four more clergical brethren.

After the passing of another twenty-four hours, camping areas and all cabins were filled to capacity. Equally good reports came from the hotel and the inns. Participants from local churches and not-too-distant villages and towns would come and go, but at any given time they would be the groups which would swell the camp-ground ranks.

That night by the light of the moon Robert walked alone to the shed. It had always seemed such a holy place to him, and there were so many memories attached to it that one now overlapped another. The hum of human voices could be heard in every direction, still exuberant. That too would change when the meetings actually got under way. The spirituality of the occasion would demand a different kind of exuberance. Strollers crisscrossed the fields and moonlit woods alone and in groups, while still others could be seen by lamplight through their cabin windows, studying the Book of books.

The shed stood ready for the morning service at nine that would formally open the camp-meeting session. The oversized Bible with large type lay closed on the crudely built rostrum. Behind it, a dozen hickory-bottomed chairs rested in soldier like alignment toward the back of the platform. Lanterns and homemade wooden candle holders were strung about the support posts of the shed, while still larger candles lined the rostrum area, hanging above the long slab of wood supported by hickory or sourwood legs resting on straw, and known to saint and sinner alike as the mourners’ bench. None of these items of illumination had yet been lit; they stood virgin-like before Robert’s searching eyes as poised and ready as his colleagues who paced the preachers’ tent, waiting for morning to come.

For years the routine had been the same: the bugle was blown by the camp bugler at precisely six A.M., which meant that all arise, wash, have breakfast, tidy up, and, if there was time left over, study the Bible diligently. The bugle sounded again at nine A.M. for the beginning of prayer service in all tents and cabins. Again it was blown at eleven A.M. for the first worship service of the day. Twice more the bugle would be heard: at the three P.M. service and again at seven P.M. for the final night service. The early evening service did not assure an early departure from the shed, however. On the · contrary, it was not unusual for the service to continue to ten or eleven o’clock at night; Robert personally had stayed down on his knees in the straw with mourners until daylight had come once again. Just as readily would he do the same with new converts, until he was sure that the conversion was genuine and that those converted had felt the full impact of the new life chosen.

Little sleep was had that night in the preachers’ tent, but the wakefulness produced well-organized plans and prayerful humility in the outlining of what needed to be done for the success of the days to follow.

The first day of services produced the usual “settling-in” process and organizational confusion, but even these were happy times. Converts had come forward – not in the large, fevered numbers to be expected near the middle and close of the meetings, but all things considered, it was a good beginning. There had been many years when the first day and night had been simply a “warm-up” time for both preachers and congregation.

Robert lay on his bedroll in the preachers’ tent, satisfied, and took note of the quietness of the night. That in itself told something. The exuberance of the people had quieted, and he knew that they had begun their worship in earnest. Gone for the while were the boisterous social overtures, for now it was time for every man’s confrontation with his God. There seemed peace even among the animals, who sharing a mutual pasture and strange surroundings, had whinnied mournfully in the beginning. Cows brought along to camp as a fresh supply of milk mingled their bawling among the prancing horses and braying mules, until, at last they too had found a compatibility of sorts. They were almost quiet now, and Robert pictured them lowing by the Wabash branch, chewing their cuds and feeling the same peace he himself was feeling.

His feeling for and about animals was as well-known as he was. This he knew without immodesty, but even so he had never discussed the subject in the depth he felt at times almost compelled to.

The following day’s services began in earnest, and by midday of still another day, which was Friday, a vast influx of foot and wagon traffic converged upon the already crowded camp grounds. There could be no policy other than welcome and yet Robert was aware, as he knew his colleagues were, that at least a small part of the latecomers were freeloaders who would partake of the food and shelter of friends and relatives with no thought at all toward contributing to the work and purpose of the camp meeting. But sometimes the problem had a happy ending when an unsuspecting freeloader would fall victim to the spirit of the meetings, or the pleadings of a friend or relative who showed genuine concern for his soul, and leave the camp ground a new person. For that reason no one was unwelcome, no matter how suspect such a person’s motives might be.

By Saturday night the crowd had swelled even more. In his rushing about, Robert would be stopped by first one and then another who would request of him special prayer, or unrelenting pressure on a family member or spouse who I remained, year after year, unsaved.

“Yes, brother, I’ll ask it of the Lord,” Robert repeated as one last man held onto his coattail, delaying him from going under the shed and opening the night service with prayer, as was the tradition. “Tell me again what your name is?”

The man repeated it, but Robert felt it flee from him as he made the journey up the straw-covered aisle to the preachers’ platform. Even before his opening prayer, Robert felt the air about him electric with spiritual obedience, but he prayed no less fervently and he did not forget the little things that were important to the humble people, and, he was sure, to God, also.

“ … and Dear Lord,” he concluded his prayer, “bless that man standing at the back who asked me to pray for him and whose name I’ve forgotten. From the cut of his coat and the way his pants hang, I believe he is from Grayson County.”

Robert relinquished the rostrum to Reverend Dill Strader, the youngest preacher On the platform and a man who had been licensed to preach at the Wabash camp meetings only two I years previously. The young man admonished his listeners not to let the fervor of the camp meeting die and to take it back to their individual churches. Having reiterated again the purpose of the camp meetings as was the custom of the leadoff preacher every night, and the citing of the innumerable army of converts that the Wabash camp ground had produced across the years, he launched into his sermon.

Robert sat on the platform with the five remaining I ministers who would in turn follow the .younger man. He would not preach, but when all the when all the others had finished he would make his way up and down the aisles, exhorting, walking with the timid and fearful toward the mourners’ bench, or kneeling with a spoken promise to spend unlimited time with a would-be penitent until peace came to his troubled heart. Sometimes he preached or gave testimonies, but his preaching did not move the crowds as did his prayers and exhortations. Each man knew his place – or, as all the assembled ministers had discussed – God’s place for them: the special talents and gifts that each possessed individually and the best ways each could utilize them. Not only had Robert seen them all find their special niches of service across the years; he had seen most of them perfect the role, until the most devout of personal belief and faith, coupled with repeatedly practiced effort, had produced a core of the Lord’s spokesman, hard for the most unrepentant soul to deny.

One after another the platform preachers took their turns, resting only between songs and intermittent lusty Methodist shouting. The crowd grew as the service progressed. There were latecomers and those who habitually waited for fevered shouts of victory to move them from their own tents to an empty seat under the shed – if one was to be found. The latecomer was lucky to find a place, and most times found himself standing outside the shed, where, during years of good attendance, three-fourths of the crowd heard the gospel messages. That too had advantages, depending on the individual point of view. For the “talkers” and “sparkers” the opportunity was greater at the fringe areas, but an attentive camp constable would often put a stop to anything above a whisper or the most unobtrusive of movement.

When the service ended that night, one hundred sixteen converts had been counted. Participating and non-participating ministers alike reassembled in the preachers’ tent, as was the yearly custom, to rejoice over the repentant souls who had made their professions. There was an extra measure of joy in the repentance of those who year after year had resisted, and on this night had succumbed, tearstained and humble, to accept a way of life Robert knew no contrite heart could any longer deny.

rockytopva · #**115** 12th June 2012, 07:03 AM

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 16
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Page 363-364- The Wabash Camp Meetings – The Lady Nick
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The camp cook entered the preachers’ tent and set their fourth meal of the day before them. Exhausted bodies were replenished, and conversation continued.

“Do you think Lady Nick will come into the fold this year?” Reverend W. N. Wagoner asked Robert.

All heads came to attention, for each year this woman whom Robert had first met as the “night visitor” at Thorn Spring church in Pulaski County had never missed the campmeeting services. In the same manner with which she observed from a distance the Thorn Spring congregation, so did she watch during sessions of the Wabash camp meetings. Robert had named her (not altogether aptly, he realized) Lady Nick, in reference to Nicodemus the Pharisee who came to Jesus by night, inquiring.

“But Lady Nick has heard ‘Ye must be born again’ so often it can’t be continued sermons on regeneration she’s waiting for? I think she’s just got the hungriest curiosity of all the camp followers we’ve ever seen,” Reverend John Perry said.

“No, Brother Perry, that isn’t it,” Robert said. “She knows the way, but like the rich young ruler who was instructed to give up his wealth by our blessed Jesus, she has much to give up.”

Reverend J. R. Walker, who now served the Staffordsville charge, asked to be given more background on the subject at hand and Robert did so, concluding, “The woman’s social position and her dependence on family wealth, among other things, represent a great chasm she must cross. It is not hard to see that she resents the obstacle. She has felt the presence of the Holy Spirit. It is that against which she is really in rebellion.”

“A heart feeling the gentle nurturing of the Holy Spirit on the one hand and all the enticement of worldly pleasures and comforts on the other?” Reverend Tyler Frazier restated the universal problem of their profession.

“Exactly,” Robert agreed. “And maybe she does have a greater gulf to cross than many do. If it be so, may the ever present sweet Lord extend His patience a little longer.”

Reverend P. L. Cobb had been the quiet one, and still he looked worried. “Brother Sheffey, do you feel that we have come no closer to winning this woman than we were this time last year?”

“I don’t know, Brother Cobb. I have talked to her and I get two impressions. I feel, in spirit, she is already a part of us, and yet there is a resentment as I talk with her and try to pray with her about her deliverance.”

“Brother Bob, there is no offense meant _ you know that without my saying it – but what about Brother Bailey and myself approaching her? I mean, if somebody new to her….?” Tyler Frazier said.

The lady in question did not stay in the camp-and-tent area each year, and the following morning, a warm but overcast Sunday, Robert directed his colleagues, Frazier and Bailey, to the proper inn. As he watched them walk from the preachers’ tent onto the turnpike road and turn northward he had a sense of foreboding that they would be unsuccessful in their mission. Their pleadings and personal testimonies would live and die as unfruitful as the little clouds of dust at their moving heels. He watched them moving farther and farther away as if the unspoken benediction he sent with them was being lost also.

Presently several children ran after the two men, one or two of them searching for an older, guiding hand, but they did not stop as they might have done had not their hearts been, Robert suspected, as filled with higher purpose as was his own. In his fifty years of being God’s advocate the current problem was above all others the most inexplainable and perplexing. How could any person, having reached the stage in life of knowing God’s truth and experiencing the visitation of the Holy Spirit, yet stand stubborn and unreceiving? The very patience of God must be strained at such times! Stubbornness itself was a grievous sin. Did not this woman and all mankind know that now was the day of salvation and even God’s patience would not rescue a soul gone beyond redemption from tardiness of action and coldness of heart? Before his two colleagues, returning, had gotten closer than hollering distance, he knew that their mission had failed. It was written in their posture, the gait of their walk, and in their downcast heads.

“She does not wish to give her life to Christ,” Robert ventured matter-of-factly.

“No,” Tyler Frazier said. "Not in the morning service, night service, or even next years’ service, to put it in her own words.”

Robert lowered his head. “She comes for more than curiosity, I know she does,” he whispered.

“She mentioned that.” Reverend Bailey whispered also. “She said she likes to come and ‘watch the parade of fools.’ She said we all ‘look like a circus act’ she saw in Philadelphia once, and she missed ‘seeing the monkeys jump around and hug each other.”

“I will go to the hill and pray for her again. Will you fetch my sheepskin. Brother Bailey?”

“Brother Bailey did not tell it all,” Tyler Frazier said. “She walked out to the yard fence with us – she is an intelligent woman, you must admit, even if she does have the bite of a viper about her – and plucked this flower and asked me to gill it to you.”

Robert held the crimson flower his hand. “Is that all?” he said. “Just a flower and nothing else?”

“She said for you to look at the red flower carefully and smell the freshness of it – she said to tell you that red means life and beauty and vitality, and what you want for her is death and sorrow and drabness so real to her that nightmares invade her sleep.”

“Could you not tell her, my brother, that death to self is the pathway to the most magnificent of life?”

“I told her that and she laughed at me,” Tyler Frazier I said.

Robert took his sheepskin and walked alone to the north hill behind the camp ground. Far below him, hurried movement gave the appearance of a busy anthill. Within the hour the eleven A.M. service would begin and only one more day of the camp meeting would remain. From the north streamed a long line of buggies. He could not see far the other way, except for the southern end of the turnpike, and from there came horse and buggy traffic from Dublin. Dust clouds indicated that worshipers from still other directions also were on their way. Sunday was always the biggest day, although Monday, the last day of the meetings, often times saw the largest number of converts come forward. It was a sort of “last-chance day,” and for those who had resisted the call to conversion throughout the session it was “now” while the spirit was soaring or go back to one’s home church and hope that the local preacher could build the same fire in one’s heart that the camp ground evangelists had – that, or wait until next year’s camp-ground session. Robert knew all the strengths and evasions of mind, and this year there had been a large number of “holdbacks,” in spite of the collective work of all the ministers and his own exhortations.

Time slipped up on him as he watched, godlike, the scene below. He had not yet prayed for Lady Nick. And he repositioned his sheepskin on flatter ground and proceeded to do so. The prayer would be another of many he had uttered in the same cause. He felt that he knew an answer that none of the others had mentioned – and certainly one that the woman in question had never thought of – God did not save a person against his will. Still he prayed over and over again: “For the sake of our blessed Jesus, dear’ Lord … for Jesus’s sake.”

rockytopva · #**116** 13th June 2012, 06:57 AM

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 16
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Page 365-369- The Camp Meetings
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Four unexpected visitors came to the preachers’ tent only moments before the eleven A.M. service was to begin. They introduced themselves quickly, and Robert took note that all four appeared to be conference officials from four separate conferences. He, like his colleagues, bade them welcome and asked if they’d like to’ have a part in the worship service (already two more conference officials were scheduled to preach during night service). They declined, saying that they would not interfere with plans already made and that they would be leaving after the night service.

“You can at least sit on the platform with us,” Tyler Frazier said. "Our camp ground participants are not always accustomed to the mightiest of our Christian army during the sessions, and we will give them something extra to remember.”

Four extra chairs were hurriedly placed on the platform and clergy and guests had already seated themselves before Robert had them on their feet again for his opening prayer.

“Our dear Heavenly Father,” he began, “we have many worshipers on the grounds and some mighty men on the platform today. But it has come to our mind that Thou art not mindful of mighty men – it is humble men on the plain order who are nearest to Thy heart. These of high rank do not come this great distance today altogether for the purpose of worship. They think we do not know it, but they come to sit in judgment – to decide whether Thy children do truly worship Thee when such happiness fills their hearts that they surely would burst if they did not shout. They disapprove of . the camp meetings, dear Lord, for it is rumored that they have invented a new word – ee-motional-ism, I think they call it – and You can see that in their hearts they want to smite this holy place. Don’t let them do it, Lord, in the name of the Sweet Lord Jesus; some of the most precious souls in Your kingdom found Thee here at my feet … “

He continued his prayer, disregarding the anxious shuffling feet behind him. When he had finished he had covered the most inspiring highlights during twenty-five years of the camp-grounds’ existence.

That evening at the night service, when the visiting dignitaries again took their chairs, Robert thought he sensed a change in their countenances. Desperately, he hoped there was. All the services on this Sunday had been spirit-filled and fruitful – an example, if the observer were looking for any, which could not help but inspire: the early-morning love feast, the singing and shouting, the morning communion that witnessed the partaking of the cup with the reverence that the very blood of Jesus glowed red therein.

The flood tide that Robert knew had been building began to break: when the third speaker had finished. That speaker was Tyler Frazier, whose eloquent and impassioned pleadings had started such a fire in the hearts of his listeners that their raptured faces shone with the glow of winter frost by moonlight. No words had been minced as to humanity’s low estate and the blackest of sin that reigned in every- individual heart, and God’s redeeming love that was, for every man, the only cure.

Before his colleague was seated, people were standing and crying, “Mercy! Mercy!”

The next speaker, a conference official previously scheduled to speak, began to take his turn at the rostrum and Robert waved him back. “Let them shout, brother – give them all the time they need to shout, and then you can speak! It is a glorious time! I They have got in a good way! Praise God!”

The tempo from the crowd rose higher and Robert left the platform and stood in the aisle at the base of the rostrum. Suddenly a man ran to Robert and shouted, “I want to forgive my neighbor of a wrong he has done to me!”

“Thank God.” Robert called back, and his own heart was so overcome with love that prostration before the throne of God seemed the smallest gift he could give in return.

In the heat of a continuing aura of spiritual servitude and Christ-like humility, the next speaker poured forth more of the food that would satisfy the hunger. The big, rawboned man who was first a preacher and second a conference official, towered over the crude rostrum and dwarfed it. His voice and manner of delivery were reminiscent of a man esteemed by Methodists everywhere, but particularly at the Wabash camp meeting grounds. Robert had never seen the coming and going of a camp-ground year without hearing mention of William Elbert Munsey’s name; he had more than once been witness to the dynamic power of this man who had often prefaced his sermons with the story of his own conversion and ministerial calling. Munsey was converted while in his teens. He had taught school after that, until he became twenty-three years old, at which time he felt the call to the ministry. “I was not sure God wanted me to leave my widowed mother and little sisters and brothers,” he had often said, “for they were completely dependent upon me. But I decided to ask my Lord if His calling to me was real, to show me in some powerful way. Shortly thereafter, at a meeting at Rocky Gap near my home, I became so filled with the Holy Spirit that I could neither speak nor move. I was carried from the altar as one dead.”

Dr. Munsey had been gone now for almost thirteen years, but he had attained a generalship in the Christian army during his short forty-four years of life, and had in the process served some of the most influential Methodist churches in America. Robert again looked at the speaker and listened; then he turned his eyes away and listened only, for the two men looked nothing alike in stature. Dr. Munsey had been thin and delicate, with small eyes and a fragile face, but the voice of the two men sounded remarkably similar, Robert thought, unless his memory was failing him completely. How much he hoped it was not! How much he hoped Elbert Munsey could be born anew again and again and manifested in a younger body for every new generation!

The present speaker had not the perfection of thought and elocution that Elbert Munsey had used to crown his own mission and faith, but the former was not lacking in effort of delivery. Once during the Civil War years Elbert Munsey had preached a sermon on “Hell and the Lost Soul” at the Wabash camp , meetings, and Robert had seen with his own eyes worshiping women tear at their own haIr and men rise groaning from their seats to parade the aisles in combat against the graphic realism that God’s spokesman had presented for their consideration.

It was that fervor which was now being reached. From all sides men, women, and children pressed in against those under the shed who had gotten seating early. Truly the crowd did number well over three thousand, as Robert had learned from the camp constables, and now all of them seemed to swamp the worship shed like drifting snow. He loved their raptured faces, and as he sat waiting for the final speaker to conclude, the desire was in his heart to go down among them all and to caress each one and simply say, “My brother _ my sister.”

“And now the hour has come,” the speaker concluded. “Has God’s Word convinced you that you are blind to pin your hopes upon this wicked world? Christ is the only King whose Kingdom never dies! Live, starting tonight, as if you will I be dead tomorrow! And neither, my brother and sister, have any fear of death, for it is the final and absolute freedom! Christ lives!”

With sweat-bathed face and heaving lungs, the speaker relinquished his place to the song leader.

“We will close the service with the singing of ‘Shall We Gather at the River,’ but before we do I feel it upon my heart to remind you that tonight and tomorrow are all that remain of this year’s happy time together .. We have no assurance that we will live to see each other again next year. Life is uncertain and death is sure. Tonight may be your last chance to make a decision that presses heavily upon your heart, or perhaps you, the baptized, have fallen from grace and wish I to rededicate yourselves anew. The time has come. The time is now!’

“Oh, what joyous times, Lord!” Robert said aloud. All the others were already singing, and his colleagues started making their way from the platform to stand together at the head of the aisles. He did not join them, though he should have gone first to his place of exhortation farther down the aisle.

The music drifted out upon the hills and valleys until there was a second chorus: an echo that was sweeter still. There was a second chorus: an echo that was sweeter still. How they loved to sing! How joyous and harmonious their God-filled voices!

“Last verse!” the song leader shouted, straining to be heard above the others. ”Soon we’ll reach the shining river, . Soon our pilgrimage will cease; soon our happy hearts will quiver with the melody of peace. / Yes, we’ll gather at the river, / The beautiful, the beautiful river, / Gather with the saints at the river ‘ That flows by the throne of God.”

A steady stream of penitents from inside and outside the shed wound their way down the straw-lined aisle. There was other movement afoot as well. Robert went about his exhortations, but he noticed that he was not alone. Spirit-filled people all over the shed were exhorting or pleading win uncommitted friends or neighbors. Some families formed a circle of their own, enclosing therein a rebellious father or brother to whom they were pouring out their earnest tears and supplications.

Some started to sing again, but Robert had lost sight of the activity about him as he knelt in the straw beside those who poured forth their doubts of pardon for their sinful lives. “Though your sins be as scarlet . . . ,” he repeated as softly as he could above the clamor of victorious voices and soft weeping.

Out of the corners of his eyes, the figure of a young man brushed past him. How familiar that face was! It was the face of a liar and a thief, expert at his trade, one for whom Robert had prayed countless times.

Robert stood up, unbelieving, as, tear-stained, the young man presented himself as a convert. There was a leap in his heart pulsating every fiber of his being as he viewed the newborn Christian. He deserted his role as exhorter for a moment to come to the side of his spirit-son. His arm about the reborn young flesh seemed electric, and so overflowing with joy was he that his lips could not be silenced: “Old Satan’s mad and am I glad! He’s lost a soul he thought he had!” He repeated the spontaneous rhyme until those about him stared in wonder.

There was no formal cessation of the service; the crowd slowly drifted out into the open fields. Groups seemed to form without conscious plan. Brother could be heard forgiving brother, wife reconciling with husband, father to son. From where had this outpouring of humility come? Robert marveled. .

He was alone now. No man or woman, or even a child, seemed any longer to need him or the other camp-ground ministers. The strangest thing was happening. The worshipers I stood by themselves in a glorified individual strength, which of itself generated an almost tangible, luminous energy. If it was indeed a spirit-filled awakening, as an evidence indicated, God had surely answered his prayers with overflowing abundance!

In his aloneness, Robert rushed back to the preachers’ tent.

“Have the visiting brethren seen the fullness of our blessing? Can they feel the Divine Spirit hovering over us? Why have they not returned to the tent?”

“They have gone, Brother Bob,” Tyler Frazier said. “You were alone on the grounds and they did not wish to disturb you with their parting remarks. They said to thank us all for the joy of worshiping with us,”

“There’s far too much of the Pharisee to be seen in them -.”

“If you knew them better. I don’t believe you would say that, Brother Bob. They are all good men, and they earnestly seek to guide the whole church in the way they think is the most far-reaching, It is not a responsibility I would wish upon myself or upon you.”

“You are young, brother, and I am old, but if we do not watch out the virtue of humbleness will be lost and we will not see God’s lovingkindness in all its fullness. We must not move away from this, nor from a just fear of God either. A righteous fear strikes dead the most wanton vainglory.”

rockytopva · #**117** 14th June 2012, 07:28 AM

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 16
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Page 371-376 The Camp Meetings
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“I know time has brought change – and will continue to bring more change, but let us pray that it is for the best.”

“For the best? Has my sweet Lord brought me through all these years to have me see a frivolous world seeking its own pleasures and becoming the destruction of our age? God forbid! Where are the heavens on earth that disobedient man has built and laid claim to? At Emory and Henry we were taught of Greece and Rome – and Egypt. Where are they now!”

Robert felt the arm of Tyler Frazier about his shoulders and heard his colleague’s soft voice. “Brother Bob, each of us can only do the best he can during our own time. All the hopes and prayers of our voices will fade from hearing when new voices replace those tired and worn.”

“Do you tell an old man that his time has come and gone, and that he doesn’t use the sense the sweet Lord gave him to hear it?”

“Your voice will be heard and loved as long as you can speak, Brother Bob, and I am among those who thank God for it and pray that it may never die.”

As the preachers’ tent filled, Robert took his leave and walked out upon the open field. The night was hot, but the faintest breeze gave a kiss of welcome relief. The murmur of human voices seemed not to have subsided at all. In the distance, from every direction, low singing permeated the air. Candlelit windows from the cabins and tents gave a faint perimeter of light, and behind the structures, farther back in the trees, still fainter candlelight was visible. The groups had not separated. Their hunger had not been filled and they continued to feed themselves.

“Blessed Lord” – Robert lifted his eyes – “if it is not Thy will that I should ever see this holy place again, my soul is satisfied with what I have witnessed. Blessed be Thy name …“

The night wind gained force and the low rumble of thunder sent candle bearers scurrying back into their cabins and tents.

Robert looked into the blackening heavens with a plea upon his lips. “Dear Lord! If the morrow brings rain the crowds will not come and there are so many who are only a step away from Thy fold!”

He stepped into the preachers’ tent just long enough to retrieve his sheepskin. He was unnoticed; the other brethren ate and talked heatedly of the fast-changing church doctrines that seemed to be engulfing other denominations as well as their own.

The way to the top of the north hill was first dark and then illuminated brilliantly by the plunging tail of lightning. An angry clap of thunder seemed to shake the very ground beneath his feet, but the rain did not come until his knees had already become numb upon the prayer mat. Large, plunging drops of rain splattered upon his upturned face, and soon the tip of his white beard seemed a gully outlet for the downpour. He always prayed aloud, but so heavy was the deluge that his words sounded garbled.

“Give us tomorrow filled with sunshine, Dear Lord. Surely it is Thy will that the workers have a good harvest on the last day. In Jesus’s name we ask it … “

He had finished. Now he would wait for an answer. The rain slowed a little, but that was just the prelude to another I downpouring. He kept his position, though little gullies of water now ran in front and behind him. At first he heard I only the trickling water, but again the lightning silhouetted his tilted face and he turned long enough to survey the sod at his very knees being taken away. Minutes after the rain stopped he leaped to his feet and went running down the hill. His descent was not complete when voices and lantern light sought him out.

“Is it you, Brother Bob?” Reverend Perry’s high-pitched tones reached him.

“Brother Bob? It’s Tyler Frazier. Call to us. Are you hurt?”

“What are you doing out in the rain?” another, unidentified, shot back lightheartedly.

“That’s between my Lord and me,” Robert said. He could see nearly all the faces of the smaller group now outlined by lantern light. They were concerned faces, and for that he was upon row of candlelight, with an occasional lantern being taken up the hill. Reverend Walker yielded his own light coat, but Robert refused it.

“Take it, Brother Sheffey. A man your age out in this downpour…”

“We were worried about you,” Tyler Frazier said a little · impatiently. “We were afraid maybe the lightning had –“

“I am much blessed but little harmed.”

“There is more mirth in your Voice than there would be in mine, had I been out in this storm,” Reverend Cobb said.

“Let’s get back to the tent,” Reverend Wagoner urged. “Look! We’re just getting ready to get the second wave of a worse storm. You might as well pack up your things tonight, my brothers. There’ll be rain all night and all day tomorrow. It never fails the last week of August or the first week in September. You can watch it every time.”

Tyler Frazier conceded that his colleague might be right. “I’m afraid our final day is doomed to failure.”

“I would not count on that at all,” Robert said, and with sprightly step led the way to the tent.

The morning broke fresh and clean and the sun rays danced playfully among leaves still wet with night rain.. Robert I had slept uneasily and his body felt drained and his temples throbbed. In spite of this, his head cleared quickly as he stepped from the tent into the fragrant morning air. The whole earth had the smell of having been swept clean, with the aroma of every blooming thing melting together and floating upon the gentle breeze.

He turned from the bath of morning sun coming from the east and looked about him. No family was packing, and though the hour was early he could hear the crunch of wagon and buggy wheels coming from the turnpike.

“Isn’t it a beautiful day?” someone called from behind him.

Robert turned to recognize members of a Baptist family, buckets in hand and heading down the path to the big spring.

“A glorious day!” he replied with all the benediction that he felt.

They passed on after he had thanked them for coming to the camp meetings. The success of the camp across the years was not to be credited to the Methodists alone, he knew, for every year faithful Baptists, Presbyterians, Disciples of Christ, Brethrens, and a scattering of Episcopalians swelled the ranks. Even some of the black-hatted believers that he assumed to be Dunkards came in small numbers, and one of his colleagues called his attention to a handful of Jewish merchants from Bluefield, Pulaski, Pearisburg, and Roanoke who attended every year. No worshiper found anything but welcome.

“Oh, my sweet Lord! This is the way it ought to be. This is what Thy blessed world is all about – that we should all come together and acknowledge our brotherhood and drown ourselves in the joy of human fellowship.”

“Brother Bob, what in the world are you doing out in the wet grass, talking to yourself? Breakfast is ready and the camp cook says when she has it ready you’re never here and the minute she gets her skillets clean you’re in the kitchen, wanting something to eat.”

Robert took Tyler Frazier’s smiling chastisement in good humor. “I will come directly,” Robert said. “We’d best keep Aunt Rachel in good humor, or she might desert us next year.”

He loved the black face of Rachel Hicks as if she were his r own blood. Year after year she had been the faithful camp cook, and he knew that nobody loved the meetings any more than she.

Robert promptly entered the tent, where Rachel served his plate with eggs and hominy. Then she brought him a lone dish of hot applesauce. She always watched after him more l devotedly than the others, and his colleagues had joshed him I about it.

“Sister Rachel, how many souls will give their lives to the Lord on this last day?” Robert queried.

“All of them that’s listenin’.”

“Why, that would be most everybody,” Robert said. ..We can’t ever hope for that.”

“I didn’t say everybody that was hearin’. I said everybody that was listenin’.”

When the final day was spent and the last of the penitents had trampled the flattened straw still deeper into the mud and surface water that had invaded the worship shed by night, one hundred and seventy-one converts had “listened,” their numbers exceeding the success of any day during the session save the previous one.

By daylight of the next morning pots and pans rattled noisily and balky horses neighed stubbornly at what Robert could guess was a preference for another day in deep grass standing the reluctance on the part of both people and animals, camp broke, and by midmorning the long wagon train resembled a westward movement through the gap of the Cumberlands.

Robert stood watching, as he did every year, until the grounds were empty and the cabins stood deserted.

“I can hardly wait for the camp meeting to start next year, Brother Sheffey; I’m thinking about it already!” a young mother with babe in arms waved and called to him in passing. He watched her husband’s buggy join the train of horse-drawn vehicles and the young woman’s arm slip shyly about her husband’s waist.

“Bless you, my children,” he said just under his breath, “truly you have stood on the threshold of true happiness. ... May it always reflect in your faces.”

Be remembered then that he had not said good-by to all his colleagues and returned to the tent to do so. When only two or three remained, Tyler Frazier asked if he might assist his elder by staying.

“There is nothing to do,” Robert thanked him. “You know it is not that I’m needed – the camp constables will leave the grounds in order. Brother Frazier, I’d like for you to go with me on some of my travels. Would you do it sometime?”

Tyler Frazier assented and extended a final handshake. Robert gathered his things and walked to the meadow gate with the local stable boy whom he had instructed to saddle and fetch Gideon. While he waited, a lone oxcart · turned from a poplar grove that he knew had been used as overflow camping area when the regular grounds could accommodate no more. The obviously poor family of more than a half-dozen children, and the stout young mother whose childbearing years looked to have only just begun, were audible with their mirth, while the robust young father continually urged the slow-moving ox to greater speed.

“Get along now, Boaz! It’s time we got home and worked as hard as we’ve worshiped! Get along now.”

“Good-by, Brother Sheffey,” all passengers seemed to speak out at once. “I said a prayer for you during the meeting . . . I’ll do it again for next year!” the woman called over her shoulder.

“Thank you, sister. That’s the most precious favor we can give to each other,” he returned.

Gideon pranced with recognition as Robert opened the gate. The animal’s hide was slick and shiny. Robert ran his hand over a well-curried hip and said, “You like this wallowing in the clover too much. You’ve gotten fat and sassy, but I’ll unspoil you! We’ll be on the road again soon, but in the meantime carry me back to Staffordsville. Eddie will be leaving us soon to go back to his new job and my sweet Lord won’t mind if I take a few days’ rest.”

rockytopva · #**118** 15th June 2012, 02:18 PM

The Saint of the Wilderness - Between Chapters 16 and 17

The Wesleyan Methods…

1. Justification – Faith Believing – On the Lord Jesus Christ and the many promises of God.
2. Salvation – Professing Jesus as Lord!
3. Sanctification - Receiving Jesus and true sanctification in the heart
4. Witness of the Spirit - Experiencing greater spiritual blessing. Often experienced in the ‘after service.’ We Pentecostals believe that this can come with tongues.

And some of the daughters of the Methodist faith...

1. Pentecostal Holiness,
2. Congregational Holiness
3. Assemblies of God
4, Church of God (Cleveland, Tn)

It is camp meeting time for all we Methodist here in the Southeast! Even in Trigg VA there is a camp meeting honoring the memory of Robert Sayers Sheffey The 33rd annual campmeeting.

The evangelist Beth Stephens preached at our Pentecostal Holiness Camp meeting this week! The Appalachian conference of Pentecostal Holiness Church is about ten miles south of the old Wabash Camp in the Robert Sheffey story. A thrilling occasion of worship! Though not exactly like the Wabash Camp meeting we were close! This is also the kind of preaching you could expect at the old Methodist Camp meeting.

Beth Stephens - Revelation 4:1 - YouTube

rockytopva · #**119** 16th June 2012, 12:45 PM

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 17
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Page 377-380- The War against Camp Meetings
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In the late fall of 1890 Robert learned from numerous colleagues returning from the Holston annual conference of the mounting sentiment against the historic camp-ground type of evangelism.

“What is being said?” he would inquire time and again, always receiving essentially the same answer.

“Brother Bob, the majority feeling is one that our very best thinkers believe in and have convinced us that John Wesley himself held dear. It is this: Wesley loved the early open-air meetings, but he believed that they were lastingly effective only when the church and its ministry were able to provide an intellectual base to go along with the emotional experience. Many of those who find precious the Lord’s work earnestly believe that we have forsaken one goal in the overzealous pursuit of the other. It will surprise you to know that many of our lay people feel this too. To put it another way, what is the good of flooding our altar with those caught in the heat of religious emotion if we have not prepared them with adequate background to make their experience completely meaningful and long lasting?”

To each separate answer, framed merely in a different set of words, Robert could but stare, dumbfounded and unbelieving. How under God’s heaven was it possible to fill His divine mission on earth any better than to send converts flocking to the altar by any means? That was the important thing! After that, visitation of the Holy Spirit upon the true convert would be eternally sustaining. The only precaution needed was the ascertaining of the genuineness of the conversion. It seemed he had spent half his lifetime in the straw upon his knees with converts, stressing repeatedly that very fact. Such was not to say one could not fall from grace, but in so doing the Christian would of his own evil, renounce the presence of the Ho[y Spirit. But even in the most rebellious denial, the true conversion could not be negated. The worst fallen Christian would need an obedient return to grace, and the watch care of the Holy Spirit, but his original conversion could not be held in doubt by even the most liberal thinker in Methodism.

As Robert pursued the matter further he had little doubt that the die was cast. As a matter of fact he found that to be true a long time ago in other sections, and what he was feeling in his own area was past history in many others. Two positive factors yet remained: no absolute church moratorium existed against the camp meetings, and, second, in his beloved domain there was still strong public interest. But this was temporary comfort, and he knew it. The continued life of the camp meeting would depend on continued support of all the circuit-appointed ministers. The church would never forbid the camp meetings, of that he was sure. But such knowledge seemed an inadequate consolation. As the church thought, so would it move; as its architects planned, so would the structure be determined.

Nevertheless the summer of 1891 came, presenting a hot and dry August by which to worship along the waters of Wabash branch. In spite of Robert’s fevered efforts, the number of participants was not impressive, but the religious fervor was high and the converts numerous. Even Lady Nick returned again to. Present him with the customary red flower by which to mock him. The small number of participating ministers seemed to foreshadow darker days ahead. But Robert pushed the knowledge from his mind and rode off after the camp meeting closed, and without rest, in the pursuit of the “hold outs” who had left camp unconverted.,

“I’m going to get them while they’re still warm!” Robert called a farewell to Tyler Frazier. “You go home and rest I awhile and I’ll come and get you. You young fellows wear out easily. You should have had your training on the same trails some of us old clodhoppers did!”

He continued the pursuit of the “hold outs” throughout the fall, and on several trips Tyler Frazier rode by his side. He loved this dedicated man who was by twenty-five years his I junior, and he loved Frazier’s camp-ground heritage even more. Tyler Frazier had first come to the Wabash camp ground in 1861 at the age of sixteen to profit by the selling of apples, melons, and candy to the great influx of people. His profit turned out to be more than he bargained for, when the spirit of the camp meeting possessed him and he was truly born again. With the seed of that rebirth, his life was henceforth dedicated to the ministry and service to the Holston conference, under which he served tirelessly and obediently.

“Brother Tyler, it gives my soul great comfort to know that a man like you follows in my footsteps as I grow old,” Robert often said as they rode along together, and particularly when he remembered the younger man’s story.

Robert’s seventy-second birthday came and passed, and by late summer widespread interest in another camp session seemed woefully lacking. A few of the people he was sure could be Counted upon to launch another camp meeting session hedged in the face of specific responsibilities and duties. He hid his heavy heart as best he could, but sometimes the flippant excuses of some hoped-for volunteers rang with hollowness when they would say, “Times are changing,” or, more absurdly still, “I believe people are outgrowing that sort of carrying on.”

Only slightly undaunted, he prepared to ride off the first week in August to start his annual appeals.

‘’Robert, please stay home this year. You are past seventy_ two years old and you have no business _”

“I have no business, but the sweet Lord has business,” he interrupted Eliza sharply.

“But, Robert, there are younger men who can do the distant riding,” Eliza pleaded.

“Do not count too heavily on the younger men, Eliza. Some of them have been swayed from the true faith, and they seek to do the church more harm than good. I’m puzzled to know where they are learning some of the things they espouse without shame.”

“But the world has changed so much since we were young, dear husband. The great war is twenty-five years past, and even I can see dimly the new face our country is beginning to wear!’

“It isn’t splendor of a good kind you are seeing, Eliza. What you see is the germ of our destruction.”

“Our destruction? You talk to me of riddles _”

“Yes, our destruction ! You are seeing born the first fruits of our disobedience when we try to educate the head before the heart. The time will come when man will let the imaginations of his mind fly so free that he no longer holds dear any truth. Then he will have no place of refuge and no star to set his sights by.”

“But, Robert, don’t you think we must believe that as the people come out of the mountains and go to school and learn more they will uplift their country in the uplifting of themselves – perhaps even to a higher justice and love among men than we have ever known?”

“There will never be earthly justice. There is no such thing. Only God will work justice. His justice is for this world as well as the next, but it can’t work if we hide it under a barrel in preference to some modernity that will be the destruction of ages to come. No, dear wife, we will not find our souls’ best love by floating loglike down a flood-swollen, raging stream. When we find ourselves there, reaching vainly for the solid banks to save ourselves, it will be too late; the current will, be too swift and the logs we reach for will be moving just as swiftly as our own – not in the least able to deliver us to safe and dry ground.”

rockytopva · #**120** 18th June 2012, 07:07 AM

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 17
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Page 380-383 Robert and Eliza, in their mid-seventies, deal with old age.
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Over Eliza’s continued protests, he rode off at the coming of dawn. “Gideon, old friend, the sweet Lord has let us see another August, and I’m thankful for that, but as the sun shines over my shoulder like a great light I’m thankful even more that I have been shown a whole lot more about life than I can see on this earth.”

He continued riding west and spent the first night of his Journey with Julia Bogle at the “preacher’s house” in the, Mount Zion community of Bland County. Notwithstanding a sumptuous meal, his hostess and her family accused him of melancholy, and he could not deny it. He went to his room early that night, for, although he sensed the disappointment of Mrs. Bogle, and her children, he wanted to spend long hours in prayer. At breakfast he was still tired, but something in his face brought a smile to those about him. Julia Bogle started to talk to him, but curtailed her words.

He took a few bites and looked across the table at her. “Why did you stop short with your words, sister?” he asked.

“I didn’t know how to say exactly what I wanted to say, but I guess it boils down to the hope that my children will find God’s grace as you have found it.”

He lifted his eyes from his plate and knew instinctively that her question had been prompted by his long night of prayer. “Sister Bogle – and children. God’s grace hovers free for the taking above every man’s head. But because it’s there doesn’t mean that every man can accept it. The man who would, must first prepare a container for it, and because there is only one kind: that container is each of you, prepared in a special way. The preparation begins by our self-examination – when we first realize that within the soul God has given us is not only the room and inclination to do the highest calling of His kingdom but the greatest evil as well. Acknowledging that, we have begun to shape the container.”

His little unplanned sermon continued until, realizing the lateness of the hour, he hurriedly dispatched Julia Bogle’s son, John, to fetch Gideon from the field and saddle him. Presently he arose from the table, thanked his hostess, and gathered his prayer mat and saddlebags about him. The young man was unduly long in returning to the house, and when he did so, Gideon did not follow, bridled and saddled, behind him.

“The animal will not let me catch him,” the boy related. “He is frisky and playful and runs from me when I get near. The field is too big for me to corner him.”

Robert dropped his sheepskin to the floor beside the dining room table, knelt, and called out his petition in low tones... "Blessed Lord Jesus, Thy servant must be on his way for the furtherance of Thy kingdom. The boy cannot catch the horse to saddle him and the hour grows late. Rest Thy hand upon this beast of Thy creation and still him.”

Robert stood as quickly as his brittle bones would allow and faced the incredulous stares that reflected also some of the light his own face mirrored when he felt as close to his maker as he did at this moment.

“Go now, son, you will catch the animal without difficulty.”

In little time Robert mounted his animal, affixed his saddlebags, positioned his sheepskin upon the saddle, and rode away. His intent was to cover first the entire community surrounding Mount Zion church – with the primary importance of boosting attendance at the Wabash camp ground – before it was necessary to ride on for a regular appointment at Wessendonck church, farther to the northwest.

In his haste, he crisscrossed Walker’s Creek, visiting first a house and then a cabin until his very head seemed to be swimming. Perhaps Eliza had been right. Perhaps his stamina was not equal to the task, for as yet the whole territory had barely been touched. He worked his way along the creek until the final house that of Tom Whittaker, had been reached and solicited. It was nearly dark then, and he hurried Gideon so that they might recross the creek before all vision was obscured.

At the west bank of the stream, where the water was shallowest and the green slime made the creek bed more treacherous, Gideon lost his footing momentarily and fell to his knees. In a split second Robert found himself pitched from the saddle, sliding awkwardly down Gideon’s neck. Quickly his head slammed against the hardness of creek rock. Half conscious, he still held on to Gideon’s bridle with one hand, and the animal continued moving out of the shallow water. Having reached a place well up the dry bank, Robert felt his I legs fail, and shortly all his senses deserted him.

When he regained consciousness two men and several boys were bent over him, wiping the blood and creek slime from his face.

“You sure got a bargain in that horse,” one of the men said. “I believe he’s got some watchdog blood in him the way he stood over you with his mournful whinnying.”

Robert tried to speak, finally responding by a painful nod of the head.

“We don’t think you’ve broke any limbs, Brother Sheffey. Can you walk?” the second adult asked.

Robert mumbled that he thought he could. He tried, with some help, and found that he could not keep his balance. At last he asked those present to deliver him to the home of Aurelius Vest, who lived nearby.

“Aurelius will have some kind of remedy to make’my head stop hurting,” he said, blotting at the small trickle of blood above his left ear. He still did not feel that he could mount his horse, and even after assistance could not maintain his balance upon the animal’s back. One of the boys offered to get his father’s buggy. Somewhere along the route blackness overcame him again, and when he awoke for the second time he lay upon a bed in the house of Aurelius Vest.

“Brother Sheffey, can you hear me?” Aurelius bent low over his friend. Robert nodded, and the expression on the kindly face changed from a frown into its normally bright luminescence. In minutes Robert raised himself and sat on the side of the bed.

“You’d better not get up for awhile,” Aurelius said gently.

‘’You are always good to me, Aurelius,” Robert declared, looking into the eyes of the other.

The wife of his host cleaned his wound, and Aurelius soothed the bruise with ointment. After an hour Robert considered himself cured and attempted to walk from his bed to the kitchen, but his feet would not go where he directed them. How could any man walk in a room that moved around?

Never could he remember a better night of sleep, nor of sleeping until midmorning. His breakfast was taken slowly, sleeping until midmorning. His breakfast was taken slowly, him several times at the Mount Zion church, made his way to Robert’s chair and examined his head.

For all of the good doctor’s gibberish, Robert could only surmise that his fall had shaken up his brains a little, and for such a minor occurrence being confined to bed seemed an unnecessarily harsh remedy.

He obliged with the obedience of a child, however, and Mrs. Vest put him into a bed where the crisp white linen smelled of captured sunshine and was crowned with a starch-stiff white counterpane.

A neighbor was dispatched to tell Eliza of his incapacitation and that he would soon be home. In a matter of hours he felt no pain, but he still could not keep his balance. Aurelius Vest, a farmer, carpenter, and country undertaker by trade, ceased his work often during the day to look in and offer comfort to his elder.

“Now, Aurelius, you go back to your casket making and don’t worry about me. One of these days I’ll want one of your best walnut coffins, but the time is not yet,” Robert would say.

Before the week was out, Robert decided to go home. Dr. Blackburn agreed to such an arrangement only if somebody took his patient by buggy. Robert needed nobody to remind him that he couldn’t sit upon a horse. He departed the home of Aurelius Vest impatiently, for there was yet work to be done and the final week in August crept ever closer.

“You have been kind to the Lord’s servant,” Robert said to both his host and hostess, “but it is good that I can be I leaving. Much is to be done. I want to tell you this before I go – if I’m ever sick again I hope it will be God’s plan that I may do my suffering in your house.”

Aurelius seemed so overcome with such a humble benediction that he pledged to Robert the watch care of himself, his home, and his prayers.

“It is not every man who can feel uplifted by caring for God’s fallen. God bless you for your Christian heart, Brother Aurelius.”

Eliza nursed him like a baby and he was ashamed that he should require it or even allow it. As the last of August drew near he wept at times that he could not be about his work, but Eliza kept referring to the “others” who were out in his stead. When he questioned her as to their names she could I never remember, claiming that those ministers who had never been to the Sheffey house weren’t in her mind identifiable.