The Saint of the Wilderness - Jess Carr

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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.
 
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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.
 
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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.”
 
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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.”
 
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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.

[FONT=&quot]‘’The sweet angels are not out tonight. It is me in the flesh.” [/FONT]
 
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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"...
======================

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.
 
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rockytopva

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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).
 
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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.
 
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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.”
 
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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.
 
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rockytopva

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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.
 
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The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 16
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Introducing Tyler Frazier... A close associate of Robert Sheffey
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JTylerFrazier.jpg

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.
 
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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...

[bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse]-cat, [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse]-cat, where have you been?
I've been to London to visit the Queen!
[bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse]-cat, [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse]-cat, what did you there?
I frightened a little mouse under her chair.

The old [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse] 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.
 
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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.
 
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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.”
 
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rockytopva

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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.”
 
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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.”
 
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rockytopva

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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
 
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rockytopva

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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.”
 
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rockytopva

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The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 17
------------------------------------------------
Page 380-383 Robert and Eliza, in their mid-seventies, deal with old age.
===============================
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.
 
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