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CHAPTER X

SALVATION RIDES THE CIRCUIT

Must Jesus bear the cross alone,

And all the world go free?

No, there's a cross for every one,
And there's a cross for me.

THOMAS SHEPHERD, 1665-1739.

Tis the second Sunday of September, 1832. A multi

tude of Methodists are gathered in camp meeting at

Springfield, Illinois, drawn from homes a hundred miles around by the name of one man. A new presiding elder is coming from Kentucky, a bronzed veteran of the circuits whose voice, now the clangor of an alarm bell, now the chime of a throbbing hymn, has been ringing in the wilderness for a quarter of a century, whose renown was borne over the mountains and through the valleys and across the plains as swiftly as the Gospel message he himself is bringing.

Breakfast fires are smoldering as the motley company of backwoodsmen and their families flock to the preacher's stand for the eight o'clock service. The sun shines down from an azure sky and the day is perfect for the far traveller, but he does not appear. The great horn blows for the eleven o'clock convocation, the hour always set apart for the heavy guns to boom from the pulpit, and still the sole expectation of this vast assemblage is not fulfilled. Preaching there must be and one from the circuit ranks

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steps into the breach only to falter and stumble as he senses the disappointment in the air. The restless crowd begins to disperse. Some of the men are hitching up their teams to depart. Suddenly a shout is raised and tracechains clatter with falling whiffletrees. A lone rider forces his way through the rush to the pulpit. He reaches up and hands a message to the trembling hand of a preacher. "Dear brethren," the parson reads to the people, "the devil has foundered my horse, which will detain me from reaching your tabernacle till evening. I might have performed the journey on foot, but I could not leave poor Paul, especially as he has never left Peter. Horses have no souls to save, and, therefore, it is all the more the duty of Christians to take care of their bodies. Watch and pray, and don't let the devil get among you on the sly before candle-light, when I shall be at my post."

A single resonant voice coming from the midst of the throng starts a soul-stirring hymn. On the second note a mighty surge of harmony picks up the tune and again and again repeats its refrain while the woodland echoes with hallelujahs. The tide has turned and the camp meeting spirit is at the flood.

Sunset fades from the sky. Watchfires of the evening gleam amid the clustering tents. Pine-knots sputter over the heads of the hosts spreading out from the preaching stand to the distant darkness. A tall, massive figure strides into the pulpit and a hush falls over the people. It is the man for whom they came.

Every eye is riveted on him as he gives out the hymn and leads with sweeping gestures of his brawny arms. What a head he has! It seems as large as half a bushel. His unruly, thick, coal-black hair, tossed back from his craggy brows, tumbles over his ears in long curling ringlets. Eyes

of deep, dark fire twinkle in the pulpit flares which disclose the weather-beaten swarthiness of his face and the redness of lips parted in an all-inclusive friendly smile.

He has begun to preach. He is ridiculing the follies of the sinner and his homely wit is pointing a torrent of eloquent humor. Laughter ripples through the throng and then bursts into explosions of mirth while dour parsons look at their feet and sanctimonious folk roll their eyes aloft. Before half an hour has passed he is teasing smiles from them too. Now a gradual change is discernible.

His countenance has lost its waggish expression. As it grows sterner, his voice becomes earnest, solemn, deep and full of pathos. The effect is immediate. The transition is startling. The thousands who were rollicking with him a moment before are weeping with him for the souls that are lost and they are listening with their own eternity at stake.

Again he changes. From the hell opening beneath their feet the people follow him heavenward in a rapture of faith and hope. The whole congregation starts to its feet. He holds out his hands and pleads-this giant of a manpleads ever so tenderly. Five hundred press forward and are kneeling at his feet.

And Peter Cartwright comes down from his pulpit and prays with the penitents he has brought back to God.

This was the circuit rider, these were his people, and they were met in one of those places of revival power from which branched new broken trails toward the setting sun. Of all the valiant men of God with whom the revival rode to lone cabin, frontier hamlet and camp-meeting concourse, braving the perils of hostile Indians, marauding wolves, storm and flood, Peter Cartwright was the hardest fighter, the bravest pioneer and the strongest preacher. Yet he was of a pattern with the scores of others whose hardi