The Quickening | Page 3

phrase so simple that the youngest child could
not fail to follow him, to draw the picture of that Judean morning scene
on the banks of the Jordan, of the wild, unkempt, skin-clad forerunner,
thundering forth his message to a sin--cursed world. On what deaf ears
had it fallen among the multitude gathered on Jordan's bank! On what
deaf ears would it fall in Zoar church this night!
He classed them rapidly, and with a prescient insight into the mazes of
human frailty that made it seem as if the doors of all hearts were open
to him: the Pharisee, who paid tithes--mint, anise and cummin--and
prayed daily on the street corners, and saw no need for repentance; the
youth and the maiden, with their lips to the brimming cup of worldly
pleasures, saying to the faithful monitor, yet a little while longer and
we will hear thee; the man and woman grown, fighting the battle for
bread, living toilfully for time and the things that perish, and hearing
the warning voice faintly and ever more faintly as the years pass; the
aged, steeped and sodden in sin unrepented of, and with the spiritual
senses all dulled and blunted by lifelong rebellion, willing now to hear
and obey, it might be, but calling in vain on the merciful and
long-suffering God they had so long rejected.
Then, suddenly, he passed from pleading to denunciation. The setting
of The Great White Throne and the awful terrors of the Judgment Day
were depicted in words that fell from the thin lips like the sentence of
an inexorable judge.
"'Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil
and his angels!'" he thundered, and a shudder ran through the crowded
church as if an earthquake had shaken the valley. "There is your end,

impenitent soul; and, alas! for you, it is only the beginning of a fearful
eternity! Think of it, you who have time to think of everything but the
salvation of your soul, your sins, and the awful doom which is awaiting
you! Think of it, you who are throwing your lives away in the pleasures
of this world; you who have broken God's commands; you who have
stolen when you thought no eye was on you; you who have so often
committed murder in your hating hearts! Think not that you will be
suffered to escape! Every servant of the most high God who has ever
declared His message to you will be there to denounce you: I, Silas
Crafts, will meet you at the judgment-seat of Christ to bear my witness
against you!"
A man, red-faced and with the devil of the cup of trembling peering
from under his shaggy eyebrows, rose unsteadily from his seat on the
bench nearest the door.
"'Sh! he's fotched Tike Bryerson!" flew the whisper from lip to ear; but
the man with the trembling madness in his eyes was backing toward the
door. Suddenly he stooped and rose again with a backwoodsman's rifle
in his hands, and his voice sheared the breathless silence like the snarl
of a wild beast at bay.
"No, by jacks, ye won't witness ag'inst me, Silas Crafts; ye'll be dead!"
The crack of the rifle went with the words, and at the flash of the piece
the man sprang backward through the doorway and was gone. Happily,
he had been too drunk or too tremulous to shoot straight. The preacher
was unhurt, and he was quick to quell the rising tumult and to turn the
incident to good account.
"There went the arrow of conviction quivering to the heart of a
murderer!" he cried, dominating the commotion with his marvelous
voice. "Come back here, Japheth Pettigrass; and you, William Layne:
God Almighty will deal with that poor sinner in His own way. For him,
for every impenitent soul here to-night, the hour has struck. 'Now is the
accepted time; now is the day of salvation.' While we are singing, _Just
as I am, without one plea_, let the doors of divine mercy stand opened
wide, and let every hard heart be softened. Come, ye disconsolate;

come forward to the mercy-seat as we sing."
The old, soul-moving, revival hymn was lifted in a triumphant burst of
sound, and Thomas Jefferson's heart began to pound like a trip-hammer.
Was this his call--his one last chance to enter the ark of safety? Just
there was the pinch. A saying of Japheth Pettigrass's, overheard in
Hargis's store on the first day of the meetings, flicked into his mind and
stuck there: "Hit's scare, first, last, and all the time, with Brother Silas.
He knows mighty well that a good bunch o' hickories, that'll bring the
blood every cut, beats a sugar kittle out o' sight when it comes to fillin'
the