The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1923, Page 18

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18

The Lutheran Pioneer.

- remain quiet and orderly during services or lessons,
to wash and comb themselves and to refrain from
starting a fight with a neighbor, or to remain in
the seat assigned to them and deny themselves the
pleasure of talking aloud, or to bombard some one
with chips, nutshells, or other missiles, often utterly
breaks up the precariously established discipline and
good order and, of course, disturbs the service or
teaching and learning.

The hot temper or lack of patience and tact of
the pastor or teacher may also be mentioned, since
they have flesh and blood as well as other people.
By God’s grace alone all these difficulties can be

overcome. L. G. Dorratr.

Darkness.

The festival beauty of the flowers has faded; the
blossoms that nodded and smiled each morning to
the warbling birds have withered and surrendered
their last fading tints to the first pricklings of the
frost. All nature is draped in a cloak of sadness
and seems to be mourning for her lost beauty. The
spreading oaks have changed their dress, and their
leaves are crimsoned, offering a contrast to the dark,
scintillating green of the lordly pines and queenly
niagnolias. Here and there may be heard the plain-
tive call of a bird as it flits from bough to bough,

secking the mate that has vanished with the dying

days of summer.

The shades of night had descended, and there
was a deathlike silence over all the surrounding
landscape. Soon, however, this silence was broken

by the happy laughter or earnest conversation of,

umber-hued couples as they wended their way

toward the dilapidated church, set in a circular .

clearing on the hillside. Here and there could be
seen the wavering flame of a torch or the flickering
and uncertain light of a lantern, carried by some old
grandfather or grandmother, to light their path as
they limped and stumbled toward their house of
worship. ‘The roads and paths teemed with people;
both old. and young, for the time of “big meetin’ ”

__ was at hand.

Old Uncle Jess’ was dangerously near his al-
lotted “threescore years and ten,” but he still re-
mained a hardened sinner, untouched by the plead-
ings and threats of many revivalists. For over forty
is he had been, at each revival season, literally

ed forward to the mourners’ bench, and there,
mid the stamping of many and sundry-clad feet,

the noisy clapping of hands, and plaintive plantation
melodies, punctuated with the hysterical screams of
emotional women, exhorted to seek “’ligion befo’ it
is too late.”
In the midst of the strains of
Gawd’s gonna set dis worl’ on fiah
Some o’ dese days,

old Uncle Jess’ was reminded of the fact that a
flaming pit awaited the delayed coming of all
hardened sinners such as he was. And then a zeal-
ous, perspiring deacon would bend over the groan-
ing, gray-haired sinner and urge him on to louder
and more earnest prayer if he would escape the
yawning gulf. And during the singing of

Pray, sinner, pray, an’ doan yo’ be ashamed,

Fo’ Jesus Chris’, de Lam’ o’ Gawd,

Done written down yo’ name,
some obese and devout “mother” of the chureh
would, between panting hallelujahs, assure the
gnarled old man that such, indeed, was the case;
that his name was “done written down,” and all he
had_ to do was to pray and pray until he saw it.
And now, having been reminded of the fact that
the Lord was going to set the world on fire, and
that his name was “done written down,” some old
silver-haired veteran of many battles around the
mourners’ bench would, in a high, tremulous voice,
offer further encouragement to the aged “seeker”
by singing: —

When I was a mourner jes’ like you,
I prayed, an’ I prayed, till I come thoo.
For forty years and more these same songs had

been sung over old Uncle Jess’. And for forty years

and more Jess’, and then old Uncle Jess’, had at |

each “big meetin’” moaned and mourned at the
bench to no avail, for immediately after each mecet-
ing the old man would slip back into his former
habits. The Saturday night following the close of
each revival he could be seen, in the gathering dusk,
with his old battered banjo slung over his shoulder,
limping along the’ public highway or a path through
the fields on his way to furnish the music for the
Saturday night plantation frolic. And so for over
a generation young Jess’, and then old Uncle Jess’,
had kneeled in the dust at the mourners’ bench,
“called the figures,” and played his banjo at the
frolics without having missed a revival or a frolic. _
And now again, on this particular night, during
the time of the annual “big meetin’,” the gray old
mourner and banjo-player had, as was the annual
custom, been dragged to the mourners’ bench. After
the sermon the deacons’ class-leaders, brethren, and