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Updated: June 6, 2025
Tenney set down his dinner pail, as if it hampered him, and began rhythmically, in the voice of the exhorter: "Saved by the blood of the Lamb." Raven stepped back a pace. "No," he said coldly, "not that I'm aware of." Tenney came forward a step and Raven again backed. There was something peculiarly distasteful in being exhorted by a fellow of unbridled temper and a bestial mind.
In twenty minutes the great trunk tottered, crackled, and swung down fair on the roof of the crowded building. The congregation had reached a degree of great mental ferment with the revival, and a long, loud murmuring of prayers and groans, with the voice of the exhorter, harsh and ringing, filled the edifice, when with a crash overhead the great arms of the tree met the roof.
If he had not been in public life, he would have been a camp-meeting exhorter. Crowds liked to listen to him; the radicals and radically inclined throughout the West swore by him; he had had two terms in Congress, had got a hundred-odd votes for the nomination for President at the last national convention of the opposition.
The 'teacher' probably had for his function, primarily, the narration of the facts of the Gospel, and the setting forth in a form addressed chiefly to the understanding the truths thereby revealed; whilst the 'exhorter' rather addressed himself to the will, presenting the same truth, but in forms more intended to influence the emotions.
His head was bowed on his hands, his elbows on his knees. Then the exhorter began again. Full of scriptural texts charged with holy fire, abounding in lurid thoughts of burning lakes, of endless torment; gifted with the fluency that sometimes passes for logic and makes for convincement, he dwelt on the horrors and the might-have-beens.
I have alluded, parenthetically, to the possible guilt of capillary attraction, but I am prepared to maintain against the attraction of gravitation the charge of total depravity. Indeed, I should say of it, as did the worthy exhorter of the Dominie's old parish in regard to slavery, "It's the wickedest thing in the world, except sin!"
Ben pulled up and they looked at it doubtfully. It looked dangerously miry. It was quite dark now and Ben said: "That's a scaly piece of road." "Oh, that's all right. Hark!" As they listened they could hear the voice of the exhorter nearly a mile away. It pushed across the cool spaces with a wild and savage sound. The young people thrilled with excitement. Insects were singing in the grass.
One old negro woman, fat, powerful, and gloomy, suddenly arose and uttered a scream that had the dignity and savagery of a mountain lion's cry. It rang far out into the night. The exhorter continued his mad, furious, thumping, barbaric walk. Behind him a row of other exhorters sat, a relay ready to leap to his aid. They urged on the tumult with wild cries. "A-men, brother."
"There, but for the grace of God, goes John Wesley," said the exhorter when he saw a murderer on the way to the gallows. Some such dismal thought assailed me as the lofty exotic cypress in the center of the Golgotha met my eye; the tree of the dead over all the world. I halted to view the expanse of mausoleums and foliage.
I'll kill ye if you lay a hand on her." With one thrust Ben cleared her tormentor from her arm. For one moment the wordless young man looked into her eyes; then she staggered toward him. He faced the preacher. "I'd smash hell out o' you for a leather cent," he said. In the tumult his words were lost, but the look on his face was enough. The exhorter fell away.
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