Crestlands Part 26

"You shall have it, sir," said Abner, his eyes filling. Then, to a negro boy who was just entering the room, he cried, "Run quickly to the spring-house, and fetch a bucket of water."

"Are you not rash, Logan?" whispered Bledsoe. "You know the doctors have all along forbidden that."

"But they have p.r.o.nounced him dying; in any case the water can make no difference, and I can not resist his plea any longer."

The water was brought, and Abner gave the sick man one sip, which was all he would take. To his fever-parched palate the water tasted a vile draught; and he turned from it in loathing and despair. With a tiny mop Logan then moistened the parched mouth with a solution of slippery elm.

Presently the moan for water was again uttered, and now the fevered palate at last began to feel its coolness. With unnatural strength he seized the gourd, and drained its contents. "Bless you, my boy!" he exclaimed faintly; then fell back on his pillow exhausted, and dropped immediately into a deep sleep.

"He's gone!" exclaimed Bledsoe, as he saw the perspiration gathering upon his brow. "He will never wake from this stupor," and again the sorrowing family were summoned. The solemnity of death reigned in the chamber, where the watchers restrained their weeping, and waited in awe-struck silence the approach of man's last grim foe.

"He may live," Abner said at last as the moments pa.s.sed and Gilcrest breathed on in quiet slumber.

"If he does," responded Bledsoe, "that water will have saved him."

Gilcrest slept on. Dawn gave place to full day, morning glided into afternoon. Late in the evening he awoke of his own accord, weak as a new-born babe, but with the fever gone and the light of reason once more in his sunken eyes.

During the long weeks of convalescence that followed, while his body was slowly regaining vigor, his heart, too, was gradually expanding into a new spiritual life. He had ample time for reflection as he sat propped with pillows in the cushioned chair in his quiet room; and in those long hours of solitude and feeble helplessness, he first began to feel the need of a religion more healing and cheering than that which showed G.o.d only as an avenger, stern, partial and dictatorial.

Gradually, and as naturally as a plant turns to the sun, his mind turned to that all-loving Father who, being "touched with a feeling for our infirmities," ever tempers his righteous judgments with tenderest mercy, and is ever yearning to deliver all from the penalty of sin.

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

CONCLUSION

Upon the third Sunday in November, while the congregation in Cane Ridge meeting-house was singing the opening hymn, Hiram Gilcrest entered, and, walking slowly down the aisle, seated himself upon the steps of the pulpit platform. All eyes were turned upon him, and for a moment there was a perceptible pause and break in the singing. Then Mason Rogers lined out the fifth stanza, and the congregation sang with redoubled zest.

"Let us pray," said Barton Stone, coming forward with uplifted hands at the conclusion of the hymn; but Gilcrest arose, and, arresting him, stood facing the a.s.sembly. "Brethren," he said, "before we pray, allow me a few words. I have been a professor of religion for over forty years, and for twenty years of this time I was identified with this church. My walk was orderly, my conversation seemly. I gave t.i.thes of all that I possessed, I was instant in season and out of season, and ever jealous for the well-being of the church. In things outward and, I thought, in things spiritual, I was a Christian; and though I was as self-righteous as any Pharisee, I was not a hypocrite, for I was self-deceived. In all these years I was as Simon the sorcerer, still 'in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity,' having neither part nor lot in true Christianity. But, brethren, the Lord in his mercy did at last reveal unto me the dark places of my soul wherein lurked pride, prejudice, vindictiveness, and all uncharitableness; and, like the publican, I cried, 'G.o.d be merciful to me, a sinner!'

"For several years I have had at times an idea that in the position taken by this church in 1803, you were perhaps right and I wrong. A sermon by a strange preacher in a distant county last June further tended to convince me of this; but still I struggled with stubborn hardihood against the truth that was threatening to crush me. It was reserved for the Lord's own stroke to smite the rock and bring forth the sweet waters of repentance and confession. To-day I am here not so much because I have surrendered one jot or t.i.ttle of my former doctrinal tenets, as because of the conviction that no system of dogma, however true and logical, is of importance compared to this, that the professed followers of Jesus Christ should be a united people. I now see that whether the doctrines formulated by Calvin or those promulgated by Arminius be true, the acceptance of either interpretation of these disputed points does not const.i.tute the vital essence of salvation. They are but matters of opinion, instead of the one supreme article of saving faith--belief in the redeeming efficacy of the sacrifice upon Calvary.

"As I now understand the position taken by this congregation in 1803, I see that so far as it may be considered a distinctive religious movement, it is distinctive only in its denial of the binding authority of human organizations, and in its renunciation of humanly devised creeds as unscriptural and as opposed to the simplicity and unity of Christian people. Therefore, leaving out of the question all matters of opinion upon doctrinal theology, and standing, as you do, upon the one sure foundation-stone, faith in and reliance upon our crucified Redeemer, I come to you to-day, begging forgiveness for my opposition and vindictiveness, and asking that my own and my wife's name be replaced upon your church book, and that we be restored to your fellowship."

Before he had finished, Barton Stone was beside him grasping his hand, but too overcome to utter a word. The congregation sat a moment in breathless silence, tears of sympathy and thankfulness in the eyes of even the most stolid. Then Mason Rogers, striding down the aisle, and facing the people, with one arm thrown over the shoulders of his old friend and comrade, lifted up his voice in thanksgiving. He prayed in his own homely words, but with fervency and fire as though his lips had indeed been touched with "a live coal from the altar."

"Amen!" and "Amen!" were the exclamations from all parts of the building. Then, in a clear, full voice, he started the hymn:

"I'm not ashamed to own my Lord, Nor to defend his cause."

The congregation quickly joined in; and as the melody of n.o.ble old "Arlington" resounded through the building, the people left their seats, and, filing down the aisle, each in turn grasped the hand of the returned brother, and welcomed him again into fellowship.

Thus, like a sincere and peace-loving Christian, Hiram Gilcrest once more took his place among his brethren, humbly and lovingly, with never again a trace of his former spirit of prejudice and dogmatic intolerance.

As for the various other characters of this story, little more need be said.

Barton Stone labored for many years in various fields of usefulness in Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana and Missouri. In 1843 he returned for a last visit to Cane Ridge. He was then an old man, bent and palsied, and so feeble that he had to be helped into the pulpit; but his eyes kindled with the old-time light, his bent form straightened with something of the old-time vigor, and his voice became full and vibrant as he stood facing that a.s.sembly where many seats were now occupied by the children and grandchildren of those who in this old meetinghouse forty years before had as a church renounced all human authoritative voice in matters of religious worship, and had resolved that henceforward the Bible should be their only rule of faith and practice, and belief in Jesus as the Christ their only creed. Stone preached this last sermon from the text of Paul's farewell to the brethren at Ephesus, "And now behold I know that ye all among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of G.o.d shall see my face no more." He was truly the old man eloquent as, standing for the last time in that pulpit, he reviewed the past, spoke approvingly of the present, and admonished to future zeal. He died in 1844 in Missouri, and the following spring his remains were brought to Kentucky by the members of Cane Ridge Church, and reinterred in the old churchyard.

Cane Ridge meeting-house is still used as a regular place of worship.

Its log walls have been weather-boarded, its clapboard roof replaced by one of shingles, and its rough-hewn puncheon benches have given way to more comfortable seats. The quaint little window over the pulpit and the slaves' gallery opposite have been removed, and more modern heating appliance subst.i.tuted for the old fireplace. Otherwise, the building is the same as it was one hundred years ago.

To one who knows the history of its venerable walls and of those who rest in its old-fashioned graveyard, where, underneath the arching boughs of walnut and pine, oak and maple, there sleep Barton Stone and many others who took part in the first great religious movement of the nineteenth century, it is indeed a hallowed place. "What Geneva was to Calvin, Wittenberg to Luther, Edinburgh to Knox, and Epworth to the Wesleys,"[3] this beautiful nook of Bourbon County is to that great reformatory or restoratory movement inaugurated in 1803, whose plea was and still is the restoration of the simplicity, the freedom and the catholicity of apostolic Christianity; and whose dominant effort has ever been for the union of G.o.d's people upon the only efficient platform of Christian union, faith in Jesus the Christ, the Son of G.o.d.

[3] J. T. Sharrard.

Mason Rogers and his bustling, kind-hearted wife lived to a ripe old age, happy in home, children and children's children, and in the affectionate regard of all who knew them. The warp of their daily life was plain and homely, but the bright threads of integrity and loving-kindness running through it, made it into a beautiful pattern, approved of all men.

Henry Rogers, after finishing his course at Transylvania, dedicated his splendid talents to the ministry, winning many souls to Christ, enduring many trials, encountering much opposition from those professed Christians in whom the spirit of sectarian intolerance still held sway.

Bravely he endured, and n.o.bly he deserved, at the end of his long life of unselfishness, the plaudit, "Well done, good and faithful servant!"

The strong bond of friendship between the Gilcrest, Rogers and Logan families was made still closer and stronger when John Calvin Gilcrest, at the close of the war of 1812, returned to Kentucky and married Susan Rogers.

For Abner and Betsy Logan, the years as they sped onward brought an ever-increasing measure of happiness; for their love for each other had that steady, faithful, fireside quality which endures, and fills the daily life with peace and charm long after the first blaze of pa.s.sion has sunk into the smouldering glow of sympathetic affection.

Where once had stood their first humble log cabin, there arose in the course of a few years the new "Crestlands," a stately mansion of brick with s.p.a.cious rooms, broad halls and pillared porches. This n.o.ble, historic homestead is to-day occupied by the fifth generation of Logans. Its founder, Abner Logan, realized his ideal; for his home became a center of peace and order, love and content--a radiating point, ever widening into increasing circles of beauty and usefulness; and the name, "Crestlands," is still a synonym for hospitality, integrity and Christian culture in that green and beautiful portion of "G.o.d's Country" called Cane Ridge.

THE END.

APPENDIX

(SEE CHAPTER XXVI.)

In June, 1804, the several ministers of the new organization met at Cane Ridge meeting-house, and drew up the "Last Will and Testament of Springfield Presbytery." A copy of this quaint and remarkable doc.u.ment is here subjoined:

THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF SPRINGFIELD PRESBYTERY

The Presbytery of Springfield, sitting at Caneridge, in the county of Bourbon, in more than ordinary bodily health, growing in strength and size daily; and in perfect soundness and composure of mind; but knowing that it is appointed for all delegated bodies once to die; and considering that the life of every such body is very uncertain, do make and ordain this our last Will and Testament, in manner and form following, viz.:

_Imprimis._ We _will_, that this body die, be dissolved, and sink into union with the Body of Christ at large; for there is but one body, and one Spirit, even as we are called in one hope of our calling.

_Item._ We _will_, that our name of distinction, with its _Reverend_ t.i.tle, be forgotten, that there be but one Lord over G.o.d's heritage, and His name one.

_Item._ We _will_, that our power of making laws for the government of the church, and executing them by delegated authority, forever cease; that the people may have free course to the Bible, and adopt _the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus_.

_Item._ We _will_, that candidates for the Gospel ministry henceforth study the Holy Scriptures with fervent prayer, and obtain license from G.o.d to preach the simple Gospel, _with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven_, without any mixture of philosophy, vain deceit, traditions of men, or the rudiments of the world. And let none henceforth take _this honor to himself, but he that is called of G.o.d, as was Aaron_.

_Item._ We _will_, that the church of Christ resume her native right of internal government--try her candidates for the ministry, at to their soundness in the faith, acquaintance with experimental religion, gravity and aptness to teach; and admit no other proof of their authority but Christ speaking in them. We will, that the church of Christ look up to the Lord of the harvest to send forth laborers into His harvest; and that she resume her primitive right to try those _who say they are apostles, and are not_.

_Item._ We _will_, that each particular church, as a body, actuated by the same spirit, choose her own preacher, and support him by a freewill offering, without a written _call_ or _subscription_--admit members, remove offences; and never henceforth _delegate_ her right of government to any man or set of men whatever.

_Item._ We _will_, that the people henceforth take the Bible as the only sure guide to heaven; and as many as are offended with other books, which stand in compet.i.tion with it, may cast them into the fire if they choose; for it is better to enter into life having one book, than having many to be cast into h.e.l.l.