There were other similar strong evidences of feeling throughout the
congregation, none of which had ever been noticed before in this place.
Our clergyman was amazed and horrified. He tried to ignore the action
of the brethren, but when a sister who has grown old in the church, and
been such a model and example of rectitude that all the girls in the
county were perfectly discouraged about trying to be anywhere near equal
to her; when she rose with a wild snort, got up on the pew with her
feet, and swung her parasol in a way that indicated that she would not
go home till morning, he paused and briefly wound up the services.
Of course there were other little eccentricities on the part of the
congregation, but these were the ones that people have talked about the
most, and have done us the most damage abroad.
Now, my desire is that through the medium of the press you will state
that this great trouble which has come upon us, by reason of which
the ungodly have spoken lightly of us, was not the result of a general
tendency to dissent from the statements made by our pastor, and
therefore an exhibition of our disapproval of his doctrines, but that
the janitor had started a light fire in the furnace, and that had
revived a large nest of common, streaked, hot-nosed wasps in the warm
air pipe, and when they came up through the register and united in the
services, there was more or less of an ovation.
Sometimes Christianity gets sluggish and comatose, but not under the
above circumstances. A man may slumber on softly with his bosom gently
rising and falling, and his breath coming and going through one corner
of his mouth like the death rattle of a bath-tub, while the pastor opens
out a new box of theological thunders and fills the air full of the
sullen roar of sulphurous waves, licking the shores of eternity and
swallowing up the great multitudes of the eternally lost; but when one
little wasp, with a red-hot revelation, goes gently up the leg of that
same man's pantaloons, leaving large, hot tracks whenever he stopped and
sat down to think it over, you will see a sudden awakening and a revival
that will attract attention.
I wish that you would take this letter, Mr. Nye, and write something,
from it in your own way, for publication, showing how we happened to
have more zeal than usual in the church last Sabbath, and that it was
not directly the result of the sermon which was preached on that day.
Yours, with great respect,
_WILLIAM LEMONS_.
THE WEEPING WOMAN.
I have not written much for publication lately, because I did not feel
well, I was fatigued. I took a ride on the cars last week and it shook
me up a good deal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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