It was a wild and weird scene that we looked down upon from the gallery of one of the prominent colored churches in a Southern city a few months since. The preacher had, at 10 o’clock, p. m., finished his part of the service, having preached an excellent and very simple sermon, in which there was nothing calculated to produce the violent scenes which followed, and having come down from the pulpit, the brethren and sisters took the meeting under their own management. Up to this time it had been as quiet and decorous as a deacons’ meeting in New England. A stentorian “son of thunder” now led the singing, and a general movement of the whole assembly at once began. Soon, nearly a hundred “seekers” were kneeling at the “mourners’ bench,” a row of seats extending across the church, in all stages of physical and spiritual abasement. Prayer and song followed each other in rapid and boisterous succession, while the congregation of believers marched and counter-marched, each one discharging at once his duty and a volley of counsel or encouragement to the mourners as he passed along the line. Black was the ground and prevailing color. The lights were hardly sufficient to resolve this nebulous blackness into faces, black sun-bonnets of the sisters, and black-coated forms of the brethren moving to and fro through the room, while the singers sang, the exhorters exhorted, the mourners mourned in dismal howls, and the shouters shouted and leaped in ecstatic joy. Now and then, one would come to the surface of all this uproar, to tell what voices he had heard, what visions he had seen, what dreams he had dreamed, and receive the assurance from the minister: “I have no more doubt that he has got religion, than I have of my own existence,” which would be the signal for a general shout of “glory to God!” that made the preceding bedlam seem tame, and gave renewed impetus to the marchings and songs and prayers. These meetings had been in nightly session for weeks, and continued for weeks afterward, prolonged often, as on this night, until 2 o’clock in the morning. As we left, about midnight, our driver, an intelligent negro, said: “You are going away too early. Things will get pretty warm after awhile. ’Ligion strikes a nigger first in the foot and then works up; it is just beginning to work, it will be lively after awhile;” of which there could not be much doubt.