The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 2 of 4American Anti-Slavery Society
History
The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 2 of 4
American Anti-Slavery Society
Antislavery movements -- United States -- Periodicals; Slavery -- United States -- Periodicals
The Wesleyans kept "watch-night" in all their chapels on the night of
the 31st July. One of the Wesleyan missionaries gave us an account of
the watch meeting at the chapel in St. John's. The spacious house was
filled with the candidates for liberty. All was animation and eagerness.
A mighty chorus of voices swelled the song of expectation and joy, and
as they united in prayer, the voice of the leader was drowned in the
universal acclamations of thanksgiving and praise, and blessing, and
honor, and glory, to God, who had come down for their deliverance. In
such exercises the evening was spent until the hour of twelve
approached. The missionary then proposed that when the clock on the
cathedral should begin to strike, the whole congregation should fall
upon their knees and receive the boon of freedom in silence.
Accordingly, as the loud bell tolled its first note, the immense
assembly fell prostrate on their knees. All was silence, save the
quivering half-stifled breath of the struggling spirit. The slow notes
of the clock fell upon the multitude; peal on peal, peal on peal, rolled
over the prostrate throng, in tones of angels' voices, thrilling among
the desolate chords and weary heart strings. Scarce had the clock
sounded its last note, when the lightning flashed vividly around, and a
loud peal of thunder roared along the sky--God's pillar of fire, and
trump of jubilee! A moment of profoundest silence passed--then came the
_burst_--they broke forth in prayer; they shouted, they sung, "Glory,"
"alleluia;" they clapped their hands, leaped up, fell down, clasped each
other in their free arms, cried, laughed, and went to and fro, tossing
upward their unfettered hands; but high above the whole there was a
mighty sound which ever and anon swelled up; it was the utterings in
broken negro dialect of gratitude to God.
After this gush of excitement had spent itself; and the congregation
became calm, the religious exercises were resumed, and the remainder of
the night was occupied in singing and prayer, in reading the Bible, and
in addresses from the missionaries explaining the nature of the freedom
just received, and exhorting the freed people to be industrious, steady,
obedient to the laws, and to show themselves in all things worthy of the
high boon which God had conferred upon them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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