Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/175

Rh wall" brigade, which General Jackson was accustomed to attend, and where the world-famous chief "played usher" until the men were all seated, and then listened with glistening eyes to the old-fashioned Gospel in which he so greatly delighted. But the chapel-building reached its climax along the Rapidan in the winter of 1863-64, and along the Richmond and Petersburg lines in the winter of 1864-65. The great revival which swept through our camps on the return of the army from the Gettysburg campaign, and which resulted in the professed conversion of thousands and the quickened zeal of Christians generally, naturally produced a desire to have houses of worship during the winter. As soon as we went into winter quarters, the cry was raised in well nigh every command: "We must have a chapel." No sooner said than done. The men did not wait to finish their own quarters before they went to work on "the church." Their axes rang through the woods; some cut logs for the body of the building, others "rove" slabs, some provided "ridge poles" and "weight poles," and there were parties to do the hauling, put up the house and undertake "the finer work." Never since the days of Nehemiah have men had a better "mind to work" on the walls of Zion, and in from two to six days the chapel was finished, and the men were worshiping God in a temple dedicated to His name. Rude as they were, the completion of these chapels was hailed with the liveliest manifestations of joy on the part of those who had helped to build them, and each one of them proved, indeed, "none other than the house of God and the gate of heaven."

Rev. W. S. Lacy, of the Forty-seventh North Carolina, thus writes of an evening service in his chapel: "It was a solemn sight to see one of those earnest, crowded congregations by our feeble light in that rude chapel. We had no brilliant gas-jets, softened by shaded or stained glass. The light was reflected from no polished surface or snowy wall; one or two rough-looking specimens of