Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/179

Rh to face death every day, and who could not have been "scared into religion," even if the preachers had tried to do so. Besides there were ministers of every denomination and of different temperaments working together, and if one were disposed to get up any undue excitement, or to use improper "machinery," another would have restrained him.

Quotations could be made from the reports, resolutions and other actions of the Southern Presbyterian General Assembly, the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, the Southern Baptist Convention and other church organizations, furnishing the strongest testimony for the genuineness, extent and permanence of this army work. But after all, the best evidence of the genuineness of the revival is to be found in the after lives of professed Christians, and of the young converts, which testimony is not lacking in the career of the Confederate soldier during and since the war. I recall the case of a young lawyer who had borne an outwardly consistent character since he had united with the church some years before the war, but who (although a ready speaker at the bar or on the hustings) could never be induced to lead a prayer-meeting, open a Sunday-school, or conduct family worship—fluent and eloquent for client or party, but dumb when asked to speak for Christ. For some time after joining the army his chaplain urged him in vain to take an active part in the meetings. But after his heart was touched by the power of one of the revivals, and just after a great battle, he came to the chaplain and said: "I wish you would call on me to lead in prayer at the meeting to-night I have been persuading myself that it was not my duty, but I have been recently led to think that I might be wrong, and as I saw my men fall around me to-day, I was made to feel keenly that I had not exerted over them the influence which I ought to have done, and to register a solemn vow that if God would spare me I