Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/181

Rh brigade and then in his division), was a leading lawyer before the war, but became very active as a Christian in the army, and was gradually led to decide that he would become a preacher of the Gospel. When on a visit to Athens, Ga., in 1869, it was my privilege to fill his pulpit, to renew at his hospitable board the Christian friendship formed in the camp, and to learn from him that three others of his military family had consecrated themselves to the work of preaching the Gospel. There were reported at one of our chaplains' meetings twenty soldiers, from the rank of colonel down, who had determined to preach. I received from our colleges and theological seminaries in 1866 some very striking statistics as to the large number of soldiers who were entering the ministry, and I have strong reasons for the statement that a very large proportion of our evangelical preachers, under sixty and over thirty-five, at the South, learned in the army to "endure hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ." And certainly a very large proportion of our church members within the past twenty years have been those who found "Christ in the camp," or had the pure gold of their Christian character refined and purified by the fiery trials through which they were called to pass. Rev. Dr. Richard Hugh Bagby, of Bruington, Va., told me that of twenty-seven members of his church who returned at the close of the war, all save two came back more earnest Christians and more efficient church members than they had ever been, and many other pastors have borne similar testimony.

And certainly the young converts, while in camp, met admirably all the tests of genuine conversion. They used to have brigade prayer-meetings, regiment prayer-meetings, company prayer-meetings and mess-prayer-meetings, and prayer-meetings to prepare for prayer-meetings, until one of our missionaries, Rev. J. E. Chambliss, reported to our chaplains' association that he could find no time in Davis' Mississippi brigade to preach