Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/198

184 a day. Up to the present writing (July 18th), twenty-five have joined the church, and penitents by the score are found nightly at the altar. In other portions of the army, chaplains and missionaries report sweeping revivals in progress. Thus, notwithstanding the booming of cannon and bursting of shell, the good work goes bravely on." Rev. J. B. McFerrin wrote from Atlanta to the Southern Christian Advocate: "The other day I rode to the line of battle to see the soldiers as they were resting in a shady wood. To my great joy a young captain whom I had baptized in his infancy approached me and said: 'I wish to join the church, and I wish you to give me a certificate; the Lord has converted me.' I gave him the document with a glad heart. 'Now,' said he, 'if I fall in battle, let my mother know of this transaction. It will afford her great joy.'" Rev. Neil Gillis, writing to the same paper, from camp on the Chattahoochee, said: "I never heard or read of anything like the revival at this place. The conversions were powerful and some of them very remarkable. One man told me that he was converted at the very hour in which his sister was writing him a letter on her knees praying that he might be saved at that moment." Not only in the army at home did our soldiers manifest the deepest interest in religion, but even in the dreary prisons of the North they prayed for and received the Divine blessing. An officer at Johnson's island wrote to the Southern Presbyterian: "This is the last quarter of a long, long twelve months' confinement. I try to pass my time as profitably as I can. We have preaching regularly every Sabbath, prayer-meetings two or three times a week, and worship in my room every night. We also have a Young Men's Christian Association, masonic meetings, etc. I attend all of these and fill out the rest of my time by reading the Bible. We have had some precious religious times. There have been about 100 conversions; colonels, majors, captains and lieutenants being among the number." The incidents