Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 18.djvu/374

 374 known instance in the history of the academy of a cadet having come out and taken position as a follower of Christ. He considered how he would be wondered at and observed, and by some ridiculed. He felt deeply the need of the greatest circumspection and strength from above, lest he should not walk consistently with the new life on which he now sought to enter. It was Saturday; next Sunday he would attend Divine worship as he had never attended before. It would get abroad in the corps that this great change had come over his mind. He would be watched in the chapel. He reflected that in no instance had ever a cadet knelt in the service, and, so far as was remembered, no officer, professor, or instructor. The chapel was then so small that the cadets sat on benches without backs, and were so crowded together that it was very difficult for any to kneel. He asked me what he ought to do, not having the slightest idea of shrinking from any confession of Christ in word or deed that might be duty, and yet modest and far from a disposition to make himself unnecessarily an object of observation. I said he had better begin at once. The next day, when the confession in the service came, I could hear his movement to get space to kneel, and then his deep tone of response as if he was trembling with new emotion, and then it seemed as if an impression of solemnity pervaded all the congregation.

It was a new sight, that single kneeling cadet. Such a thing had not been supposed to be possible as a cadet that turned to God. From that time he grew rapidly in spiritual knowledge, and in the consolation of Christ. He came to Him as a lost sinner; he sought refuge in Him and found peace with God; his mind soon became peaceful and happy. Such was the carefulness and consistency of his walk, so manifestly had he become a new man, with a new heart, and a new life begun, and yet so wisely and inoffensively did he go in and out with those around him, that I never heard of any who doubted his sincerity or gainsayed the reality of his conversion, and did not regard him with respect for entire consistency of life. There was that in his previous standing in the corps which gave his example a special impressiveness. He had been among his comrades a gay, high-spirited youth, not much given to study, not over careful of obedience to the interior discipline of the corps, not unwilling to join in certain not perfectly temperate frolics with his companions; popular among them, and regarded as of such high gentlemanly