Page:The Galaxy, Volume 6.djvu/419

1868.] some earnest soul pour forth the burning longings of his heart; longings for communion, for acceptance, for blessedness, for salvation. Too often these are formal, canting words, which mean almost nothing; and they fall upon stony-ground, ears filled with other sounds. Now it was not so; a strange influence went forth with them; men heard, they heeded; poor as the words too often were, they seemed radiant with a kind of holy light which made them to glow and burn and warm; so that men heard them, and pondered them, and, indeed, made them tapers to light up within their own souls the fires which had so long lain dark and smouldering.

The fires spread, and, indeed, started up spontaneously.

The merchants of Chambers street went to Mr. Burton (March, 1858), and proposed to hire his theatre.

"What for?"

"For a prayer-meeting."

"A w-h-a-t?"

"For a prayer-meeting."

Burton was a rough man, not used to the praying mood; but he not only leased them his theatre, he asked them to pray for him. For an hour before noon the crowd began to assemble, so that by twelve o'clock the house was packed from pit to gallery, with such a crowd as never was seen in that theatre before; carriages lined the street, and often as many as fifty clergymen were present to join in the exercises.

Noonday prayer-meetings were now held all through the winter at various points, at Centre street near the Tombs, at Duane street, at Greenwich street; in many other places near the business centre of the city. Not only came merchants to spend their hour of noon here, but mechanics stole half of their dinner time to come; and all over the city this thing went on. Various agencies set themselves to work; energetic business men, energetic aldermen even, organized themselves into a "flying artillery," and went from place to place, from church to church, all over the town, to move forward or to initiate this surprising work. The firemen held prayer-meetings, so did the policemen. But not only were there these set places for public prayer, in printing offices and other places where were large numbers of workmen, impromptu prayer-meetings were organized, and it is doubtful whether under heaven ever was seen such a sight as went on in the city of New York in the winter and spring of the year 1857-58.

Brooklyn followed, and soon, indeed, led; so that a weekly bulletin of the places for midday prayer was posted at the ferry landings, at the railroad offices, and at other public places.

We come now to another fact in this curious history. It is this: that from New York as the centre, the mysterious influence spread abroad till it penetrated all New England in the East, southward as far as Virginia and even beyond, westward to Buffalo, Cincinnati, Chicago, St. Louis; and in every great town and small town the thing went on, in open day and now at various hours of the day. Those who could not come at noon came in the morning, and they who could not come at morning came at evening.

In Philadelphia, over three thousand met daily in Jayne's Hall, at the hour of noon. In Cleveland, two thousand met daily, in the mornings, on the way to their business. In Chicago, assemblages of more than two thousand met daily at midday; and so it went on, until it became literally true that there was a line of prayer-meetings all the way from Omaha to Washington City. Even the