Pocahontas County History Preservation, Digitization, Community

Afterward

Thus closes my diary virtually, transcribed as written forty years ago under the circumstances indicated there in.

No doubt our discerning readers have perceived ere this that the writer was usually in the vanguard when the marching was retrogressive but, when it was otherwise, he was save, comparatively, in the rearward, during those weeks in May and June, 1861, which he spent with the "foremost ranks in danger's dark career." And should they surmise that I greatly preferred to be a living noncombatant to be a heroic slain or wounded combatant, they will not miss it very far.

Let it pass without being written that it would take a book of multiplied pages to contain all that might be written about what I saw, heard, and experienced in my sequestered sphere of service in Bath and Highland Counties during the tearful and bloody four years of War Between the States and the seven or eight years thereafter characterized by vexing business cares, bitter political dissensions, and irritating controversies pertaining to the relations between the Church and State. I had become through force of circumstances a one book personality, as it were, which may be explained in this manner: In preparing for ministerial service I passed ten years in school at the virtual sacrifice of my worldly patrimony, and went into the ministry equipped with the best the schools I attended could furnish. The early operations were brilliant but, somehow, the results were not what I had hoped for. Were an elegantly attired milk maid furnished with a painted stool and ornamental pad to seat herself in the pasture to sing and wait for the cows to come to her, her performance may be brilliant, but results unsatisfactory, especially with the younger part of the herd. I took my position in the gospel work and displayed my lectures and sermons, but results were not what I anticipated. About the time Ruling Elder Robert Houston Milroy and Deacon Stonewall Jackson came to my part of the gospel field in 1862. Whereupon my preaching outfit was hidden away under the corn cobs and other rubbish in the grain house of one of my ruling elders, the late Joseph Layne, of revered memory, near McDowell, Virginia, and it remained there until several months under the surrender at Appomattox.

For three or more years with a pocket Bible and a small thumbworn hymn book I went from house to house, camp to camp, grave to grave, talking and singing, and much to the joy of my heart, there were signs following, though my efforts were far from being such as the schools would have passed on favorably in student days. There was so much that passed under my observation that recalled the utterances of Jeremiah, the Prophet, that speaks of himself as a man that saw affliction, that I have been much drawn to his writings.

I need not try to give expression to my feeling when I ponder what the Lord Jehovah says of that Prophet:"Behold I have put my words into thy mouth. See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, to pull down, to destroy and build and to plant."--Jeremiah 1, 9-10.

During these years time after time these words of the Prophet of the Nations would be recalled with a vividness that was almost as startling as audible voice: "For the hurt of the daughter of my people am I hurt; is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Then why is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?"

When I came to consider that earth hath no sorrow that heaven cannot heal it was pertinent to inquire what is to be done that the health of the daughter of my people might be recovered. I rested in the decided opinion that the Sermon on the Mount and the Golden Rule gave instructions which if faithfully observed would settle every controversy in the Church and State, right every wrong between man and man in all the relations of citizenship. I became fully persuaded of the truth of all this and felt it would be so deplorable were all to come to ruin the chief source of remorseful regret would be to think that all this came about while the efficient remedy was just in reach, and had been for ages past, but unfortunately forgotten or overlooked at the proper time.

A heartbroken mother of my acquaintance, seated by the coffin of her beloved first born, exclaimed as the casket was closed, "Oh, just to think, my darling one died in my arms while the remedy was just within my reach and I failed to remember and use it in time. Oh, it is more than I can bear to think of."

The train of reflection awakened by the prayer I had heard at Hillsboro on the day of humiliation and prayer, spoken of last week, and what I say, heard, and felt during the subsequent years of the war and the seven or eight years thereafter have all been very much in my mind ever since, and has influenced my ministerial course, more or less.