olume of his voice increased until it
filled the church. The rafters shook, and sinners fell prostrate in
the chancel. This, however, was only the beginning. The great opera
of Brother Pratt's spirit went on like a rude Wagnerian measure until
none could resist it. Men arose from their knees shouting. Finally,
the prayer-maker, who had risen in his passion and stood praying with
his hands above his head, reaching visibly for salvation, fell
exhausted to the floor.

The scene is no less amazing to me now as I recall it than it was that
night thirty years ago as I sat, a trembling bride, in the remotest
corner, praying privately and fervently that the Lord would spare me
the sight of William taking part in it. I felt that if he did I should
ever after have some earth fear of him. If preachers could only preach
without thrusting us up too close to the awful elbows of God before our
time!

It was the custom in those days always to conclude a Methodist revival
with a "love feast"; you cannot have it where you cannot have an
old-fashioned revival. One of the coldest functions I ever attended
was a so-called "love feast" in a fashionable Methodist church at the
end of a series of meetings. The men wore tuxedos and the women wore
party gowns, high-necked, of course, on account of its being a church
affair. And the only difference between that and any other social
function was that a good many people were present whom the fashionable
members never invited to their own homes and whom they treated with
offensive cordiality on this occasion.

But at the end of the revival at Redwine there was a real "love feast."
A great crowd had assembled, due to the honorable curiosity in the
neighborhood to know who would "testify," who would confess his fault
or proclaim that he had forgiven some brother man about a line fence
between their farms or a shoat. It was, indeed, a sort of Dun and
Bradstreet opportunity to know the exact spiritual standing of every
man and woman in the community. And it was William's plan that the
service should be held in the evening out-of-doors under the great
pines. Torches of lightwood furnished the illumination. William stood
beside a small table facing the congregation, who were seated on the
benches that had been brought out of the church. After a song and a
prayer that must have made the old saints sit up on their dust in the
graveyard behind the church to listen, William gave the customar