Truth Stranger Than Fiction/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
MY CONVERSION
A GOOD MAN.—HEAR A SERMON FOR THE FIRST TIME.—ITS EFFECT UPON ME.—PRAYER AND COMMUNION.—ITS FIRST FRUITS.
My heart exults with gratitude when I mention the name of a good man who first taught me the blessedness of religion. His name was John McKenny. He lived at Georgetown, a few miles only from Riley's plantation; his business was that of a baker, and his character was that of an upright, benevolent Christian. He was noted especially for his detestation of slavery, and his resolute avoidance of the employment of slave labor in his business. He would not even hire a slave, the price of whose toil must be paid to his master, but contented himself with the work of his own hands, and with such free labor as he could procure. His reputation was high, not only for this almost singular abstinence from what no one about him thought wrong, but for his general probity and excellence. This man occasionally served as a minister of the Gospel, and preached in a neighborhood where preachers were somewhat rare at that period. One Sunday when he was to officiate in this way, at a place three or four miles distant, my mother urged me to ask master's permission to go and hear him. I had so often been beaten for making such a request that I refused to make it. She still persisted, telling me that I could never become a Christian if I minded beatings—that I must take up my cross and bear it. She was so grieved at my refusal that she wept. To gratify her I concluded to try the experiment, and accordingly went to my master and asked permission to attend the meeting. Although such permission was not given freely or often, yet his favor to me was shown for this once by allowing me to go, without much scolding, but not without a pretty distinct intimation of what would befall me if I did not return immediately after the close of the service. I hurried off, pleased with the opportunity, but without any definite expectations of benefit or amusement; for up to this period of my life, and I was then eighteen years old, I had never heard a sermon, nor any discourse or conversation whatever, upon religious topics, except what I had heard from my mother, on the responsibility of all to a Supreme Being. When I arrived at the place of meeting, the services were so far advanced that the speaker was just beginning his discourse, from the text, Hebrews ii. 9: "That he, by the grace of God, should taste of death for every man." This was the first text of the Bible to which I had ever listened, knowing it to be such. I have never forgotten it, and scarcely a day has passed since, in which I have not recalled it, and the sermon that was preached from it.
The divine character of Jesus Christ, his tender love for mankind, his forgiving spirit his compassion for the outcast and despised, his cruel crucifixion and glorious ascension, were all depicted, and some of the points were dwelt on with great power; great, at least, to me, who then heard of these things for the first time in my life. Again and again did the preacher reiterate the words "for every man." These glad tidings, this salvation, were not for the benefit of a select few only. They were for the slave as well as the master, the poor as well as the rich, for the persecuted, the distressed, the heavy-laden, the captive; for me among the rest, a poor, despised, abused creature, deemed of others fit for nothing but unrequited toil—but mental and bodily degradation. O, the blessedness and sweetness of feeling that I was loved! I would have died that moment, with joy, for the compassionate Saviour about whom I was hearing. "He loves me," "he looks down in compassion from heaven on me," "he died to save my soul," "he'll welcome me to the skies," I kept repeating to myself. I was transported with delicious joy. I seemed to see a glorious being, in a cloud of splendor, smiling down from on high. In sharp contrast with the experience of the contempt and brutality of my earthly master, I basked in the sunshine of the benignity of this divine being. "He'll be my dear refuge—he'll wipe away all tears from my eyes." "Now I can bear all things; nothing will seem hard after this." I felt sorry that "Massa Riley" didn't know him, sorry he should live such a coarse, wicked, cruel life. Swallowed up in the beauty of the divine love, I loved my enemies, and prayed for them that did despitefully use and entreat me.
Revolving the things which I had heard in my mind as I went home, I became so excited that I turned aside from the road into the woods, and prayed to God for light and for aid with an earnestness, which, however unenlightened, was at least sincere and heartfelt; and which the subsequent course of my life has led me to imagine was acceptable to Him who heareth prayer. At all events, I date my conversion, and my awakening to a new life—a consciousness of power and a destiny superior to any thing I had before conceived of—from this day, so memorable to me. I used every means and opportunity of inquiry into religious matters; and so deep was my conviction of their superior importance to every thing else, so clear my perception of my own faults, and so undoubting my observation of the darkness and sin that surrounded me, that I could not help talking much on these subjects with those about me; and it was not long before I began to pray with them, and exhort them, and to impart to the poor slaves those little glimmerings of light from another world, which had reached my own eye. In a few years I became quite an esteemed preacher among them, and I will not believe it is vanity which leads me to think I was useful to some.
I must return, however, for the present, to the course of my life in secular affairs, the facts of which it is my principal object to relate.