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Bible Translation on the Threshold of the Twenty First
Century Athalya Brenner Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Athalya Brenner, Jan Willem van Henten
ISBN(s): 9780567512796, 0567512797
Edition: Kindle
File Details: PDF, 11.96 MB
Year: 2009
Language: english
JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
SUPPLEMENT SERIES

353

BTC1
Editors
David J. A. Clines
Philip R. Davies

Executive Editor
Andrew Mein

Editorial Board
Richard J. Coggins, Alan Cooper, J. Cheryl Exum, John Goldingay,
Robert P. Gordon, Norman K. Gottwald, John Jarick,
Andrew D.H. Mayes, Carol Meyers, Patrick D. Miller

Sheffield Academic Press

A Continuum imprint
This page intentionally left blank
Bible Translation on the
Threshold of the Twenty-
First Century
Authority, Reception,
Culture and Religion

edited by

Athalya Brenner &

Jan Willem van Henten

Journal for the Study of the Old Testament

Supplement Series 353

BTC1
Copyright © 2002 Sheffield Academic Press
A Continuum imprint

Published by Sheffield Academic Press Ltd

The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX
370 Lexington Avenue, New York NY 10017-6550
www. SheffieldAcademicPress. com
www. continuumbooks .com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in

any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Typeset by Sheffield Academic Press

Printed on acid-free paper in Great Britain by Bookcraft Ltd, Midsomer Norton, Bath

ISBN 0-82646-029-1
 CONTENTS

List of Abbreviations vii

List of Contributors ix

ATHALYA BRENNER AND JAN WILLEM VAN HENTEN

Editors' Introduction 1

SlJBOLT NOORDA
New and Familiar: The Dynamics of Bible Translation 8

JOHN ROGERSON
Can a Translation of the Bible Be Authoritative? 17
JUDITH FRISHMAN
Why a Translation of the Bible Can't Be Authoritative:
A Response to John Rogerson 31

SIMON CRISP
Icon of the Ineffable? An Orthodox View of
Language and its Implications for Bible Translation 36
LÉNART J. DE REGT
Otherness and Equivalence in Bible Translation:
A Response to Simon Crisp 50

ROBERT P. CARROLL
Between Lying and Blasphemy or On Translating a
Four-Letter Word in the Hebrew Bible:
Critical Reflections on Bible Translation 53
ATHALYA BRENNER
'Between Lying and Blasphemy':
Responding to Robert Carroll 65
vi Bible Translation on the Threshold

LAMIN SANNEH
Domesticating the Transcendent.
The African Transformation of Christianity:
Comparative Reflections on Ethnicity and
Religious Mobilization in Africa 70
THEO WITVLIET
Response to Lamin Sanneh, 'Domesticating the Transcendent.
The African Transformation of Christianity' 86

JEREMY PUNT
Translating the Bible in South Africa:
Challenges to Responsibility and Contextuality 94
WiMJ.C. WEREN
Translation, Interpretation and Ideology:
A Response to Jeremy Punt 125

MARY PHIL KORSAK

Translating the Bible: Bible Translations and Gender Issues 132
CAROLINE VANDER STICHELE
Murder She Wrote or Why Translation Matters:
A Response to Mary Phil Korsak's 'Translating the Bible' 147

EVERETT Fox
The Translation of Elij ah: Issues and Challenges 156
A.J.C. VERHEIJ
'The Translation of Elijah': A Response to Everett Fox 170

ADELE BERLIN
On Bible Translations and Commentaries 175

Bibliography 192
Index of References 203
Index of Authors 205
 ABBREVIATIONS

AB Anchor Bible
ACS African Christian Studies
ASV American Standard Version
AT J African Theological Journal
AV Authorized Version
BUS Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia
Biblnt Biblical Interpretation: A Journal of Contemporary
Approaches
Bibiit Bible and Literature
BibPostCol Bible and Postcolonialism
BibSem The Biblical Seminar
BJS Brown Judaic Studies
BT The Bible Translator
CEV Contemporary English Version
FCB Feminist Companion to the Bible
GCT Gender, Culture, Theory
GNB Good News Bible
HTR Harvard Theological Review
JAAR Journal of the American Academy of Religion
JANES Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Studies
JB Jerusalem Bible
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature
JFSR Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion
JNSL Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages
JRT Journal of Religious Thought
JSNT Journal for the Study of the New Testament
JSNTSup Journal for the Study of the New Testament, Supplement
Series
JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
JSOTSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement Series
JTS Journal of Theological Studies
JTSA Journal of Theology for South Africa
KJV King James Version
Moffatt Moffatt New Testament Commentary
NAB New American Bible
NASB New American Standard Bible
viii Bible Translation on the Threshold

NEB New English Bible

NGTT Nederduitse gereformeerde teologiese tydskrif
NIV New International Version
NJB New Jerusalem Bible
NJV New Jerusalem Version
NRSV New Revised Standard Version
NXB New Xhosa Bible
OAB Old Afrikaans Bible
REB Revised English Bible
RSV Revised Standard Version
SJOT Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament
STAR Studies in Theology and Religion
UBS United Bible Societies
VT Vetus Testamentum
 CONTRIBUTORS

Professor Adele Berlin, Jewish Studies and English, University of Mary-

land, College Park, MD, USA

Professor Athalya Brenner, Art and Culture, University of Amsterdam,

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Dr Simon Crisp, United Bible Societies and University of Birmingham,

Birmingham, UK

Professor E. Fox, Clark University, Newton, MA, USA

Professor Judith Frishman, Catholic Theological University ,Utrecht, The

Netherlands

Professor Jan Willem van Henten, Art and Culture, University of Amster-
dam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Ms M.P. Korsak, Sentier op Linkebeek 7, Brussels, Belgium

Dr S. Noorda, President, The University Board, University of Amsterdam,

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Dr Jeremy Punt, Theology University of Fort Hare, Alice, South Africa

Professor L. De Regt, United Bible Societies and Humanities Free Univer-

sity, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Professor J. Rogerson, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

Professor Lamin Sanneh, Divinity School, Yale University, New Haven,

CT, USA
x Bible Translation on the Threshold

Dr Caroline Vander Stichele, Art and Culture, University of Amsterdam,

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Dr A. Verheij, Art and Culture, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam,

The Netherlands

Professor W J.C. Weren, Theological Faculty Tilburg, Tilburg, The Nether-

lands
 EDITORS' INTRODUCTION

Athalya Brenner and Jan Willem van Henten

The Why
This volume is firmly anchored in the Dutch scene of Bible study and
Bible translation. It contains, at least for the most part, papers read at a
workshop/colloquium organized by the Chair of Bible, Faculty of the
Humanities, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, in cooperation
with ASCA (The Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis). The title of
that workshop/colloquium was Bible Translations on the Threshold of the
21st Century: Issues of Translation Authority in Religious Beliefs and
Cultural Reception, and it was held in Amsterdam on 29-30 May 2000.
This event followed two other workshops/colloquia held in Amsterdam in
1997 and 1998, on Recycling Biblical Figures and on biblical Families
respectively.' Our aim, at these workshops, was to refresh approaches to
certain topics or to problematize them anew, in response to what we see as
changing times and nomadic shifts in interpretive paradigms. We tried to
stimulate this refreshing process through an interdisciplinary approach and
the engagement of pluriformity for and of scholars coming from various
Christian, Jewish and secular contexts.
In that spirit, the subject of the Bible translations was chosen for the
2000 workshop/colloquium because of the local discussion over the new
translation of the Bible into Dutch. This translation-in-process2 has had
enormous publicity in the Netherlands and even caused a public uproar.
The translation, ostensibly interdenominational and ecumenical, as well as
directed at non-confessional (secular?) audiences, became hotly debated. It

1. A. Brenner and J. W. van Henten (eds.), Recycling Biblical Figures (STAR, 1;

Leiden: DEO Publishing, 1999); J.W. van Henten and A. Brenner (eds.), Families and
Family Relations as Represented in Early Judaisms and Early Christianities: Texts and
Fictions (STAR, 2; Leiden: DEO Publishing, 2000).
2. See the website of the NBG (the Dutch Society for Bible Translation), esp.
http.//www.biibelgenootschap.nl/nbv/achtergrond/ and further.
2 Bible Translation on the Threshold

is in danger—at least in the view of several interested sections of the

public—of failing to modernize sufficiently, at least in some aspects, thus
undermining its own raison d'etre. On the other hand, other interested
parties have argued vehemently that the translation should stick to render-
ings of biblical vocabulary that have become classics, like Ecclesiastes'
'vanities of vanities' (Dutch: ijdelheid der ijdelheden). A case was put
forward by some members of the translation committee for rejecting the
time-honoured 'translation' of God's name—the Hebrew Tetragrammaton
Yhwh, usually pronounced 'adonay by Jewish readers, following the
vowel signs in the Hebrew biblical text—from the traditional Dutch (dé)
Heer(-e) ('[The] Lord') into something more fitting for a (postmodern
target audience. Objections to the traditional appellation were voiced
especially by feminists, on the grounds that the appellation (de) Heer(-e)
represented and recreated older non-inclusive gender notions as well as
hierarchy parameters for God—parameters that should be revised, in the
light of changing winds in theology, philosophy, history and culture in the
last decades.
The public uproar—including press and other media discussions, signed
petitions and bitter altercations between proponents of change and uphold-
ers of tradition—ended, quite recently, in the not-unforeseen victory of
traditionalists. The Tetragrammaton is rendered by HEER ('LORD', in small
caps) in the new Dutch translation. Consequently, female members of the
translation committee resigned and stopped their participation in the ongo-
ing project.3 While the decision was taken months after the workshop had
been planned and had come to pass—at the time we could only guess at the
outcome—public debate here convinced us that contemporary Bible transla-
tions continue to be of fascination to an audience wider and more varied
than religious officials, Bible scholars, historians of religion, translators and
other interested professionals.4 This debate was a forceful reminder that
Bible translations—like other major cultural objects—are commodities,

3. See the Appendix to this Introduction for a translated paraphrase of the press
releases, following the official decision to maintain the rendering HEER.
4. Amsterdam University Press, in conjunction with the university library of the
University of Amsterdam, has started an online digital Bible project, pairing off a
commentary to the new translation together with relevant visual artwork from the
European art tradition. This project, still at its infancy and awaiting the proper financial
support that it deserves, was enthusiastically embarked on by library personnel. This is
another indication—if one is still necessary—of the fascination that Bible projects still
hold for an interested, 'secular' public.
 Introduction 3

consumer goods that, as such, are subject to change and change producing
at the same time. In light of this public debate and the ensuing realization,
we decided to organize a small forum to look at some directions, orienta-
tions and practices of Bible translation for the present and future—proceed-
ing from the Dutch context but beyond it, into the Bible translation scene as
it unfolds now and for the immediate future.

The Participants
The contributors of the main papers in this volume and in the original
conference fall into three main categories: creators and practitioners of the
art, that is, Bible translators; people who are involved in the production
and dissemination of Bible translations (under the auspices of Bible
societies, for instance); and professional consumers, that is Bible scholars,
who function—among other things—as critics of translations. The demar-
cation lines between categories are not stable, of course: the translators are
certainly scholars in their own right as well as consumers of others' trans-
lations; producers and disseminators are usually heavily involved in the
translation process and may determine the direction a translation will take,
as well as its eventual influence and ultimate fate; Bible scholars are critics
and consumers, but tend to create their own ad hoc translations as the need
arises. These papers relate to the state-of-the-art in the Netherlands as well
as abroad (the US, Belgium, South Africa, England, Israel), and the
contributors are local people as well as visitors. The respondents to the
main papers belong primarily to the second and third categories of produc-
ers/disseminators and scholars/critics, and are mostly local people.
Several of the contributors and respondents are Jewish, others are
Christians of several denominations or—in spite of or together with their
original subscription to a religious community—secular in their approach.
Unfortunately, we have no contributions from outside the Judeo-Christian
productions/receptions of Bible translation. Several experts on translation
theory participated in the discussions, and one of them (L. de Regt) con-
tributed to the volume with a Response. In this way, we hoped, a balance
between potential perspectives, a cursory overview of the complexities
involved from the angle of various community memberships, as well as
the common denominators across such memberships, could be touched
upon.
4 Bible Translation on the Threshold

The What and the How

It follows, then, that 'The Bible'—for this volume—means the Hebrew
Bible/Old Testament and the New Testament as texts belonging to con-
temporary culture.
There's no discussion here of ancient translations per se, unless such
discussion is helpful for reviewing the contemporary scene and for contem-
plating future developments. To be seen in a proper perspective, though,
translation practices in 'pre-modernity' and 'modernity' are referred to.
Thus, temporally, this book's scope is rather limited. On the other hand,
spatially it covers quite a range. It proceeds from the new Dutch transla-
tion-in-the-making (Noorda) to a general discussion of translation prac-
tices, especially in the Dutch and English scenes (Rogerson), to recent
translations produced in the US and in Belgium and England (Fox, Korsak,
Carroll), to the processes and problematics involved in translations for
former European Eastern Bloc countries (Crisp) and 'Third World' Africa
(Sanneh, Punt), to the mutual dependency of translation and commentary
even in Israel, where usage of the Hebrew text for Hebrew Bible/Old Testa-
ment study is the norm (Berlin). The target languages referred to are mostly
English, Dutch, East European and African languages, with some refer-
ences to German.
The first (by Noorda) and last (by Berlin) essays in this collection
function as an introduction and conclusion, respectively. As such, we felt,
no formal responses to them were appropriate. Other essays are followed
by individual Responses that, in most cases, are recognizable as printed
versions of oral responses. The respondents, as well as the editors, thought
that in this way the original dialogic, conversational feel of the verbal
exchanges during the workshop/colloquium will be conveyed to the
reader, at least in part.
The problems discussed in the individual essays and in the responses to
them are varied and different. They range from theoretical consideration to
translation practice, from linguistic considerations to theological ones,
from the scholarly to the social, from the general to the particular, from the
conservative to the innovative. No attempt has been made to be compre-
hensive, not even about one facet of our supercharged subject. On the
contrary: an attempt has been made to supply an overview of problems
and possible remedies, or—more modestly still—of reassessments in
service of the future.
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seventy-five and a hundred feet high, and in a minute they'd be
standing pillars of fire, and the heavens were all a blaze, and the
crackling and roaring was like the sea in a storm. There's a
judgment-day for you! Oh, sinner, what will become of you in that
day? Never cry, Lord, Lord! Too late—too late, man! You wouldn't
take mercy when it was offered, and now you shall have wrath! No
place to hide! The heavens and earth are passing away, and there
shall be no more sea! There's no place for you now in God's
universe."
By this time there were tumultuous responses from the audience of
groans, cries, clapping of hands, and mingled shouts of glory and
amen!
The electric shout of the multitude acted on the preacher again, as
he went on, with a yet fiercer energy. "Now is your time, sinners!
Now is your time! Come unto the altar, and God's people will pray for
you! Now is the day of grace! Come up! Come up, you that have got
pious fathers and mothers in glory! Come up, father! come up
mother! come up, brother! Come, young man! we want you to
come! Ah, there's a hardened sinner, off there! I see his lofty looks!
Come up, come up! Come up, you rich sinners! You'll be poor
enough in the day of the Lord, I can tell you! Come up, you young
women! You daughters of Jerusalem, with your tinkling ornaments!
Come, saints of the Lord, and labor with me in prayer. Strike up a
hymn, brethren, strike up the hymn!" And a thousand voices
commenced the hymn,—

"Stop, poor sinner, stop and think,

Before you further go!"

And, meanwhile, ministers and elders moved around the throng,

entreating and urging one and another to come and kneel before the
stand. Multitudes rushed forward, groans and sobs were heard, as
the speaker continued, with redoubled vehemence.
"I don't care," said Mr. John Gordon, "who sees me; I'm going up! I
am a poor old sinner, and I ought to be prayed for, if anybody."
Nina shrank back, and clung to Clayton's arm. So vehement was the
surging feeling of the throng around her that she wept with a wild,
tremulous excitement.
"Do take me out,—it's dreadful!" she said.
Clayton passed his arm round her, and, opening a way through the
crowd, carried her out beyond the limits, where they stood together
alone, under the tree.
"I know I am not good as I ought to be," she said, "but I don't know
how to be any better. Do you think it would do me any good to go
up there? Do you believe in these things?"
"I sympathize with every effort that man makes to approach his
Maker," said Clayton; "these ways do not suit me, but I dare not
judge them. I cannot despise them. I must not make myself a rule
for others."
"But, don't you think," said Nina, "that these things do harm
sometimes?"
"Alas, child, what form of religion does not? It is our fatality that
everything that does good must do harm. It's the condition of our
poor, imperfect life here."
"I do not like these terrible threats," said Nina. "Can fear of fire
make me love? Besides, I have a kind of courage in me that always
rises up against a threat. It isn't my nature to fear."
"If we may judge our Father by his voice in nature," said Clayton,
"he deems severity a necessary part of our training. How inflexibly
and terribly regular are all his laws! Fire and hail, snow and vapor,
stormy wind, fulfilling his word—all these have a crushing regularity
in their movements, which show that he is to be feared as well as
loved."
"But I want to be religious," said Nina, "entirely apart from such
considerations. Not driven by fear, but drawn by love. You can guide
me about these things, for you are religious."
"I fear I should not be accepted as such in any church," said
Clayton. "It is my misfortune that I cannot receive any common form
of faith, though I respect and sympathize with all. Generally
speaking, preaching only weakens my faith; and I have to forget the
sermon in order to recover my faith. I do not believe—I know that
our moral nature needs a thorough regeneration; and I believe this
must come through Christ. This is all I am certain of."
"I wish I were like Milly," said Nina. "She is a Christian, I know; but
she has come to it by dreadful sorrows. Sometimes I'm afraid to ask
my heavenly Father to make me good, because I think it will come
by dreadful trials, if he does."
"And I," said Clayton, speaking with great earnestness, "would be
willing to suffer anything conceivable, if I could only overcome all
evil, and come up to my highest ideas of good." And, as he spoke,
he turned his face up to the moonlight with an earnest fervor of
expression, that struck Nina deeply.
"I almost shudder to hear you say so! You don't know what it may
bring on you!"
He looked at her with a beautiful smile, which was a peculiar
expression of his face in moments of high excitement.
"I say it again!" he said. "Whatever it involves, let it come!"
* * * * * * * * *
*
The exercises of the evening went on with a succession of
addresses, varied by singing of hymns and prayers. In the latter part
of the time many declared themselves converts, and were shouting
loudly. Father Bonnie came forward.
"Brethren," he shouted, "we are seeing a day from the Lord! We've
got a glorious time! Oh, brethren, let us sing glory to the Lord! The
Lord is coming among us!"
The excitement now became general. There was a confused sound
of exhortation, prayers, and hymns, all mixed together, from
different parts of the ground. But, all of a sudden, every one was
startled by a sound which seemed to come pealing down directly
from the thick canopy of pines over the heads of the ministers.
"Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord! To what end shall it
be for you? The day of the Lord shall be darkness, and not light!
Blow ye the trumpet in Zion! Sound an alarm in my holy mountain!
Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble! for the day of the Lord
cometh!"
There was deep, sonorous power in the voice that spoke, and the
words fell pealing down through the air like the vibrations of some
mighty bell. Men looked confusedly on each other; but, in the
universal license of the hour, the obscurity of the night, and the
multitude of the speakers, no one knew exactly whence it came.
After a moment's pause, the singers were recommencing, when
again the same deep voice was heard.
"Take away from me the noise of thy songs, and the melody of thy
viols; for I will not hear them, saith the Lord. I hate and despise
your feast-days! I will not smell in your solemn assemblies; for your
hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers are greedy for
violence! Will ye kill, and steal, and commit adultery, and swear
falsely, and come and stand before me, saith the Lord? Ye oppress
the poor and needy, and hunt the stranger; also in thy skirts is found
the blood of poor innocents! and yet ye say, Because I am clean
shall his anger pass from me! Hear this, ye that swallow up the
needy, and make the poor of the land to fail, saying, When will the
new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? that we may buy the
poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes? The Lord hath
sworn, saying, I will never forget their works. I will surely visit you!"
The audience, thus taken, in the obscurity of the evening, by an
unknown speaker, whose words seemed to fall apparently from the
clouds, in a voice of such strange and singular quality, began to feel
a creeping awe stealing over them. The high state of electrical
excitement under which they had been going on, predisposed them
to a sort of revulsion of terror; and a vague, mysterious panic crept
upon them, as the boding, mournful voice continued to peal from
the trees.
"Hear, oh ye rebellious people! The Lord is against this nation! The
Lord shall stretch out upon it the line of confusion, and the stones of
emptiness? For thou saidst, I will ascend into the stars; I will be as
God! But thou shalt be cast out as an abominable branch, and the
wild beasts shall tread thee down! Howl, fir-tree, for thou art
spoiled! Open thy doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour thy
cedars! for the Lord cometh out of his place to punish the
inhabitants of the land! The Lord shall utter his voice before his
army, for his camp is very great! Multitudes! multitudes! in the valley
of decision! For the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision!
The sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars withdraw their
shining; for the Lord shall utter his voice from Jerusalem, and the
heavens and earth shall shake! In that day I will cause the sun to go
down at noon, and darken the whole earth! And I will turn your
feasts into mourning, and your songs into lamentation! Woe to the
bloody city! It is full of lies and robbery! The noise of a whip!—the
noise of the rattling of wheels!—of the prancing horses, and the
jumping chariot! The horseman lifteth up the sword and glittering
spear! and there is a multitude of slain! There is no end of their
corpses!—They are stumbling upon the corpses! For, Behold, I am
against thee, saith the Lord, and I will make thee utterly desolate!"
There was a fierce, wailing earnestness in the sound of these
dreadful words, as if they were uttered in a paroxysm of affright and
horror, by one who stood face to face with some tremendous form.
And, when the sound ceased, men drew in their breath, and looked
on each other, and the crowd began slowly to disperse, whispering
in low voices to each other.
So extremely piercing and so wildly earnest had the voice been, that
it actually seemed, in the expressive words of Scripture, to make
every ear to tingle. And, as people of rude and primitive habits are
always predisposed to superstition, there crept through the different
groups wild legends of prophets strangely commissioned to
announce coming misfortunes. Some spoke of the predictions of the
judgment-day; some talked of comets, and strange signs that had
preceded wars and pestilences. The ministers wondered, and
searched around the stand in vain. One auditor alone could, had he
desired it, make an explanation. Harry, who stood near the stand,
had recognized the voice. But, though he searched, also, around, he
could find no one.
He who spoke was one whose savage familiarity with nature gave
him the agility and stealthy adroitness of a wild animal. And, during
the stir and commotion of the dispersing audience, he had silently
made his way from tree to tree, over the very heads of those who
were yet wondering at his strange, boding words, till at last he
descended in a distant part of the forest.
After the service, as father Dickson was preparing to retire to his
tent, a man pulled him by the sleeve. It was the Georgia trader.
"We have had an awful time, to-night!" said he, looking actually pale
with terror. "Do you think the judgment-day really is coming?"
"My friend," said father Dickson, "it surely is! Every step we take in
life is leading us directly to the judgment-seat of Christ!"
"Well," said the trader, "but do you think that was from the Lord, the
last one that spoke? Durned if he didn't say awful things!—'nough to
make the hair rise! I tell you what, I've often had doubts about my
trade. The ministers may prove it's all right out of the Old
Testament; but I'm durned if I think they know all the things that we
do! But, then, I an't so bad as some of 'em. But, now, I've got a gal
out in my gang that's dreadful sick, and I partly promised her I'd
bring a minister to see her."
"I'll go with you, friend," said father Dickson; and forthwith he began
following the trader to the racks where their horses were tied.
Selecting, out of some hundred who were tied there, their own
beasts, the two midnight travellers soon found themselves trotting
along under the shadow of the forest's boughs.
"My friend," said father Dickson, "I feel bound in conscience to tell
you that I think your trade a ruinous one to your soul. I hope you'll
lay to heart the solemn warning you've heard to-night. Why, your
own sense can show you that a trade can't be right that you'd be
afraid to be found in if the great judgment-day were at hand."
"Well, I rather spect you speak the truth; but, then, what makes
father Bonnie stand up for 't?"
"My friend, I must say that I think father Bonnie upholds a soul-
destroying error. I must say that, as conscience-bound. I pray the
Lord for him and you both. I put it right to your conscience, my
friend, whether you think you could keep to your trade, and live a
Christian life."
"No; the fact is, it's a d——d bad business, that's just where 't is. We
an't fit to be trusted with such things that come to us—gals and
women. Well, I feel pretty bad, I tell you, to-night; 'cause I know I
haven't done right by this yer gal. I ought fur to have let her alone;
but, then, the devil or something possessed me. And now she has
got a fever, and screeches awfully. I declar, some things she says go
right through me!"
Father Dickson groaned in spirit over this account, and felt himself
almost guilty for belonging ostensibly and outwardly to a church
which tolerated such evils. He rode along by the side of his
companion, breaking forth into occasional ejaculations and snatches
of hymns. After a ride of about an hour, they arrived at the
encampment. A large fire had been made in a cleared spot, and
smouldering fragments and brands were lying among the white
ashes. One or two horses were tied to a neighboring tree, and
wagons were drawn up by them. Around the fire, in different groups,
lay about fifteen men and women, with heavy iron shackles on their
feet, asleep in the moonlight. At a little distance from the group, and
near to one of the wagons, a blanket was spread down on the
ground under a tree, on which lay a young girl of seventeen, tossing
and moaning in a disturbed stupor. A respectable-looking mulatto-
woman was sitting beside her, with a gourd full of water, with which
from time to time she moistened her forehead. The woman rose as
the trader came up.
"Well, Nance, how does she do now?" said the trader.
"Mis'able enough!" said Nance. "She done been tossing, a throwing
round, and crying for her mammy, ever since you went away!"
"Well, I've brought the minister," said he. "Try, Nance, to wake her
up; she'll be glad to see him."
The woman knelt down, and took the hand of the sleeper.
"Emily! Emily!" she said, "wake up!"
The girl threw herself over with a sudden, restless toss. "Oh, how
my head burns!—Oh, dear!—Oh, my mother! Mother!—mother!—
mother!—why don't you come to me?"
Father Dickson approached and knelt the other side of her. The
mulatto-woman made another effort to bring her to consciousness.
"Emily here's the minister you was wanting so much! Emily, wake
up!"
The girl slowly opened her eyes—large, tremulous, dark eyes. She
drew her hand across them, as if to clear her sight, and looked
wistfully at the woman.
"Minister!—minister!" she said.
"Yes, minister! You said you wanted to see one."
"Oh, yes, I did!" she said, heavily.
"My daughter!" said father Dickson, "you are very sick!"
"Yes!" she said, "very! And I'm glad of it! I'm going to die!—I'm glad
of that, too! That's all I've got left to be glad of! But I wanted to ask
you to write to my mother. She is a free woman; she lives in New
York. I want you to give my love to her, and tell her not to worry any
more. Tell her I tried all I could to get to her: but they took us, and
mistress was so angry she sold me! I forgive her, too. I don't bear
her any malice, 'cause it's all over, now! She used to say I was a wild
girl, and laughed too loud. I shan't trouble any one that way any
more! So that's no matter!"
The girl spoke these sentences at long intervals, occasionally
opening her eyes and closing them again in a languid manner. Father
Dickson, however, who had some knowledge of medicine, placed his
finger on her pulse, which was rapidly sinking. It is the usual
instinct, in all such cases, to think of means of prolonging life. Father
Dickson rose, and said to the trader:—
"Unless some stimulus be given her, she will be gone very soon!"
The trader produced from his pocket a flask of brandy, which he
mixed with a little water in a cup, and placed it in father Dickson's
hand. He kneeled down again, and, calling her by name, tried to
make her take some.
"What is it?" said she, opening her wild, glittering eyes.
"It's something to make you feel better."
"I don't want to feel better! I want to die!" she said, throwing herself
over. "What should I want to live for?"
What should she? The words struck father Dickson so much that he
sat for a while in silence. He meditated in his mind how he could
reach, with any words, that dying ear, or enter with her into that
land of trance and mist, into whose cloudy circle the soul seemed
already to have passed. Guided by a subtle instinct, he seated
himself by the dying girl, and began singing, in a subdued plaintive
air, the following well-known hymn:—

"Hark, my soul! it is the Lord,

'Tis thy Saviour, hear his word;
Jesus speaks—he speaks to thee!
Say, poor sinner, lov'st thou me?"

The melody is one often sung among the negroes; and one which,
from its tenderness and pathos, is a favorite among them. As oil will
find its way into crevices where water cannot penetrate, so song will
find its way where speech can no longer enter. The moon shone full
on the face of the dying girl, only interrupted by flickering shadows
of leaves; and, as father Dickson sung, he fancied he saw a slight,
tremulous movement of the face, as if the soul, so worn and weary,
were upborne on the tender pinions of the song. He went on
singing:—

"Can a mother's tender care

Cease toward the child she bare?
Yes, she may forgetful be:
Still will I remember thee."

By the light of the moon, he saw a tear steal from under the long
lashes, and course slowly down her cheek. He continued his song:—
 "Mine is an eternal love,
Higher than the heights above,
Deeper than the depths beneath,
True and faithful—strong as death.

"Thou shalt see my glory soon,

When the work of faith is done;
Partner of my throne shalt be!
Say, poor sinner, lov'st thou me?"

Oh, love of Christ! which no sin can weary, which no lapse of time
can change; from which tribulation, persecution, and distress cannot
separate—all-redeeming, all-glorifying, changing even death and
despair to the gate of heaven! Thou hast one more triumph here in
the wilderness, in the slave-coffle, and thou comest to bind up the
broken-hearted.
As the song ceased, she opened her eyes.
"Mother used to sing that!" she said.
"And can you believe in it, daughter?"
"Yes," she said, "I see Him now! He loves me! Let me go!"
There followed a few moments of those strugglings and shiverings
which are the birth-pangs of another life, and Emily lay at rest.
Father Dickson, kneeling by her side, poured out the fulness of his
heart in an earnest prayer. Rising, he went up to the trader, and,
taking his hand, said to him,—
"My friend, this may be the turning-point with your soul for eternity.
It has pleased the Lord to show you the evil of your ways; and now
my advice to you is, break off your sins at once, and do works meet
for repentance. Take off the shackles of these poor creatures, and
tell them they are at liberty to go."
"Why, bless your soul, sir, this yer lot's worth ten thousand dollars!"
said the trader, who was not prepared for so close a practical
application.
Do not be too sure, friend, that the trader is peculiar in this. The
very same argument, though less frankly stated, holds in the bonds
of Satan many extremely well-bred, refined, respectable men, who
would gladly save their souls if they could afford the luxury.
"My friend," said father Dickson, using the words of a very close and
uncompromising preacher of old, "what shall it profit a man if he
should gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"
"I know that," said the trader, doubtfully; "but it's a very hard case,
this. I'll think about it, though. But there's father Bonnie wants to
buy Nance. It would be a pity to disappoint him. But I'll think it
over."
Father Dickson returned to the camp-ground between one and two
o'clock at night, and, putting away his horse, took his way to the
ministers' tent. Here he found father Bonnie standing out in the
moonlight. He had been asleep within the tent; but it is to be
confessed that the interior of a crowded tent on a camp-ground is
anything but favorable to repose. He therefore came out into the
fresh air, and was there when father Dickson came back to enter the
tent.
"Well, brother, where have you been so late?" said father Bonnie.
"I have been looking for a few sheep in the wilderness, whom
everybody neglects," said father Dickson. And then, in a tone
tremulous from agitation, he related to him the scene he had just
witnessed.
"Do you see," he said, "brother, what iniquities you are
countenancing? Now, here, right next to our camp, a slave-coffle
encamped! Men and women, guilty of no crime, driven in fetters
through our land, shaming us in the sight of every Christian nation!
What horrible, abominable iniquities are these poor traders tempted
to commit! What perfect hells are the great trading-houses, where
men, women, and children are made merchandise of, and where no
light of the Gospel ever enters! And when this poor trader is
convicted of sin, and wants to enter into the kingdom, you stand
there to apologize for his sins! Brother Bonnie, I much fear you are
the stumbling block over which souls will stumble into hell. I don't
think you believe your argument from the Old Testament, yourself.
You must see that it has no kind of relation to such kind of slavery
as we have in this country. There's an awful Scripture which saith:
'He feedeth on ashes; a deceived heart hath turned him aside, so
that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right
hand?'"
The earnestness with which father Dickson spoke, combined with
the reverence commonly entertained for his piety, gave great force
to his words. The reader will not therefore wonder to hear that
father Bonnie, impulsive and easily moved as he was, wept at the
account, and was moved by the exhortation. Nor will he be surprised
to learn that, two weeks after, father Bonnie drove a brisk bargain
with the same trader for three new hands.
The trader had discovered that the judgment-day was not coming
yet a while; and father Bonnie satisfied himself that Noah, when he
awoke from his wine, said, "Cursed be Canaan."
* * * * * * * * *
*
We have one scene more to draw before we dismiss the auditors of
the camp-meeting.
At a late hour the Gordon carriage was winding its way under the
silent, checkered, woodland path. Harry, who came slowly on a
horse behind, felt a hand laid on his bridle. With a sudden start, he
stopped.
"Oh, Dred, is it you? How dared you—how could you be so
imprudent? How dared you come here, when you know you risk your
life?"
"Life!" said the other, "what is life? He that loveth his life shall lose it.
Besides, the Lord said unto me, Go! The Lord is with me as a mighty
and terrible one! Harry, did you mark those men? Hunters of men,
their hands red with the blood of the poor, all seeking unto the Lord!
Ministers who buy and sell us! Is this a people prepared for the
Lord? I left a man dead in the swamps, whom their dogs have torn!
His wife is a widow—his children, orphans! They eat and wipe their
mouth, and say, 'What have I done?' The temple of the Lord, the
temple of the Lord, are we!"
"I know it," said Harry, gloomily.
"And you join yourself unto them?"
"Don't speak to me any more about that! I won't betray you, but I
won't consent to have blood shed. My mistress is my sister."
"Oh, yes, to be sure! They read Scripture, don't they? Cast out the
children of the bond-woman! That's Scripture for them!"
"Dred," said Harry, "I love her better than I love myself. I will fight
for her to the last, but never against her, nor hers!"
"And you will serve Tom Gordon?" said Dred.
"Never!" said Harry.
Dred stood still a moment. Through an opening among the branches
the moonbeams streamed down on his wild, dark figure. Harry
remarked his eye fixed before him on vacancy, the pupil swelling out
in glassy fulness, with a fixed, somnambulic stare. After a moment,
he spoke, in a hollow, altered voice, like that of a sleep-walker:—
"Then shall the silver cord be loosed, and the golden bowl be
broken. Yes, cover up the grave—cover it up! Now, hurry! come to
me, or he will take thy wife for a prey!"
"Dred, what do you mean?" said Harry. "What's the matter?" He
shook him by the shoulder.
Dred rubbed his eyes, and stared on Harry.
"I must go back," he said, "to my den. 'Foxes have holes, the birds
of the air have nests,' and in the habitation of dragons the Lord hath
opened a way for his outcasts!"
He plunged into the thickets, and was gone.
 CHAPTER XXIV.
LIFE IN THE SWAMPS.

Our readers will perhaps feel an interest to turn back with us, and
follow the singular wanderings of the mysterious personage, whose
wild denunciations had so disturbed the minds of the worshippers at
the camp-meeting.
There is a twilight-ground between the boundaries of the sane and
insane, which the old Greeks and Romans regarded with a peculiar
veneration. They held a person whose faculties were thus darkened
as walking under the awful shadow of a supernatural presence; and,
as the mysterious secrets of the stars only become visible in the
night, so in these eclipses of the more material faculties they held
there was often an awakening of supernatural perceptions.
The hot and positive light of our modern materialism, which exhales
from the growth of our existence every dewdrop, which searches out
and dries every rivulet of romance, which sends an unsparing beam
into every cool grotto of poetic possibility, withering the moss, and
turning the dropping cave to a dusty den—this spirit, so remorseless,
allows us no such indefinite land. There are but two words in the
whole department of modern anthropology—the sane and the
insane; the latter dismissed from human reckoning almost with
contempt. We should find it difficult to give a suitable name to the
strange and abnormal condition in which this singular being, of
whom we are speaking, passed the most of his time.
It was a state of exaltation and trance, which yet appeared not at all
to impede the exercise of his outward and physical faculties, but
rather to give them a preternatural keenness and intensity, such as
sometimes attends the more completely-developed phenomena of
somnambulism.
In regard to his physical system there was also much that was
peculiar. Our readers may imagine a human body of the largest and
keenest vitality to grow up so completely under the nursing
influences of nature, that it may seem to be as perfectly en rapport
with them as a tree; so that the rain, the wind, and the thunder, all
those forces from which human beings generally seek shelter, seem
to hold with it a kind of fellowship, and to be familiar companions of
existence.
Such was the case with Dred. So completely had he come into
sympathy and communion with nature, and with those forms of it
which more particularly surrounded him in the swamps, that he
moved about among them with as much ease as a lady treads her
Turkey carpet. What would seem to us in recital to be incredible
hardship, was to him but an ordinary condition of existence. To walk
knee-deep in the spongy soil of the swamp, to force his way through
thickets, to lie all night sinking in the porous soil, or to crouch, like
the alligator, among reeds and rushes, were to him situations of as
much comfort as well-curtained beds and pillows are to us.
It is not to be denied, that there is in this savage perfection of the
natural organs a keen and almost fierce delight, which must excel
the softest seductions of luxury. Anybody who has ever watched the
eager zest with which the hunting-dog plunges through the woods,
darts through the thicket, or dives into water, in an ecstasy of
enjoyment, sees something of what such vital force must be.
Dred was under the inspiring belief that he was the subject of
visions and supernatural communications. The African race are said
by mesmerists to possess, in the fullest degree, that peculiar
temperament which fits them for the evolution of mesmeric
phenomena; and hence the existence among them, to this day, of
men and women who are supposed to have peculiar magical
powers. The grandfather of Dred, on his mother's side, had been
one of these reputed African sorcerers, and he had early discovered
in the boy this peculiar species of temperament. He had taught him
the secret of snake-charming, and had possessed his mind from
childhood with expectations of prophetic and supernatural impulses.
That mysterious and singular gift, whatever it may be, which
Highland seers denominate second sight, is a very common tradition
among the negroes; and there are not wanting thousands of reputed
instances among them to confirm belief in it. What this faculty may
be, we shall not pretend to say. Whether there be in the soul a yet
undeveloped attribute, which is to be to the future what memory is
to the past, or whether in some individuals an extremely high and
perfect condition of the sensuous organization endows them with
something of that certainty of instinctive discrimination which
belongs to animals, are things which we shall not venture to decide
upon.
It was, however, an absolute fact with regard to Dred, that he had
often escaped danger by means of a peculiarity of this kind. He had
been warned from particular places where the hunters had lain in
wait for him; had foreseen in times of want where game might be
ensnared, and received intimations where persons were to be found
in whom he might safely confide; and his predictions with regard to
persons and things had often chanced to be so strikingly true, as to
invest his sayings with a singular awe and importance among his
associates.
It was a remarkable fact, but one not peculiar to this case alone,
that the mysterious exaltation of mind in this individual seemed to
run parallel with the current of shrewd, practical sense; and, like a
man who converses alternately in two languages, he would speak
now the language of exaltation, and now that of common life,
interchangeably. This peculiarity imparted a singular and grotesque
effect to his whole personality.
On the night of the camp-meeting, he was as we have already seen,
in a state of the highest ecstasy. The wanton murder of his associate
seemed to flood his soul with an awful tide of emotion, as a thunder-
cloud is filled and shaken by slow-gathering electricity. And, although
the distance from his retreat to the camp-ground was nearly fifteen
miles, most of it through what seemed to be impassable swamps,
yet he performed it with as little consciousness of fatigue as if he
had been a spirit. Even had he been perceived at that time, it is
probable that he could no more have been taken, or bound, than the
demoniac of Gadara.
After he parted from Harry he pursued his way to the interior of the
swamp, as was his usual habit, repeating to himself, in a chanting
voice, such words of prophetic writ as were familiar to him.
The day had been sultry, and it was now an hour or two past
midnight, when a thunder-storm, which had long been gathering
and muttering in the distant sky, began to develop its forces.
A low, shivering sigh crept through the woods, and swayed in weird
whistlings the tops of the pines; and sharp arrows of lightning came
glittering down among the darkness of the branches, as if sent from
the bow of some warlike angel. An army of heavy clouds swept in a
moment across the moon; then came a broad, dazzling, blinding
sheet of flame, concentrating itself on the top of a tall pine near
where Dred was standing, and in a moment shivered all its branches
to the ground, as a child strips the leaves from a twig. Dred clapped
his hands with a fierce delight; and, while the rain and wind were
howling and hissing around him, he shouted aloud:—
"Wake, O arm of the Lord! Awake, put on thy strength! The voice of
the Lord breaketh the cedars—yea, the cedars of Lebanon! The
voice of the Lord divideth the flames of fire! The voice of the Lord
shaketh the wilderness of Kadesh! Hailstones and coals of fire!"
The storm, which howled around him, bent the forest like a reed,
and large trees, uprooted from the spongy and tremulous soil, fell
crashing with a tremendous noise; but, as if he had been a dark
spirit of the tempest, he shouted and exulted.
The perception of such awful power seemed to animate him, and yet
to excite in his soul an impatience that He whose power was so
infinite did not awake to judgment.
"Rend the heavens," he cried, "and come down! Avenge the
innocent blood! Cast forth thine arrows, and slay them! Shoot out
thy lightnings, and destroy them!"
His soul seemed to kindle with almost a fierce impatience, at the
toleration of that Almighty Being, who, having the power to blast
and to burn, so silently endures. Could Dred have possessed himself
of those lightnings, what would have stood before him? But his cry,
like the cry of thousands, only went up to stand in waiting till an
awful coming day!
Gradually the storm passed by; the big drops dashed less and less
frequently; a softer breeze passed through the forest, with a patter
like the clapping of a thousand little wings; and the moon
occasionally looked over the silvery battlements of the great clouds.
As Dred was starting to go forward, one of these clear revealings
showed him the cowering form of a man, crouched at the root of a
tree, a few paces in front of him. He was evidently a fugitive, and, in
fact, was the one of whose escape to the swamps the Georgia trader
had complained of the day of of the meeting.
"Who is here, at this time of night?" said Dred, coming up to him.
"I have lost my way," said the other. "I don't know where I am!"
"A runaway?" inquired Dred.
"Don't betray me!" said the other, apprehensively.
"Betray you! Would I do that?" said Dred. "How did you get into the
swamp?"
"I got away from a soul-driver's camp, that was taking us on through
the states."
"Oh, oh!" said Dred. "Camp-meeting and driver's camp right
alongside of each other! Shepherds that sell the flock, and pick the
bones! Well, come, old man; I'll take you home with me."
"I'm pretty much beat out," said the man. "It's been up over my
knees every step; and I didn't know but they'd set the dogs after
me. If they do, I'll let 'em kill me, and done with it, for I'm 'bout
ready to have it over with. I got free once, and got clear up to New
York, and got me a little bit of a house, and a wife and two children,
with a little money beforehand; and then they nabbed me, and sent
me back again, and mas'r sold me to the drivers,—and I believe I's
'bout as good 's die. There's no use in trying to live—everything
going agin a body so!"
"Die! No, indeed, you won't," said Dred; "not if I've got hold of you!
Take heart, man, take heart! Before morning I'll put you where the
dogs can't find you, nor anything else. Come, up with you!"
The man rose up, and made an effort to follow; but, wearied, and
unused as he was to the choked and perplexed way, he stumbled
and fell almost every minute.
"How now, brother?" said Dred. "This won't do! I must put you over
my shoulder as I have many a buck before now!" And, suiting the
action to the word, he put the man on his back, and, bidding him
hold fast to him, went on, picking his way as if he scarcely perceived
his weight.
It was now between two and three o'clock, and the clouds, gradually
dispersing, allowed the full light of the moon to slide down here and
there through the wet and shivering foliage. No sound was heard,
save the humming of insects and the crackling plunges by which
Dred made his way forward.
"You must be pretty strong!" said his companion. "Have you been in
the swamps long?"
"Yes," said the other, "I have been a wild man—every man's hand
against me—a companion of the dragons and the owls, this many a
year. I have made my bed with the leviathan, among the reeds and
the rushes. I have found the alligators and the snakes better
neighbors than Christians. They let those alone that let them alone;
but Christians will hunt for the precious life."
After about an hour of steady travelling, Dred arrived at the outskirts
of the island which we have described. For about twenty paces
before he reached it, he waded waist-deep in water. Creeping out, at
last, and telling the other one to follow him, he began carefully
coursing along on his hands and knees, giving, at the same time, a
long, shrill, peculiar whistle. It was responded to by a similar sound,
which seemed to proceed through the bushes. After a while, a
crackling noise was heard, as of some animal, which gradually
seemed to come nearer and nearer to them, till finally a large water-
dog emerged from the underbrush, and began testifying his joy at
the arrival of the new-comer, by most extravagant gambols.
"So, ho! Buck! quiet, my boy!" said Dred. "Show us the way in!"
The dog, as if understanding the words, immediately turned into the
thicket, and Dred and his companion followed him, on their hands
and knees. The path wound up and down the brushwood, through
many sharp turnings, till at last it ceased altogether, at the roots of a
tree; and, while the dog disappeared among the brushwood, Dred
climbed the tree, and directed his companion to follow him, and,
proceeding out on to one of the longest limbs, he sprang nimbly on
to the ground in the cleared space which we have before described.
His wife was standing waiting for him, and threw herself upon him
with a cry of joy.
"Oh, you've come back! I thought, sure enough, dey'd got you dis
time!"
"Not yet! I must continue till the opening of the seals—till the vision
cometh! Have ye buried him?"
"No; there's a grave dug down yonder, and he's been carried there."
"Come, then!" said Dred.
At a distant part of the clearing was a blasted cedar-tree, all whose
natural foliage had perished. But it was veiled from head to foot in
long wreaths of the tillandsia, the parasitic moss of these regions,
and, in the dim light of the approaching dawn, might have formed
no unapt resemblance to a gigantic spectre dressed in mourning
weeds.
Beneath this tree Dred had interred, from time to time, the bodies of
fugitives which he had found dead in the swamps, attaching to this
disposition of them some peculiar superstitious idea.
The widow of the dead, the wife of Dred, and the new-comer, were
now gathered around the shallow grave; for the soil was such as
scarcely gave room to make a place deep enough for a grave
without its becoming filled with water.
The dawn was just commencing a dim foreshadowing in the sky. The
moon and stars were still shining.
Dred stood and looked up, and spoke, in a solemn voice.
"Seek him that maketh Arcturus and Orion—that turneth the shadow
of death into morning! Behold those lights in the sky—the lights in
his hands pierced for the sins of the world, and spread forth as on a
cross! But the day shall come that he shall lay down the yoke, and
he will bear the sin of the world no longer. Then shall come the
great judgment. He will lay righteousness to the line and judgment
to the plummet, and the hail shall sweep away the refuges of lies."
He stooped, and, lifting the body, laid him in the grave, and at this
moment the wife broke into a loud lament.
"Hush, woman!" said Dred, raising his hand. "Weep ye not for the
dead, neither bewail him; but weep ye sore for the living! He must
rest till the rest of his brethren be killed; for the vision is sealed up
for an appointed time. If it tarry, wait for it. It shall surely come, and
shall not tarry!"
 CHAPTER XXV.
MORE SUMMER TALK.

A glorious morning, washed by the tears of last night's shower, rose

like a bride upon Canema. The rain-drops sparkled and winked from
leaf to leaf, or fell in showery diamonds in the breeze. The breath of
numberless roses, now in full bloom, rose in clouds to the windows.
The breakfast-table, with its clean damask, glittering silver, and
fragrant coffee, received the last evening's participants of the camp-
meeting in fresh morning spirits, ready to discuss, as an every-day
affair, what, the evening before, they had felt too deeply, perhaps, to
discuss.
On the way home, they had spoken of the scenes of the day, and
wondered and speculated on the singular incident which closed it.
But, of all the dark circle of woe and crime,—of all that valley of
vision which was present to the mind of him who spoke,—they were
as practically ignorant as the dwellers of the curtained boudoirs of
New York are of the fearful mysteries of the Five Points.
The aristocratic nature of society at the south so completely
segregates people of a certain position in life from any acquaintance
with the movements of human nature in circles below them, that the
most fearful things may be transacting in their vicinity unknown or
unnoticed. The horrors and sorrows of the slave-coffle were a sealed
book to Nina and Anne Clayton. They had scarcely dreamed of
them; and Uncle John, if he knew their existence, took very good
care to keep out of their way, as he would turn from any other
painful and disagreeable scene.
All of them had heard something of negro-hunters, and regarded
them as low, vulgar people, but troubled their heads little further on
the subject; so that they would have been quite at a loss for the
discovery of any national sins that could have appropriately drawn
down the denunciations of Heaven.
The serious thoughts and aspirations which might have risen in any
of the company, the evening before, assumed, with everything else,
quite another light under the rays of morning.
All of us must have had experience, in our own histories, of the
great difference between the night and the morning view of the
same subject.
What we have thought and said in the august presence of
witnessing stars, or beneath the holy shadows of moonlight, seems
with the hot, dry light of next day's sun to take wings, and rise to
heaven with the night's clear drops. If all the prayers and good
resolutions which are laid down on sleeping pillows could be found
there on awaking, the world would be better than it is.
Of this Uncle John Gordon had experience, as he sat himself down at
the breakfast-table. The night before, he realized, in some dim wise,
that he, Mr. John Gordon, was not merely a fat, elderly gentleman,
in blue coat and white vest, whose great object in existence was to
eat well, drink well, sleep well, wear clean linen, and keep out of the
way of trouble. He had within him a tumult of yearnings and
aspirings,—uprisings of that great, life-long sleeper, which we call
soul, and which, when it wakes, is an awfully clamorous, craving,
exacting, troublesome inmate, and which is therefore generally put
asleep again in the shortest time, by whatever opiates may come to
hand. Last night, urged on by this troublesome guest, stimulated by
the vague power of such awful words as judgment and eternity, he
had gone out and knelt down as a mourner for sin and a seeker for
salvation, both words standing for very real and awful facts; and,
this morning, although it was probably a more sensible and
appropriate thing than most of the things he was in the habit of
doing, he was almost ashamed of it. The question arose, at table,
whether another excursion should be made to the camp-ground.
"For my part," said Aunt Maria, "I hope you'll not go again, Mr.
Gordon. I think you had better keep out of the way of such things. I
really was vexed to see you in that rabble of such very common
people!"
"You'll observe," said Uncle John, "that, when Mrs. G. goes to
heaven, she'll notify the Lord, forthwith, that she has only been
accustomed to the most select circles, and requests to be admitted
at the front door."
"It isn't because I object to being with common people," said Anne
Clayton, "that I dislike this custom of going to the altar; but it seems
to me an invasion of that privacy and reserve which belong to our
most sacred feelings. Besides, there are in a crowd coarse, rude,
disagreeable people, with whom it isn't pleasant to come in contact."
"For my part," said Mrs. John Gordon, "I don't believe in it at all! It's
a mere temporary excitement. People go and get wonderfully
wrought up, come away, and are just what they were before."
"Well," said Clayton, "isn't it better to be wrought up once in a while,
than never to have any religious feelings? Isn't it better to have a
vivid impression of the vastness and worth of the soul,—of the
power of an endless life,—for a few hours once a year, than never to
feel it at all? The multitudes of those people, there, never hear or
think a word of these things at any other time in their lives. For my
part," he added, "I don't see why it's a thing to be ashamed of, if Mr.
Gordon or I should have knelt at the altar last night, even if we do
not feel like it this morning. We are too often ashamed of our better
moments;—I believe Protestant Christians are the only people on
earth who are ashamed of the outward recognition of their religion.
The Mahometan will prostrate himself in the street, or wherever he
happens to be, when his hour for prayer comes. The Roman Catholic
sailor or soldier kneels down at the sound of the vesper bell. But we
rather take pride in having it understood that we take our religion
moderately and coolly, and that we are not going to put ourselves
much out about it."
"Well, but, brother," said Anne, "I will maintain, still, that there is a
reserve about these things which belongs to the best Christians. And
did not our Saviour tell us that our prayers and alms should be in
secret?"
"I do not deny at all what you say, Anne," said Clayton; "but I think
what I said is true, notwithstanding; and, both being true, of course,
in some way they must be consistent with each other."
"I think," said Nina, "the sound of the singing at these camp-
meetings is really quite spirit-stirring and exciting."
"Yes," said Clayton, "these wild tunes, and the hymns with which
they are associated, form a kind of forest liturgy, in which the
feelings of thousands of hearts have been embodied. Some of the
tunes seem to me to have been caught from the song of birds, or
from the rushing of wind among the branches. They possess a
peculiar rhythmical energy, well suited to express the vehement
emotions of the masses. Did camp-meetings do no other good than
to scatter among the people these hymns and tunes, I should
consider them to be of inestimable value."
"I must say," said Anne, "I always had a prejudice against that class
both of hymns and tunes."
"You misjudge them," said Clayton, "as you refined, cultivated
women always do, who are brought up in the kid-slipper and carpet
view of human life. But just imagine only the old Greek or Roman
peasantry elevated to the level of one of these hymns. Take, for
example, a verse of one I heard them sing last night:—

'The earth shall be dissolved like snow,

The sun shall cease to shine,
But God, who called me here below,
Shall be forever mine.'
What faith is there! What confidence in immortality! How could a
man feel it, and not be ennobled? Then, what a rough hearty
heroism was in that first hymn! It was right manly!"
"Ah, but," said Anne, "half the time they sing them without the
slightest perception of their meaning, or the least idea of being
influenced by them."
"And so do the worshippers in the sleepiest and most aristocratic
churches," said Clayton. "That's nothing peculiar to the camp-
ground. But, if it is true, what a certain statesman once said, 'Let me
make the ballads of the people, and I care not who makes their
laws,' it is certainly a great gain to have such noble sentiments as
many of these hymns contain circulating freely among the people."
"What upon earth," said Uncle John, "do you suppose that last fellow
was about, up in the clouds, there? Nobody seemed to know where
he was, or who he was; and I thought his discourse seemed to be
rather an unexpected addition. He put it into us pretty strong, I
thought! Declare, such a bundle of woes and curses I never heard
distributed! Seemed to have done up all the old prophets into one
bundle, and tumbled it down upon our heads! Some of them were
quite superstitious about it, and began talking about warnings, and
all that."
"Pooh!" said Aunt Maria, "the likelihood is that some itinerant poor
preacher has fallen upon this trick for producing a sensation. There
is no end to the trickeries and the got-up scenes in these camp-
meetings, just to produce effect. If I had had a pistol, I should like
to have fired into the tree, and see whether I couldn't have changed
his tune."
"It seemed to me," said Clayton, "from the little that I did hear, that
there was some method in his madness. It was one of the most
singular and impressive voices I ever heard; and, really, the
enunciation of some of those latter things was tremendous. But,
then, in the universal license and general confusion of the scene, the
thing was not so much to be wondered at. It would be the most
natural thing in the world that some crazy fanatic should be heated
almost to the point of insanity by the scene, and take this way of
unburdening himself. Such excitements most generally assume the
form of denunciation."
"Well, now," said Nina, "to tell the truth, I should like to go out again
to-day. It's a lovely ride, and I like to be in the woods. And, then, I
like to walk around among the tents, and hear the people talk, and
see all the different specimens of human nature that are there. I
never saw such a gathering together in my life."
"Agreed!" said Uncle John. "I'll go with you. After all, Clayton, here,
has got the right of it, when he says a fellow oughtn't to be
ashamed of his religion, such as it is."
"Such as it is, to be sure!" said Aunt Maria, sarcastically.
"Yes, I say again, such as it is!" said Uncle John, bracing himself. "I
don't pretend it's much. We'll all of us bear to be a good deal better,
without danger of being translated. Now, as to this being converted,
hang me if I know how to get at it! I suppose that it is something
like an electric shock,—if a fellow is going to get it, he must go up to
the machine!"
"Well," said Nina, "you do hear some queer things there. Don't you
remember that jolly, slashing-looking fellow, whom they called Bill
Dakin, that came up there with his two dogs? In the afternoon, after
the regular services, we went to one of the tents where there was a
very noisy prayer-meeting going on, and there was Bill Dakin, on his
knees, with his hands clasped, and the tears rolling down his
cheeks; and father Bonnie was praying over him with all his might.
And what do you think he said? He said, 'O Lord, here's Bill Dakin;
he is converted; now take him right to heaven, now he is ready, or
he'll be drunk again in two weeks!'"
"Well," said Anne Clayton, tossing her head, indignantly, "that's
blasphemy, in my opinion."
"Oh, perhaps not," said Clayton, "any more than the clownish talk of
any of our servants is intentional rudeness."
"Well," said Anne, "don't you think it shows a great want of
perception?"
"Certainly, it does," said Clayton. "It shows great rudeness and
coarseness of fibre, and is not at all to be commended. But still we
are not to judge of it by the rules of cultivated society. In well-
trained minds every faculty keeps its due boundaries; but, in this
kind of wild-forest growth, mirthfulness will sometimes overgrow
reverence, just as the yellow jessamine will completely smother a
tree. A great many of the ordinances of the old Mosaic dispensation
were intended to counteract this very tendency."
"Well," said Nina, "did you notice poor old Tiff, so intent upon getting
his children converted? He didn't seem to have the least thought or
reference to getting into heaven himself. The only thing with him
was to get those children in. Tiff seems to me just like those
mistletoes that we see on the trees in the swamps. He don't seem to
have any root of his own; he seems to grow out of something else."
"Those children are very pretty-looking, genteel children," said Anne;
"and how well they were dressed!"
"My dear," said Nina, "Tiff prostrates himself at my shrine, every
time he meets me, to implore my favorable supervision as to that
point; and it really is diverting to hear him talk. The old Caliban has
an eye for color, and a sense of what is suitable, equal to any French
milliner. I assure you, my dear, I always was reputed for having a
talent for dress; and Tiff appreciates me. Isn't it charming of him? I
declare, when I see the old creature lugging about those children, I
always think of an ugly old cactus with its blossoms. I believe he
verily thinks they belong to him just as much. Their father is entirely
dismissed from Tiff's calculations. Evidently all he wants of him is to
keep out of the way, and let him work. The whole burden of their
education lies on his shoulders."
"For my part," said Aunt Nesbit, "I'm glad you've faith to believe in
those children. I haven't; they'll be sure to turn out badly—you see if
they don't."
"And I think," said Aunt Maria, "we have enough to do with our own
servants, without taking all these miserable whites on our hands,
too."
"I'm not going to take all the whites," said Nina. "I'm going to take
these children."
"I wish you joy!" said Aunt Maria.
"I wonder," said Aunt Nesbit, "if Harry is under concern of mind. He
seems to be dreadfully down, this morning."
"Is he?" said Nina. "I hadn't noticed it."
"Well," said Uncle John, "perhaps he'll get set up, to-day—who
knows? In fact, I hope I shall myself. I tell you what it is, parson,"
said he, laying his hand on Clayton's shoulder, "you should take the
gig, to-day, and drive this little sinner, and let me go with the ladies.
Of course you know Mrs. G. engrosses my whole soul; but, then,
there's a kind of insensible improvement that comes from such
celestial bodies as Miss Anne, here, that oughtn't to be denied to
me. The clergy ought to enumerate female influence among the
means of grace. I'm sure there's nothing builds me up like it."
Clayton, of course, assented very readily to this arrangement; and
the party was adjusted on this basis.
"Look ye here, now, Clayton," said Uncle John, tipping him a sly
wink, after he had handed Nina in, "you must confess that little
penitent! She wants a spiritual director, my boy! I tell you what,
Clayton, there isn't a girl like that in North Carolina. There's blood,
sir, there. You must humor her on the bit, and give her her head a
while. Ah, but she'll draw well at last! I always like a creature that
kicks to pieces harness, wagon, and all, to begin with. They do the
best when they are broken in."
With which profound remarks Uncle John turned to hand Anne
Clayton to the carriage.
Clayton understood too well what he was about to make any such
use of the interview as Uncle John had suggested. He knew perfectly
that his best chance, with a nature so restless as Nina's, was to keep
up a sense of perfect freedom in all their intercourse; and, therefore,
no grandfather could have been more collected and easy in a tête-à-
tête drive than he. The last conversation at the camp-meeting he
knew had brought them much nearer to each other than they had
ever stood before, because both had spoken in deep earnestness of
feeling of what lay deepest in their heart; and one such moment, he
well knew, was of more binding force than a hundred nominal
betrothals.
The morning was one of those perfect ones which succeed a
thunder-shower in the night; when the air, cleared of every gross
vapor, and impregnated with moist exhalations from the woods, is
both balmy and stimulating. The steaming air developed to the full
the balsamic properties of the pine-groves through which they rode;
and, where the road skirted the swampy land, the light fell slanting
on the leaves of the deciduous trees, rustling and dripping with the
last night's shower. The heavens were full of those brilliant, island-
like clouds, which are said to be a peculiarity of American skies, in
their distinct relief above the intense blue. At a long distance they
caught the sound of camp-meeting hymns. But, before they reached
the ground, they saw, in more than one riotous group, the result of
too frequent an application to Abijah Skinflint's department, and
others of a similar character. They visited the quarters of Old Tiff,
whom they found busy ironing some clothes for the baby, which he
had washed and hung out the night before. The preaching had not
yet commenced, and the party walked about among the tents.
Women were busy cooking and washing dishes under the trees; and
there was a great deal of good-natured gossiping.
One of the most remarkable features of the day was a sermon from
father Dickson, on the sins of the church. It concluded with a most
forcible and solemn appeal to all on the subject of slavery. He
reminded both the Methodists and Presbyterians that their books of
discipline had most pointedly and unequivocally condemned it; that
John Wesley had denounced it as the sum of all villanies, and that
the general assemblies of the Presbyterian Church had condemned it
as wholly inconsistent with the religion of Christ, with the great law
which requires us to love others as ourselves. He related the scene
which he had lately witnessed in the slave-coffle. He spoke of the
horrors of the inter-state slave-trade, and drew a touching picture of
the separation of families, and the rending of all domestic and social
ties, which resulted from it; and, alluding to the unknown speaker of
the evening before, told his audience that he had discerned a deep
significance in his words, and that he feared, if there was not
immediate repentance and reformation, the land would yet be given
up to the visitations of divine wrath. As he spoke with feeling, he
awakened feeling in return. Many were affected even to tears; but,
when the sermon was over, it seemed to melt away, as a wave flows
back again into the sea. It was far easier to join in a temporary
whirlwind of excitement, than to take into consideration
troublesome, difficult, and expensive reforms.
Yet, still, it is due to the degenerate Christianity of the slave states to
say, that, during the long period in which the church there has been
corrupting itself, and lowering its standard of right to meet a
depraved institution, there have not been wanting, from time to
time, noble confessors, who have spoken for God and humanity. For
many years they were listened to with that kind of pensive tolerance
which men give when they acknowledge their fault without any
intention of mending. Of late years, however, the lines have been
drawn more sharply, and such witnesses have spoken in peril of their
lives; so that now seldom a voice arises except in approbation of
oppression.
The sermon was fruitful of much discussion in different parts of the
camp-ground; and none, perhaps, was louder in the approbation of
it than the Georgia trader, who, seated on Abijah Skinflint's counter,
declared: "That was a parson as was a parson, and that he liked his
pluck; and, for his part, when ministers and church-members would
give over buying, he should take up some other trade."
"That was a very good sermon," said Nina, "and I believe every
word of it. But, then, what do you suppose we ought to do?"
"Why," said Clayton, "we ought to contemplate emancipation as a
future certainty, and prepare our people in the shortest possible
time."
This conversation took place as the party were seated at their
nooning under the trees, around an unpacked hamper of cold
provisions, which they were leisurely discussing.
"Why, bless my soul, Clayton," said Uncle John, "I don't see the
sense of such an anathema maranatha as we got to-day. Good Lord,
what earthly harm are we doing? As to our niggers, they are better
off than we are! I say it coolly—that is, as coolly as a man can say
anything between one and two o'clock in such weather as this. Why,
look at my niggers! Do I ever have any chickens, or eggs, or
cucumbers? No, to be sure. All my chickens die, and the cut-worm
plays the devil with my cucumbers; but the niggers have enough.
Theirs flourish like a green bay-tree; and of course I have to buy of
them. They raise chickens. I buy 'em, and cook 'em and then they
eat 'em! That's the way it goes. As to the slave-coffles, and slave-
prisons, and the trade, why, that's abominable, to be sure. But, Lord
bless you, I don't want it done! I'd kick a trader off my doorsteps
forthwith, though I'm all eaten up with woolly-heads, like locusts. I
don't like such sermons, for my part."
"Well," said Aunt Nesbit, "our Mr. Titmarsh preached quite another
way when I attended church in E——. He proved that slavery was a
scriptural institution, and established by God."
"I should think anybody's common sense would show that a thing
which works so poorly for both sides couldn't be from God," said
Nina.
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