Here leaving the matter, he announced his text: "But the Scripture hath concluded all under sin." And as he was in the mood of a holy indignation at that hour, he evolved from his text the topic of "_sin_: wherein it consists," and "_its bitter fruits_: wherein do they consist." And he gave them, to the best of his ability, a sermon that savored of brimstone and the hot place below!
Sunday morning the preacher gave them "faith, hope, and charity," and felt victory his, as seen in the increasing numbers and interest of the meetings.
General M. was his personal and accepted friend, and a Union man at heart, and accepted the garb of a brigadier-general of State militia to hold his political popularity in the State, for he had aspirations toward the gubernatorial chair, and hoped some day to do his State better service in a civil capacity.
THE CONSCRIPT LAW AND HOW THE WRITER BEAT IT.
Three years and more of war had now passed, and we had succeeded in flanking all movements to get us into the army. The conscript law had been in force a year or two, sweeping all ages from eighteen to forty-five, and all classes except ministers of religion in regular discharge of ministerial duties, State and county officers, and slaveholders owning a certain number of slaves, fifteen being the minimum. Of course, it being the slaveholder's war, and the slaveholder never having been obliged to work for his rights in human chattels and things, but others made to produce and maintain them for him, his aristocratic leisure must be consulted and favored still, in the conduct of the war. _It was the slaveholder's war, but the poor man's fight._ And nothing pleased them better than to force a Northern man, described in their parlance--"a d--d Yankee, and a d--d abolitionist"--into the army, and get him killed off.
The writer has been asked a hundred and one times: "How did you escape the army?" The question is easily answered. After the first volunteering wild-fire had swept over the land and died out, he saw what would be the next step in the war programme, conscription. "The wise man seeth the evil and fleeth," says the prince of wise men. And though he did not flee in the literal sense, yet he did in the legal sense of the coming conscript law, by changing his "base" from that of a simple private citizen to that of a minister of religion; and had his regular congregation, to whom he ministered over two years. By this _dernier_ resort, he bridged over a bad place in the road--for "Jordan was a hard road to travel"--and he was on the hardest part of the road in those days.