CHAPTER II. A WEEK OF AGONIZING CONFLICTS. In this chapter we shall find Mr. Caughey toiling to overcome the hindrances which a spiritless church, and a state of hardened indifference to divine things in the community generally, placed in the way of his opening movements in Huddersfield. The peculiarity of this portion of his journal lies in the full exposé its author makes of the workings of his distressed spirit. It lays his heart open to the reader's eye, and reveals the mental agony of which he was the subject. Perhaps his soliloquies are, in some parts, too long continued; but they are so true to the experience of every Christian who knows what it is to travail for souls, we are sure the spiritual reader will peruse them both with interest and profit. Huddersfield, December 2, 1844, Monday morning.— Preached in Buxton-road Chapel yesterday morning and night. Had some power. The chapel is a hard place to speak in; it is large, but the difficulty is a vast compartment behind the pulpit, for the accommodation of hundreds of Sabbath-school children and teachers. All is vacancy behind the preacher; and if his head be somewhat vacant of ideas, woe be to him! But though his head be full as the rich farmer's barns of old, it avails him little, so long as that void in the rear quite divides his voice, nothing to reäct and send it forward,-so "divided it falls" into feebleness, unless he puts on a strength that will quite exhaust him before he has half finished. Such a construction is a great erra"; but the preacher is the sufferer. English Wesleyan chapels, usually, are the easiest edifices in the world to speak in. Their pulpits project out into the congregation. The orchestra and organ (for they are nearly all furnished with organs) are behind the pulpit, with a front sufficiently high to serve as a "soundingboard," not, indeed, over the head of the preacher, but close behind, upon which his voice reäcts, and sounds forth with great power, and little effort comparatively. I have found it easier to make three thousand people hear in such chapels than seven or eight hundred in some of our American churches, with pulpit close to brick or stone wall. Buxton-road Chapel is a sad exception, for the reason already given. A few souls were saved yesterday. Tuesday, Dec. 3.— Prayer-meeting last night; a cold, hard time, surely; people cold,-looked as if they had been praying but little in secret, but expecting to light their torch at somebody's else fire,—perhaps mine; but for some reason or other mine burned so low, there was little for anybody except self, and not enough at that, for I was very uncomfortable. Had the Bridegroom come, there would have been trouble in the camp, I fear. Matt. 25.-"Give us of your oil, for our lamps have gone out. there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves." Nor did there seem to be much disposition for that, either, with one exception, a poor backslider, whose lamp had long gone Not so; lest * For some remarks on the structure of churches, see Appendix. out; he got oil from above, and fire to kindle it, and shined among us like a Pharos over a sea of gloom. There is much green wood in Huddersfield, or I am much mistaken, not easily kindled into a flame, indisposed to catch Gospel-fire, as much so as the drenched. wood on the memorable altar on Mount Carmel. However, Huddersfield wood is on the altar of our God. But the devil, instead of Elijah, has thrown a dozen barrels of the water of lukewarmness upon it. Hush, my soul! when the fire of the Lord comes down it will burn the wood, and lick up all the water. May it be so, until all the people shall cry, as of old on Carmel, "The Lord, he is the God! The Lord, he is the God!"-1 Kings 18. It is thus, my Lord, that thou dost prove the heavenly origin of revivals! Amen! Wednesday, Dec. 4.-A gloomy time last night. No freedom. The people, too, were somewhere else. Satan is going to usurp upon me here. His legions are in "the hill country," veteran fiends, who curse the throne of God, and scorn these poor sinners, though they know it not; ay, my weak soul, that would snatch them from a gaping hell. In the eyes of devils I am one of "the weak things of this world; " but my soul knows their scorn; but devils know, and I know, that God often uses such "weak things," and things which are not, and things which are despised, to bring to naught the things which are, that no flesh, yes, and no devils, may glory in his presence.1 Cor. 1: 27. We shall see. With the psalmist, my eyes are unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. Infernal opposition comes over these Huddersfield hills,--doubt it not, my soul! If angels from heaven were my confidences I should fear for the result; for one devil withstood an angel sent on a divine mission twenty-one days,- a great angel, toc,Dan. 10: 6,- his body like the beryl, his face like the lightning, his eyes like lamps of fire, his arms and feet in color like to polished brass, and the voice of his words like the voice of a multitude: and yet one devil coped with him in a conflict of twenty-one days, and how much longer ncbody can tell, had not Michael, the archangel, rushed down from heaven to his assistance,- poor Daniel praying all the time. If one devil is so strong, what shall we say of the combined force of all those legions, of whom it is said, "They throng the air, and darken heaven"? Great as are the angels in power and strength, I would despair if left altogether to their aid. But with him in the Bible my soul cries out, "Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth." It was not an angel which Jesus promised to the church, to indemnify her for the loss of his visible presence, and by which to convince the world of sin, righteousness and judgment; no, but the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, the Spirit of truth, the third person of the Godhead. He might well tell his disciples to tarry at Jerusalem until they were endued with power from on high, promising them a baptism cf the Holy Ghost. not many days hence; otherwise they would have been helpless as withered leaves before "the Prince of the power of the air, the Spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience," and with amazing energy. For this Holy Spirit I wait; no victory over opposing powers without his aid. Thursday, Dec. 5.- Knocked hard and loud at the door of closed hearts last night; but the trio of voices within Ignorance, Prejudice and Unbelief was louder and more influential than my poor voice. My heart groans within - me; my spirit is stirred. Thought best to open all the doors and windows, so to speak, of my soul, for a thorough airing, this morning; nor are the breezes of grace denied, diffusing a heavenly sweetness through all within. Walked out for a while. How sweet the reflection that by prayer one reaches out the hand of the soul to God! nor is it ever refused when offered sincerely in faith and love. Want of success is apt to be the death of joy, or to make it very languid. At such times one is more inclined to groan evermore than to "rejoice evermore; " especially when Satan and his fiends, and sinful men, like Sanballat, and Tobiah, and the Arabians, who said of Nehemiah and his keepers on the ruined walls of Jerusalem, when they were almost buried in rubbish, "What do these feeble Jews? will they fortify themselves? will they sacrifice? will they make an end in a day? will they revive the stones out of the heaps of the rubbish which are burnt? Even that which they build, if a fox go up he shall even break down their stone wall."— Neh. 4. But if one cannot " "rejoice evermore" just now, the spirit may retain a gracious aptitude for it, like a bird on the branch, ready, on the first blink of sunshine, to burst out into a song of joy. Till then, one may watch and "pray without ceasing,"-ejaculatory prayer, Paul means, I suppose,- broken fragments of desire and prayer, projected upward continually to God; arrows of thought in soul-wishes, darting heavenward as arrows from a bow, the bow of confidence in God,-feathered with faith, and hope, and love. May my quiver be full of them, these days! Past 1 o'clock, P. M.- Sadness is a dyer; it discolors everything, and drapes the soul in sable. How charmless and dreary all appears under its influence! How it drives. the soul back upon itself, and shuts one up within one's |