by Judith Pella
With the help of Hunter and still using brush and weeds as mat.tresses, Benjamin had made more suitable beds. Two small ones for Micah and Isabel and a larger one for himself and Rebekah. He’d also built a cradle for Leah. True, he was no carpenter, and the thing was a bit lopsided, but it was better than the woodbox his wife had been using.
They had also made a few repairs on the cabin and patched the leaky roof. He blessed God that the job was completed before the heaviest of the rain had begun.
The second morning after the last day of rain, John Hunter, who had by then returned to his home, reappeared on Benjamin’s doorstep. He had volunteered to show Benjamin around the circuit, and they had previously arranged that when the weather cleared they would start. Benjamin had prepared Rebekah for this moment, but when it came, she behaved as if it were a surprise.
“I can’t stay here alone,” she complained.
“We have talked about this already, wife. It is the way of things in the wilderness. Even if it were not for my circuit, I, like most men, would have to leave for long periods to hunt and trap and make a living.”
“Please don’t go, Benjamin!” Her tone was imploring rather than contentious.
He hated to refuse her, but what else could he do?
“You know this is why I came to Texas.” He drew her to him in an embrace. “You’ll have the company of the children. And Micah will help. I have taught you how to shoot. You will manage wonderfully, I am certain.”
He tried to ignore her silence as he bid her and the children good-bye. It would take a month for him to ride the circuit, which covered several hundred miles. If it hadn’t been for the weight he bore of his wife’s discontent, he would have been in ecstasy during the next days.
Six months ago when Benjamin had answered the call to Texas, he had little idea of what the life of a circuit rider would be like. At thirty-three years old, he had been an ordained minister for only ten years, all of which he spent in a pastorate: two years in a small church thirty miles west of Boston, four years as an assistant pastor in a large Boston church, and finally four years with his own congregation in a smaller church just outside of Boston. Thus, the life of an itinerate preacher was completely foreign to him. He dressed in much the same manner as he had in Boston, feeling that the formality of his black frock coat, waistcoat, and cravat were necessary here on the frontier, where men had given up so many of the niceties of civilization along with the proper Christian faith.
The mission board had tried to prepare him and his wife, but few of those men had any real experience in that capacity. So it was with some surprise that Benjamin came to realize he loved his new calling.
He stayed no more than one or two nights in any single place. There were no churches or meeting halls, of course, so the assemblies were held in the cabins of individual settlers. Usually the news of his arrival to an area spread quickly, and several families would trek to a central location for the meeting. But often settlers were in such remote places that Benjamin ministered to a single family at a time. It was not unusual for neighbors to live fifteen or twenty miles apart.
Each day was different. He never knew what situation he might be walking into. Once he was waved away from a cabin because there was fever present. Another time he was intercepted and taken to a new location other than the one his predecessor usually used because three Mexican soldiers had stopped for the night in the old location. It made Benjamin realize he was technically a law breaker, a secret agent in the enemy’s land. He justified his actions with the reminder that he worked for the cause of Christ.
More disturbing yet were the immoral practices he discovered among the settlers themselves, specifically in regards to marriage. several couples were living together without the benefit of having said vows before a clergyman. Some had even borne children in that state. They defended themselves by saying they had no choice since they could not know when a minister might come. Benjamin brooked no defense. They had placed lusts of the flesh over their moral duty to God. He enjoined them to seek forgiveness and marry immediately. He performed a half dozen marriages in that first month.
One man, Amos Hawke, refused to marry his woman. Taking Benjamin aside, he confided, “I can’t marry with her, Reverend, ’cause I got a wife back in the States.”
If he expected absolution, he received none from Benjamin. “Then you place not only yourself but the woman you profess to love in danger of eternal damnation. The sin of the others is nothing compared to what you are doing. They have fornicated, but you are an adulterer and have made her one also. You must leave her immediately and cease living in sin.”
“I can’t do that, Reverend. I love her. What will become of her without me?”
“Your temporal comforts mean nothing compared to your eternal souls.”
“I just can’t leave her.”
Benjamin shook the dust of the Hawke cabin off his coat and left. He had a great work to do in this country. His predecessor had failed in many respects because some of the situations, including that of Hawke’s, had been in existence before Rev. Meredith had been arrested. Benjamin vowed to make it his priority to reach every resident on the circuit and reclaim them for Christ.
One day as he and John Hunter were riding to visit one of Benjamin's flock, they came to a swollen river.
“Usually, at least this time of year, you can walk across this stream.” “ Shielding his eyes from the sun, Hunter gazed down the stream’s length. “That rain made it swell up good.”
“What do we do now?” Benjamin, too, was studying the waterway. It was a daunting torrent.
There’s three families of settlers across it, but usually Meredith would turn back when it was like this. There’s been talk of building a ferry, but nothing’s ever come of it.”
“I want to cover the entire circuit.” No wonder the lives of so many of his people were in such shambles if Meredith gave up so easily. Benjamin knew he was made of better fiber.
“Well, I’ve crossed worse, but . . .” Hunter slanted a dubious glance at Benjamin. “I’ve had some experience, and so has my horse. You ever . . . ?”
“Let’s do it.”
Hunter’s brows arched and he wore a look that said, Are you sure? Benjamin’s response was to nod and grip his reins firmly in hand. He was not a frontiersman by any means, but he was determined to learn even if it meant jumping literally into the water, sink or swim.
The rushing river was awesome. Even Benjamin lost some of his enthusiasm as he urged his horse forward. But the dapple-gray mare tensed beneath him and pranced skittishly on the bank.
“Come on, girl,” Benjamin encouraged, trying to steady his own shaky voice.
“Maybe that animal’s got more brains than us,” observed Hunter. But defying his own words, John dug his heels into his mount’s flanks and spurred it into the water. “Seeing my horse might give your gray some courage.”
Bejamin had to give Hunter credit for not calling into question the green minister’s own courage. With a little more encouragement, the gray did indeed take the plunge. Both animal and rider kept their eyes on the man ahead. Benjamin had to keep such a firm rein on the gray that his shoulders and arms began to ache. Yet he hardly noticed that in the exhilaration of the roaring, rushing water. To be in the center of such a powerful maelstrom! He simply could not describe the strange pulsing sensations coursing through him just then.
He squelched the urge to whoop, reminding himself of the danger. The gray seemed far more cognizant of the perils, for the animal twitched and whinnied. Then with a suddenness that no one could have anticipated, especially a greenhorn, the gray reared. Benjamin clutched at the gray’s flanks with his knees, but it did not prove enough. The beast thrashed, jerking its head violently so that Benjamin lost his grip on the reins. In that same moment, the gray went down, spilling its rider into the angry torrent of water.
Benjamin went under but fought mightily with his feet and legs and managed to break the surface and gul
p in a breath of air. Before he went under again, he caught a glimpse of the gray, which had found its footing and made a mad run for the shore. Benjamin also saw John reach the shore. Then Benjamin went under again.
Although he was a fair swimmer and a strong, broad-shouldered man, Benjamin was caught in the current and was carried many feet before he could force his head above the surface and cry for help. John would never be able to hear him over the noise of the river, but surely he would know what had happened when he saw the riderless gray.
But Benjamin despaired if even that would help when he saw a rapid straight ahead that made the place where they had crossed seem tame. He fought harder than ever to swim to the shore. His arms were numb with cold and shaking with his efforts. The few feet to the shore could have been a thousand miles.
“Oh, God . . . help me!” But it had been foolish to utter a verbal prayer. The attempt got him a gut full of water.
Then he saw it—an outcropping of rock and brush several feet ahead. It jutted far enough into the water so he might just be able to reach it. But the rapids came first, buffeting him about as if he were a helpless twig. He rode the waters with an odd mixture of fear and elation, almost forgetting that he was probably going to die. But before he was assailed with despair, he saw John crawling out on hands and knees toward the same outcropping.
The sight injected Benjamin with renewed strength, and he pushed and struggled agains the tumult engulfing him until he came near the rock and thrust out his hand toward it. John was reaching out also, his own body hanging precariously over the rushing rapids.
“Just a little more!” John yelled.
Another mighty stretch. Then the hands met and gripped. John instantly grasped Benjamin’s sleeve, which would not be as slippery as bare skin. Then Benjamin managed to get an arm around a sturdy branch, providing some traction as John pulled. And in the next instant, Benjamin’s soaking body was dragged up on the rocks.
“Whew!” Benjamin exclaimed, and it was a moment before he realized that his coughing and sputtering was mingled with eruptions of laughter.
“What’re you laughing about, Reverend?”
Benjamin simply could not keep from laughing outright. “I have never had such an exhilarating experience.”
“You plumb near killed yourself—and me, too—and you’re laughing?” groused Hunter.
“Oh . . . yes . . .” Benjamin instantly sobered. “I am so sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I . . .”
Hunter grinned. “I was just funning you, Reverend. It was quite an experience. I guess even a preacher is allowed a pleasure or two, eh?”
“That was a worldly pleasure, Mr. Hunter. My joy should be in Christ alone.”
“Well, God made the river, didn’t He? For our enjoyment, right?”
“That, Mr. Hunter, is the kind of thinking that leads a man to perdition.”
“I wouldn’t know about that.” Hunter shook his head, sending a spray of water everywhere. “But I do know we better dry off or we’ll catch our deaths.”
With that he climbed up the bank and proceeded to gather wood and build a fire. Benjamin took care of the horses, which had made the crossing unscathed, then joined him at the fire where they stripped down to their long underwear, laying their outer garments in the sun to dry. Sitting before the fire, Benjamin continued to think about the river crossing and the conversation that had followed. His reaction to the experience troubled him. He did not completely frown upon certain amusements. He took great satisfaction from a walk in the woods; he enjoyed a good meal; he was even known to take pleasure in his children’s antics at times, though fear of spoiling them kept that at a minimum. He found great delight in preaching and in reading the Word of God. Indeed, God often said in His Word that He wanted His children happy.
Yet there were so many areas where pleasure was far too close to the lusts of the flesh. Succumbing too easily to such pleasure, one took a great chance of falling into sin. Benjamin believed for himself it was best to curb pleasure. He was a man of God and simply could not allow himself the luxury of such risks.
But there was more to what had happened on the river. When he had come to his senses after laughing, he realized that his laughing self resembled not Rev. Benjamin Sinclair, but rather his devil-may-care brother, Haden Sinclair. He’d always known there was some of Haden in him, but it frightened him when that side broke free of his carefully reined person. Haden’s whole life was spent seeking one wild adventure after another. He was a prime example of how living for pleasure could lead to sin and eventually to spiritual death. Thus Benjamin had to work harder than most men to keep his own natural wildness in check. The journey to Texas was a concession Benjamin tried not to think about.
“Reverend?” Hunter broke into his thoughts. “You want something to eat? It’s gonna take a while to get everything dry.”
“Yes, that’s a good idea. We won’t need to bother with a stop later.”
Hunter retrieved a packet of biscuits and jerky from the saddlebags. The food had been wrapped carefully and was only a little damp. He handed a portion to Benjamin.
“You know, Reverend,” Hunter said around a mouthful of biscuit, “I gotta ask you about what you were saying before. You know, about pleasure. Don’t God want us to have fun? It just don’t seem right that all fun is bad.”
“Of course it is not, Mr. Hunter. But given our limited human understanding, a man should approach such things cautiously. There is an old saying, ‘When in doubt, don’t.’ ”
“Maybe that’s why folks have such a hard time with religion. There’s just too many don’ts.”
“You would not view it in such a negative light, Mr. Hunter, if your whole being were set upon God. I do not see my faith in terms of the sacrifices I make but rather in the ultimate sacrifice God made in giving His son to die on the cross for the abject sinner that I am. Does giving up some temporal pleasure compare with that in magnitude? You should fall on your knees and praise God for His mercy instead of complaining that you can’t have as much fun as you’d like.”
“I reckon if you put it that way . . .” Hunter scratched the stubble of a beard on his face. He didn’t appear completely convinced. “I’m a Christian man, Reverend, and yet I just can’t let myself be so sober about life.”
“Perhaps as a man of God I am expected to hold to a higher standard.”
“Seems an awful heavy burden to be carrying around.” Hunter held his hands over the fire, warming them.
“I am equal to it, Mr. Hunter. By the grace of God.”
Hunter looked at Benjamin and shook his head, not in disagreement, but more with a sense of wonder or confusion, as if he could not understand anything about the burdens a man of God carried. Even Benjamin had difficulty understanding at times. And at the moment he couldn’t understand why he felt such a loss that he had nearly forgotten what that moment of laughter and enjoyment of the river crossing had felt like. In truth, he had forgotten—though not entirely—how very good it had felt.
CHAPTER
19
AFTER COMPLETING THE CIRCUIT, Benjamin returned home and stayed for two weeks before commencing the circuit once again. Rebekah, of course, complained, but her laments were becoming so much the norm in their marriage that he found it easy to ignore her. She was growing so morose and withdrawn that he feared she would bring him and his entire ministry down with her if he let her.
With each day Benjamin felt the weight of the burden for his parish grow heavier, and he knew he must minister unrelentingly until he had well established the spirit of God in his assigned region. But the needs he encountered were so great that he was certain he would never come to the end of them.
The members of his circuit parish always welcomed him and had never ending requests for his services—marriages, funerals, baptisms. Yet he never ceased to have the sense that they wanted only the form of faith, the means to comply with the social standards of the times.
A few, of course, were eager to hea
r the Word of God and to talk of spiritual matters. But many more than that received such matters politely, as if they knew religious instruction must be tolerated in order to have the service they desired. Seldom did he find a Bible in a home. Yes, many in his parish couldn’t read, but that was no excuse for the absence of the Word of God. He was certain they didn’t speak of spiri.tual matters when he wasn’t around. Once when he was invited to dinner at a home, one of the children was so nonplussed as Benjamin delivered grace that he stared openmouthed at the reverend. Later, the boy asked why the minister was talking to his plate!
Conversions were so few that he was going to be embarrassed to send his six-month report to the mission board. Thus, as he set out on his circuit on a cold autumn day, upon what would be his third ride of the circuit, he determined to bring about a revival among his flock. He had prayed and fasted for five days before setting out, beseeching God to bring a true spiritual awakening upon the lost souls entrusted to him. He had sent word ahead throughout the circuit that he would have a two-day meeting at one of the central homes in his area.
He was gratified when he reached the Butler home to find about fifty people waiting for him. Tents dotted the meadow around the house, and there was a charged atmosphere over the company. Benjamin wanted to think this was due to an anticipation of the descent of the Holy Spirit, but it was plain many of the folks were using the gathering for social interaction as well.
He complained to John Hunter, who had accompanied him to the meeting. “They are more interested in visiting than in hearing the Word of God.”
“Well, Reverend, most of these folk, especially the women, go for weeks and even months without seeing another soul besides their families.”
Benjamin thought of Rebekah and how she so often groused about that very thing. However, he had asked her to come to this meeting with him, but she had declined because Isabel was feeling poorly. He wondered if that was a mere excuse, but it was true the child did have a bit of a cough. At least Micah had come, though Benjamin had had to force the boy with threats of eternal damnation.