Abstract
The preacher tells of days long ago and of a people whose sufferings were like ours. He preaches of the Hebrews and the fiery furnace, of Daniel, of Moses, of Solomon and of Christ. What we have not dared feel in the presence of the Lords of the Land, we now feel in church. Our hearts and bodies reciprocally acting upon each other, swing out into the meaning of the story the preacher is unfolding. Our eyes become absorbed in a vision. . . . The preacher’s voice is sweet to us, caressing and lashing, conveying to us a heightening of consciousness that the Lords of the Land would rather keep from us, filling us with a sense of hope that is treasonable to the rule of Queen Cotton. As the sermon progresses, the preacher’s voice increases in emotional intensity, and we, in tune and sympathy with his sweeping story stay in our seats until we have lost all notion of time and have begun to float on a tide of passion. The preacher begins to punctuate his words with sharp rhythms, and we are lifted far beyond the boundaries of our daily lives, and upward and outward, until drunk with our enchanted vision, our senses lifted to the burning skies, we do not know who we are, what we are, or where we are. . . . We go home pleasantly tired and sleep easily for we know that we hold somewhere within our hearts a possibility of inexhaustible happiness; we know that if we could but get our feet planted firmly upon this earth, we could laugh and live and build. We take this feeling with us each day and it drains the gall out of our years, sucks the sting from the rush of time, purges the pain from our memory of the past, and banishes the fear of loneliness and death. When the soil grows poorer, we cling to this feeling; when clanking tractors uproot and hurl us from the land, we cling to it; when our eyes behold a black body swinging from a tree in the wind, we cling to it. Some say that, because we possess this faculty of keeping alive this spark of happiness under adversity, we are children. No, it is courage and faith in simple living that enables us to maintain this reservoir of human feeling, for we know that there will come a day when we shall pour out our hearts over this land.