The Ottawa Free Trader

Henry Ward Beecher In An Ecstasy

I cannot tell you how much I was affected. I have never had such a trance of worship, and I shall never have such another view. I am the narrate of the church service that I cannot call the various parts their right names, but the portion that most affected me were the prayers and responses which the choir sang. I had never heard any part of supplication - a direct prayer, chanted by a choir; but with my soul - I was dissolved. My whole being seemed to me like an incense wafted gratefully towards God. The Divine presence rose before me in wondrous majesty, but oh of ineffable gentleness and goodness and I could not stay away from more familiar approach but seemed irresistibly, yet gently, drawn towards God. My soul, thou didst magnify the Lord and rejoice in the God of thy salvation! And then came to my mind the many exultations of the Psalms of David, and never before were the expressions and figures so noble and necessary to express what I felt. I had risen, it seemed to me, so high as to be where David was when his soul conceived the things which he wrote. Throughout the service, and it was an hour and a quarter long, whenever an "Amen" occurred it was given by the choir, accompanied by an organ and the congregation. O, that swell and solemn cadence rings in my ear yet! Not once, not a single time did it occur in that service from beginning to end, without bringing tears from my eyes. I stood like a shrub in a spring morning - every leaf covered with dew, and every breeze shook down some drops. I trembled so much at times that I was obliged to sit down. O, when in the prayers breathed forth in strains of sweet, simple solemn music, the love of Christ was recognized, how I longed to give utterance to what that love seemed to me. There was a moment in which the heavens seemed to open to me, and I saw the glories of God! I never knew, I never dreamed before, of what heart there was in the word amen. Every time it swelled forth and died away solemnly, not my lips, not my mind, but my whole being said Savior, so let it be.