Acres of Diamonds |
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melody—barely more than a single line of almost monotone music:
It was good enough for mother and it's good enough for me! It was good on the fiery furnace and it's good enough for me!
Thus it went on, with never-wearying iteration, and each time with the refrain, more and more rhythmic and swaying:
The old-time religion, The old-time religion, The old-time religion— It's good enough for me!
That it was good for the Hebrew children, that it was good for Paul and Silas, that it will help you when you're dying, that it will show the way to heaven—all these and still other lines were sung, with a sort of wailing softness, a curious monotone, a depth of earnestness. And the man who had worked this miracle of control by evoking out of the past his memory of a meeting with two of the vanished great ones of the earth, stood before his people, leading them, singing with them, his eyes aglow with an inward light. His magic had suddenly set them into the spirit of the old camp-meeting days, the days of pioneering and hardship, when religion meant so much to everybody, and even those who knew nothing of such things felt them, even if but vaguely. Every heart was moved and touched, and that old tune will sing in the memory of all who thus heard it and sung it as long as they live.
V. GIFT FOR INSPIRING OTHERS
THE constant earnestness of Conwell, his desire to let no chance slip by of helping a fellowman, puts often into his voice, when he preaches, a note of eagerness, of anxiety. But when he prays, when he turns to God, his manner undergoes a subtle and unconscious change. A load has slipped off his shoulders and has been assumed by a higher power. Into his bearing, dignified though it was, there comes an unconscious increase of the dignity. Into his voice, firm as it was before, there comes a deeper note of firmness. He is apt to fling his arms widespread as he prays, in a fine gesture that he never uses at other times, and he looks upward with the dignity of a man who, talking to a higher being, is proud of being a friend and confidant. One does not need to be a Christian to appreciate the beauty and fineness of Conwell's prayers.
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