on after he had wrestled sufficiently with
the Lord to get hold of him, _et cetera_. The admiration of the
crowd was evinced by almost constant cries of "Amen! Amen!"
"Jesus! Jesus!" "Glory! Glory!" and the like. But this
comparative tranquility did not last long: the preacher told
them that "this night was the time fixed upon for anxious
sinners to wrestle with the Lord;" that he and his brethren
"were at hand to help them," and that such as needed their
help were to come forward into "the pen." The phrase forcibly
recalled Milton's lines--

"Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold
A sheep-hook, or have learned aught else, the least
That to the faithful herdsman's art belongs!
--But when they list their lean and flashy songs,
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw;--
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed!
But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly--and foul contagion spread."

"The pen" was the space immediately below the preachers' stand;
we were therefore placed on the edge of it, and were enabled to
see and hear all that took place in the very centre of this
extraordinary exhibition.

The crowd fell back at the mention of the _pen_, and for some
minutes there was a vacant space before us. The preachers came
down from their stand and placed themselves in the midst of it,
beginning to sing a hymn, calling upon the penitents to come
forth. As they sung they kept turning themselves round to every
part of the crowd and, by degrees, the voices of the whole
multitude joined in chorus. This was the only moment at which
I perceived any thing like the solemn and beautiful effect,
which I had heard ascribed to this woodland worship. It is
certain that the combined voices of such a multitude, heard at
dead of night, from the depths of their eternal forests, the
many fair young faces turned upward, and looking paler and
lovelier as they met the moon-beams, the dark figures of the
officials in the middle of the circle, the lurid glare thrown by
the altar-fires on the woods beyond, did altogether produce a
fine and solemn effect, that I shall not easily forget; but ere
I had well enjoyed it, the scene changed, and sublimity gave
place to horror and disgust.

The exhortation nearly resembled that which I had heard at
"the Revival," but the result was very different; for, instead
of the few hysterical women who had distinguished them