ions, he preached the gospel with a power that broke many a
sinner's heart, and with a persuasiveness that brought many a wanderer
back to the Good Shepherd's fold. His bodily energy, like his religious
zeal, was unflagging. It seemed little less than a miracle that he
could, day after day, make such vast expenditure of nervous energy
without exhaustion. He put all his strength into every sermon and
exhortation, whether addressed to admiring and weeping thousands at a
great camp-meeting, or to a dozen or less "standbys" at the
Saturday-morning service of a quarterly-meeting.

He had his trials and crosses. Those who knew him intimately learned to
expect his mightiest pulpit efforts when the shadow on his face and the
unconscious sigh showed that he was passing through the waters and
crying to God out of the depths. In such experiences, the strong man is
revealed and gathers new strength; the weak one goes under. But his
strength was more than mere natural force of will, it was the strength
of a mighty faith in God--that unseen force by which the saints work
righteousness, subdue kingdoms, escape the violence of fire, and stop
the mouths of lions.

As a flame of fire, Fisher itinerated all over California and Oregon,
kindling a blaze of revival in almost every place he touched. He was
mighty in the Scriptures, and seemed to know the Book by heart. His was
no rose-water theology. He believed in a hell, and pictured it in Bible
language with a vividness and awfulness that thrilled the stoutest
sinner's heart; he believed in heaven, and spoke of it in such a way
that it seemed that with him faith had already changed to sight. The
gates of pearl, the crystal river, the shining ranks of the white-robed
throngs, their songs swelling as the sound of many waters, the holy love
and rapture of the glorified hosts of the redeemed, were made to pass in
panoramic procession before the listening multitudes until the heaven he
pictured seemed to be a present reality. He lived in the atmosphere of
the supernatural; the spirit-world was to him most real.

"I have been out of the body," he said to me one day. The words were
spoken softly, and his countenance, always grave in its aspect, deepened
in its solemnity of expression as he spoke.

"How was that?" I inquired.

"It was in Texas. I was returning from a quarterly-meeting where I had
preached one Sunday morning with great liberty and with unusual effect.
The horses attached to my