Hearne History - Page 490

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Parents, children, servants, masters, then must take their farewell. "'But come, my saints of every nation ; joyfully my cross you bore; You have come through tribulation, all your sufferings now are o'er. Come and bathe in seas of pleasure; crowns of glory I will give. You did lay up here your treasure, while a pilgrim you did live.'"

When in my fourteenth year and listening to old Brother John French talk to my father in class-meeting (my father never was a professor of religion), I felt pungent conviction, and if my father had been a Christian. and he and my good old mother had encouraged me as some parents have done, my or the Lords good time would soon have been; but I wore off my convictions, as too many have done, and some to their everlasting ruin. In my sixteenth year, at a camp-meeting at Reeve's camp-ground, seeing my cousin Stephen Hearne and several of my kindred going up to be prayed for. and believing that I needed religion, I went up also, but did not feel much, and as I went home, old preacher John Hancock found me in the road. and with tears in his eves encouraged me to seek the Lord, and I always loved him for it. We ought always to work when we can in this way. About two days after this, when I seemed about to give up in despair, the Lord smote my heart and I fell among the mourners, and soon I was happy, and wondering why I had not found religion sooner, and I thought I could persuade every one to accept the Savior, but to my sorrow, I soon found I could not. This was on the 6 of Oct., 1810 twenty-five miles east of Salisbury, North Carolina.

That fall we moved and settled four miles east of Lebanon, Tennessee, and 1811 we moved ten miles further east, and 1812 I went in Jackson's army to Natchez, in place of my father, he being a volunteer, and 1813 I went with the army to the Creek Nation: in both trips suffering much exposure, often wading in water up to my chin and sleeping under snow, suffering with hunger and persecution. When I would go out to pray in secret. some would say that I went out for mischief. I always thought I was providentially hindered from firing a gun at any human being during the war. I witnessed great suffering among

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Copyright (c) 1999, 2007 Brian Cragun.