On a Wednesday night in late summer, twenty-year-old Samuel Mullins finished his supper, changed out of his rough work clothes into the only clean set he owned, and set out down the dirt path that followed the creek through Shepherd’s Gap toward Harmony Baptist Church. The day had been blistering hot, spent working in the hayfield, and his back ached and his arms were sore. But this was no time to rest. On the white wooden steps of that old church a mile away, Doris Jenkins was surely already waiting for him.
Sam crossed the creek bed for the final time and walked through old man Hoskins’ pasture across from the church. He saw Doris from afar, her pink calico gown a bright spot against the whiteness of the steps. It was just after sunset, and the sky was beautifully painted with rosy clouds still glowing in the west. Truth be told, Doris wasn’t the prettiest girl in Shepherd’s Gap, but she had a smile that meant the world to Sam, and it was worth a long walk just to see it again.
Everyone in Knox County knew Sam and Doris were lovebirds, yet the pair was extremely shy and awkward in expressing their deep mutual feelings. They had been drawn to each other during their lonely days as a boy and girl down at Island View school. Sam was an orphan, and Doris’s father had long since married a woman who resented Doris’s very existence. Life wasn’t a fairy tale in Shepherd’s Gap.
Both Sam and Doris had grown up with grudges against fate, working from the time each was able, with little to enliven them or inspire aspiration. But stranger things had happened than that both should be absurdly ambitious. Sam’s grandfather had been a devout Christian man, well educated for his time, not without power in his oratory skills. For forty-one years, his brimstone-and-fire sermons came from the pulpit of Harmony Baptist Church, so hot with passion for the Lord that the souls of the faithful felt the pews begin to heat up.
Each Sunday, a bounty of souls would be saved because of the old man’s preaching. Everyone in Shepherd’s Gap was sure that the old man’s son, Sam’s father, would fill his role as pastor when he went on to glory. But it was never to be. Sam’s father possessed none of the old man’s godly ambitions or aspirations, and the doors of Harmony Baptist Church had been closed ever since.
The sanctuary that had been filled with praise and worship was now silent. Tonight, just like most every other night, Sam sat on those church steps alongside his sweetheart, the very same steps where his grandfather had lifted up his voice so many times in the days of the past. Physically weary, Sam’s spirits wavered. He dreamed of reopening the doors of that church.
Doris, eighteen years old, had long dreamed of a home different from the one her own life had been. She dreamed of peaceful days, of thrifty management, of love, of being kind to those around her. She entered enthusiastically into Sam’s ideas and had always supported and encouraged him from his boyhood to his daring dreams of success. “If only I had somebody to teach me,” Sam said.
“If I had money, I could go to the seminary down in Knoxville and learn how to be a preacher. But I’ll never have enough money to pay for it. I don’t even have a church that can sponsor me, and I can’t figure out how to do it alone. ”
“What in heaven’s name do you mean, how are you going to do it on your own?
” Doris replied. “You’re never going without me. No one has stood by your side or believed in you like I have, and we’re not going to give up, Samuel Mullins. I’ve got a little money hidden away, you know.
Well, I guess we can’t do anything until the hay’s over, but as soon as it’s done, I’m going to go up and see. ”
For the next few weeks, the days were full of backbreaking work in those hayfields, and the nights were filled with endless dreaming, planted on those church steps. Finally, the work was done, and the sturdy country lad gathered his courage to travel down to the big city of Knoxville, dressed in his best tattered clothing. Upon his arrival, he promptly interrupted a meeting of the faculty at a certain college and theological seminary.
He came in asking shyly for entrance into the college, with little money and no church influence to back him. As Sam stood there before those men dressed in their suits and fancy clothes, he froze up for a moment. The professors looked down their noses and took little notice of the rural boy. They just stared.
Finally, Sam found the courage to speak. The spirit of his grandfather seemed to flow through him. He told of the dreams he had had for years, his toil, and also of Doris, her interest and encouragement. Somehow, the mountain boy’s sincere words and faith just poured out of him.
Exactly how that happened, Sam had no clue. When he finished, the faculty said little. But as the old president walked from the great hall to the library afterward, he couldn’t get Sam’s words out of his mind. The young man had seemed so sincere.
So what that he didn’t have money? Wasn’t it his godly command to help those in need? Finally, the president said to the professor of Greek walking alongside him, “It’s been a long time since I felt that a lad had such a clear call. In fact, I had been wondering if there was to be no more inspiration in the youth of today.
”
After consideration, the school promised Sam shelter in part of a house on the campus. He went back to Doris triumphant. Now was his chance to become the faithful servant of the Lord. His return to Shepherd’s Gap was filled with whispers of the young boy becoming a man, going to college, and of his projected wedding to Doris.
Such prospects for a boy of no property caused the wildest excitement. Doris was poor too, but as mountain women have always done, they did all they could to help the teenage girl prepare to become a godly woman and a preacher’s wife. Her setting out was discussed far and near, and there were many presents from women throughout the cove who thought that by helping her out, they were giving directly to the Lord. Meetings were held to help her learn how to sew, and from one of these gatherings grew an idea that afterward caused such a sensation at the college.
Meanwhile, some of the menfolk chuckled at the very thought of the farmer’s boy going off to college to get a sheepskin and become a preacher. After all, just where was he going to preach? Harmony Baptist Church had been closed for years. It was a dead building, with its pulpit reached by a winding stair and its benches black with age.
Before long, a sentiment began to grow amongst the womenfolk to open it one Sunday during the summer, and Sam was asked to conduct a service by a committee of elders in the community. Sam wasn’t so sure. “Well, I can’t just preach,” he said. “I’m just now starting college, and I don’t have any experience.
All I’ve ever done is plow from sunrise to dark. I don’t even know what I expect to learn in college yet. It’ll be seven years before I’m fit to teach the word of the Lord. ”
Sam kindly declined.
But just then, Ted Watkins, the owner of the general store and a lifelong friend of Sam’s grandfather, spoke up. “The Lord would tell you what to say. Just have faith in the Lord, son. ”
So Sam promised to think on it and obliged to give an answer the next day.
But first, he had to go see Doris. There was no happier woman than her in those days. She was sitting at her sewing table when Sam came in, humming a quaint country ditty. He thought her a changed woman; surely she had never seemed so pretty in the olden days of toil and anxiety.
She listened intently as Sam told her what the people had asked. Its full meaning dawned upon her. “You can do this, Sam. I know you can.
I believe in you, and I know how proud your grandpa would be. Think of it—this will help you and everyone who lives here. The very thought of fellowship in that old church after all these years. I’m absolutely sure that it will be beautiful.
”
“But what will I preach? I’ve never written a sermon. ”
“Sam, there won’t be nothing expected of you that you’re not ready for. No one expects you to talk of great things from around the world, and Lord knows there’s plenty to talk about right here.
Don’t preach all high and mighty. Everyone here in this cove is just common folks. Talk man to man. And Sam, don’t forget to talk a little to us women too.
We need God. ”
With that, Sam and Doris walked down to the gate together. There was an old sugar maple tree there. He leaned down and kissed her solemnly.
“Doris, I’ll do it. But you must wear your bride dress, and I want you to sit all alone on the front bench. ”
Rumor spread the news all over Shepherd’s Gap, as far away as Dry Cove and Thundering Creek, that for the first time in over twenty years, there was going to be a preaching down at Harmony Baptist Church. It was a Sunday in late August, and the little church was filled to overflowing, with people standing in the doors and looking through the windows.
The womenfolk had spent the week leading up to the service with an old hymnbook, practicing some of their old gospel favorites. They sat on the second bench in their clean summer array so their voices could be heard throughout the sanctuary. But there, alone on the first bench, sat Doris, dressed in her simple white dress, the one the womenfolk had made for her, the one she was to be married in, wearing a simple hat. When the house was full, Sam walked in and took his place, standing there in his black suit.
He looked like a true son of toil, a lad from the very midst of the people. Just then, the women started singing “Nearer My God to Thee. ” All who could sing slowly joined in. Then Sam read, not too well, a portion of the Book of Matthew, summoning all the courage and faith he had within him.
It was a simple message of God’s love and forgiveness. Afterward, he stepped down from the pulpit and stood amongst the flock. It was a sermon like none other; there was near a dry eye in the room. An old spirit that had been missing for so long filled the building.
Glory be to God, the Holy Ghost was once again filling the sanctuary of Harmony Baptist Church. Sam Mullins would go on to become a great preacher, and his and Doris’s dreams were nothing in comparison to God’s reality. They still talked about him down in Knoxville at the college, of his hard study, Doris’s aid and comradeship, and of the wagonload of provisions that came to him every few months down from Shepherd’s Gap. They still told of Sam’s gift of speech, his honors, and what a credit he was to the college.
And somewhere out there, Sam’s grandpa was surely looking down and smiling, standing beside his blessed savior in glory. Well done, Sam. Well done.