William W. Bennett, A narrative of the great revival which prevailed in the Southern armies during the late Civil War

[218] passed the terrible ordeal of Gaines' Mill on Friday, and Malvern Hill on Tuesday, where the men fell around him like grain before the reapers, and covered the ground thick as autumn leaves. A degree of joy and gratitude swelled his heart as he surveyed the field of death, in view of his own wonderful escape, but not so deep and warm as on a former occasion, when his faith and piety were more earnest and simple. Albert continued at times to read his Bible; but it was evidently more as a task than a pleasant duty; his keen relish for Divine things had abated very much; the excuses of camp-life, long marches, and the general indifference of officers and men upon the subject of religion, offered his conscience the consolation of a temporary opiate. Sometimes, however, on the reception of letters from home, and sometimes when alone on his midnight round of picket duty, he would shed a penitential tear, and resolve to double his diligence and regain his lost ground as a Christian; but a plant so tender and unprotected by the pale of the Church, unwatered by the dews of the sanctuary, persecuted and scathed by the lightnings of contempt, nipped and browsed upon by every wild beast of the forest, necessarily became greatly dwarfed in life and growth; a feeling of self-security, a trust in fate or chance, impressed him more than a simple faith in the ever-present God. In this spiritually demoralized condition he entered the Sharpsburg fight, without even asking God to protect and save him from danger and death. Soon after the battle opened he was struck by a ball and carried back to the rear a wounded man; from profuse hemorrhage, a sick, dreamy sensation stole over him; the light faded from his eyes, while a thousand mingled sounds filled his ears, and a faint vision of home, friends, green turf, battle-fields, and grave-yards, flitted by like phantoms of the night. With returning consciousness, there came a sense of shame and sorrow for having declined in his religious state, and a conviction