Obedience

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Dec 19, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, No. 50.

THAT is what God asks—the spirit of unswerving, loyal obedience. If one has not the power,—and no one has in himself,—Christ will furnish it. The worth of that trait of character is forcibly illustrated by the following from the Rev. G. C. Peck in the Treasury:

I think there is nothing finer in all history than Keenan’s last charge. It was amid the gloomy pines in Chancellorsville. Stonewall Jackson had surprised the Eleventh Corps and was driving it in utter rout. Not a Federal musket was in sight save such as were being borne to the rear as fast as frightened legs could carry them. Six hundred men remained to meet the victorious rush of twenty thousand. Suddenly out in front of the guns rode General Pleasanton and paused where Major Keenan sat with his three hundred cavalry. “Major,” he said, “you must charge into the woods with your men and hold the enemy in check until I can get these guns alined and shotted. You must do it at all cost.” The reply quick and hard: “It is just the same, general, as saying, ‘You must be killed,’ but, general, I will do it!”

O, what a scene that was! I wish we had some American Tennyson to immortalize that charge. Three hundred horsemen with deep-set spurs and flashing sabers flying at the throats of twenty thousand. Nobody had blundered; somebody must die for the army, that was all! Then every man died in his stirrups. But they died not in vain. The few minutes gained for the gunners saved the day; for the batteries had meanwhile been double-shotted, and not even Jackson’s veterans could stand such raking fire. They quailed. Jackson fell by a shot from his own lines. Sickles’s old Third Corps filed behind the guns, and victory was won. What an obedience that was, when Keenan knew he had no more chance for life than a thistledown in the teeth of the tempest! What an exhibition of devotion for men and angels—three hundred men obeying when obedience meant certain death!