John Brown’s powers in describing the delights of heaven were no greater than those in depicting the horrors of hell.  I saw great, strapping fellows trembling and weeping like children at the “mourners’ bench.”  His warnings to sinners were truly terrible.  I shall never forget one expression that he used, which for originality and aptness could not be excelled.  In my opinion, it is more graphic and, for us, far more expressive than St. Paul’s “It is hard to kick against the pricks.”  He struck the attitude of a pugilist and thundered out:  “Young man, your arm’s too short to box with God!”

Interesting as was John Brown to me, the other man, “Singing Johnson,” was more so.  He was a small, dark-brown, one-eyed man, with a clear, strong, high-pitched voice, a leader of singing, a maker of songs, a man who could improvise at the moment lines to fit the occasion.  Not so striking a figure as John Brown, but, at “big meetings,” equally important.  It is indispensable to the success of the singing, when the congregation is a large one made up of people from different communities, to have someone with a strong voice who knows just what hymn to sing and when to sing it, who can pitch it in the right key, and who has all the leading lines committed to memory.  Sometimes it devolves upon the leader to “sing down” a long-winded or uninteresting speaker.  Committing to memory the leading lines of all the Negro spiritual songs is no easy task, for they run up into the hundreds.  But the accomplished leader must know them all, because the congregation sings only the refrains and repeats; every ear in the church is fixed upon him, and if he becomes mixed in his lines or forgets them, the responsibility falls directly on his shoulders.

For example, most of these hymns are constructed to be sung in the following manner: 

  Leader. Swing low, sweet chariot.
  Congregation. Coming for to carry me home.
  Leader. Swing low, sweet chariot.
  Congregation. Coming for to carry me home.
  Leader. I look over yonder, what do I see?
  Congregation. Coming for to carry me home.
  Leader. Two little angels coming after me.
  Congregation. Coming for to carry me home....

The solitary and plaintive voice of the leader is answered by a sound like the roll of the sea, producing a most curious effect.

In only a few of these songs do the leader and the congregation start off together.  Such a song is the well-known “Steal away to Jesus.”

The leader and the congregation begin with part-singing: 

Steal away, steal away, Steal away to Jesus; Steal away, steal away home, I ain’t got long to stay here.

Then the leader alone or the congregation in unison: 

  My Lord he calls me,
  He calls me by the thunder,
  The trumpet sounds within-a my soul.

Then all together: