One Sunday, a year later, Waddell administered the sacrament to ninety white persons and twenty-three colored people. The next day, Monday, all of the people were assembled at church and the boys and girls recited the catechism. One young girl in the congregation “said all the Larger Catechism and all the Shorter.” When Dr. Waddell stood in the pulpit, he was very graphic in his description of biblical scenes. An old gentleman of Lancaster County who, as a youth, was a member of Waddell’s congregation, used to speak of the wonderful impression made upon his heart by the minister’s sermons. “The brazen serpent, raised in the wilderness as an emblem of Christ, won his heart; it seemed, to him that, like a wounded Israelite, he saw the serpent – and, as a sinner, he saw Christ crucified for sin.”
From: Southern Presbyterian Leaders, 1683-1911 by Henry Alexander White; reprint (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2000), pp. 60-61. Originally published: (New York: Neale Publishing Company, 1911)
