'Captain of Thine enlisted host, Display Thy glorious banner high.'"
After a week of never to be forgotten blessings, the great crowds slowly dispersed, and the tireless evangelists took horse and rode away, each to his work, with strength renewed, and spirit refreshed as from the presence of the Lord.
Although Fletcher did not reside at the college, his connexion with it was by no means a nominal one. His journeys to Trevecca were frequent, involving fatigue and privations, which his feeble frame could ill endure, though he counted them less than nothing. As to the character of his visits, and the influence that accompanied him, the testimony of Mr. Benson, the headmaster, himself a man of exceptional intelligence and sanctity, is well known, but is too important to be omitted here:
"Mr. Fletcher visited them frequently, and was received as an angel of God. It is not possible for me to describe the veneration in which we all held him. Like Elijah in the schools of the prophets, he was revered, he was loved, he was almost adored; and that, not only by every student, but by every member of the family. And indeed he was worthy. The reader will pardon me if he think I exceed. My heart kindles while I write. Here it was that I saw, shall I say an angel in human flesh? I should not far exceed the truth if I said so. But here I saw a descendant of fallen Adam so fully raised above the ruins of the fall, that though by the body he was tied down to earth, yet was his whole conversation in heaven, yet was his life, from day to day, hid with Christ in God. Prayer, praise, love, and zeal, all ardent, elevated above what one would think attainable in this state of frailty, were the element in which he continually lived. And as to others, his one employment was to call, entreat, and urge them to ascend with him to the glorious Source of being and blessedness. He had leisure comparatively for nothing else. Languages, arts, sciences, grammar, rhetoric, logic, even divinity itself, as it is called, were all laid aside when he appeared in the schoolroom among the students. His full heart would not suffer him to be silent. He must speak, and they were readier to hearken to this servant and minister of Jesus Christ than to attend to Sallust, Virgil, Cicero, or any Latin or Greek historian, poet, or philosopher, they had been engaged in reading. And they seldom hearkened long before they were all in tears, and every heart catched fire from the flame which burned in his soul.