Later, a heated discussion arose among the church members as to whether fermented wine should be used at the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, and when a vote was taken in favor of the unfermented, the senior deacon withdrew in disgust and joined the “Pedo Baptist” church where he could have alcohol in his.

All this of course made the judicious grieve, and the cause of religion to languish.  This was the time, famous in church history, when a great reaction set in against Cotton Mather theology, who proclaimed that the pleasure of the elect would be greatly enhanced by looking down from the sublime heights of heaven upon the non-elect writhing in hell.

Unitarianism grew apace, and Henry Ward Beecher immortalized himself by saying:  “Many preachers act like the foolish angler who goes to the trout brook with a big pole, ugly line and naked hook, thrashes the waters into a foam, shouting, bite or be damned, bite or be damned!  Result; they are not what their great Master commanded them to be—­successful fishers of men.”

Our pastor was a good man despite his peculiarities, and led a blameless though colorless life; but his “hard shell” theology, his long years of monkish seclusion in the training schools, engendering gloomy views as to the final misery of the majority of human beings, his poverty and lack of adaptation, banished all cheerfulness from his demeanor, and when I recall his sad, solemn face, made so largely by his views in regard to the horrors awaiting the most of us in the next world, I find myself repeating the words of Harriet Beecher Stowe in the “Minister’s Wooing,” when she was thinking of that hell depicted by the old theology; “Oh my wedding day, why did they rejoice?  Brides should wear mourning, every family is built over this awful pit of despair, and only one in a thousand escapes.”

When I semi-occasionally peruse one of the sermons I preached in those days of my youth, I am strongly inclined to crawl into a den and pull the hole in after me.  I can fully believe the orator who said that a stupid speech once saved his life.

“I went back home,” he said, “last year to spend Thanksgiving with the old folks.  While waiting for the turkey to cook, I went into the woods gunning—­it would amuse me, and wouldn’t hurt the game, for I couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn at ten paces.  While promenading, it commenced to rain, and not wishing to wet my best Sunday-go-to-meetings, I crawled into a hollow log for shelter; at last the clouds rolled by and I attempted to pull out, but to my horror, the log had contracted so that I was stuck fast in the hole, and I gave myself up for lost.  I remembered all the sins of my youth, and conscience assured me that I richly deserved my fate; finally, I thought of a certain unspeakably asinine speech which I once inflicted upon a suffering audience, and I felt so small that I rattled round in that old log like a white bean in a washtub, and slipped like an eel out of the little pipe-stem end of that old tree.  I was saved; but the audience had been ruined for life.”