SUNDAY, October 2.  Meeting and love feast at the Lost River meetinghouse.  Acts 3 is read.  Brother John Harshberger officiates at love feast.  Stay all night at Jacob Mathias’s.  Pleasant day and evening.  Brother Daniel Thomas and Brother John Harshberger in their relation to the work of the church remind me of the relation which the lead-horse bears to the off-wheel horse in a team of four.  Each has his place:  the one as much needed as the other; varied in talent and usefulness, yet working together, the load goes on beautifully, and the roughness of the way is forgotten.

WEDNESDAY, October 5.  Meeting and love feast at our meetinghouse.  Great concourse of people present.  Christian Keffer, of Maryland, and David Long are with us.  Fine day and night.

SATURDAY, October 15.  Brother Kline and Brother John Harshberger started in company of each other to the Piedmont counties on the east side of the Blue Ridge mountain.  How long they contemplated staying there, the Diary does not say.  The first appointment they expected to fill was met without a congregation.  It had either not been properly given out and circulated, or the people did not wish to come.

Brother Kline preached one sermon on this trip, at a place called Good Hope, in the county of Madison, Virginia.  But from the spirit of the Diary more than from its direct letter the inference is clear that the name belied the character of the place, and that instead of Good Hope it should be Bad Despair.  His subject was Rev. 14:6, “I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people.”

The selection of this text shows a lofty sense of propriety in Brother Kline.  He was here among a people largely opposed to the views and feelings of the Brethren on the slave question which was, at this particular time, fearfully agitating the public mind.  But the above text was at once a passport in his hand to go “with the everlasting gospel” in his mouth to preach to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people.  It showed at once that his mission was love, and the end peace.  Many preachers in the South about this time adopted the following motto:  “Keep politics out of religion; but put all the religion you can into politics.”  This means:  Pour the pure water of Life into the cesspools of wickedness and deceit to cleanse them.  This is worse, if possible, than giving what is holy to dogs, or casting pearls before swine.  It is as “the sons of God going in unto the daughters of men, and bringing forth giants—­” giants of iniquity.  If every man and every woman in our land were filled with godliness, politics, in its popular sense, would vanish.  Governments would continue, it is true, but the spirit of their administration would make duty their joy, and love their law.

Finding little encouragement in these parts, the two brethren soon started homeward through Page County, stopping one night at Brother Hamilton Varner’s, and one night at Brother Isaac Spitler’s, where, at either place, they could again enjoy the breath of love and the heartbeat of peace.