sorry and began to serve God. They burned matches
and pods of red pepper to choke us; they hired strolls to beat drums
that we might not be heard for the din. Some of us knew what it was to
have live snakes thrown into our assemblages while at worship; or nests
of live hornets. Or to have a crowd rush into the church with farming
tools and whips and clubs. Or to see a gun levelled at one of us in the
pulpit, and to be dispersed with firearms. Harder than any of these
things to stand, we have known what it is to be slandered. But no
single man of us, thank God, ever stopped for these things or for
anything. Thirty years and more this lasted, until we and all such as
we found a friend in Patrick Henry. Now, we hear that by statute all
religious believers in Virginia have been made equal as respects the
rights and favors of the law.

"But you know it was partly to escape intolerable tyranny that we left
our mother country and travelled a path paved with suffering and lined
with death into this wilderness. For in this virgin land we thought we
should be free to worship God according to our consciences."

"Since we arrived you know what our life has been,--how we have fought
and toiled and suffered all things together. You recall how lately it
was that when we met in the woods for worship,--having no church and no
seats,--we men listened and sang and prayed with our rifles on our
shoulders."

He paused, for the memories hurt him cruelly.

"And now you notify me that you intend to expel me from this church as
a man no longer fit to worship my Maker in your company. Do you bring
any charge against my life, my conduct? None. Nothing but that, as a
believer in the living God--whom honestly I try to serve according to
my erring light--I can no longer have a seat among you--not believing
as you believe. But this is the same tyranny that you found unendurable
in Spottsylvania. You have begun it in Kentucky. You have been at it
already how long? Well, my brethren, I'll soon end your tyranny over
me. You need not TURN me out. And I need not change my religious
opinions. I will GO out. But--"

He wheeled round to the rough pulpit on which lay the copy of the Bible
that they had brought with them from Virginia, their Ark of the
Covenant on the way, seized it, and faced them again. He strode toward
the congregation as far as the benches would allow--not seeing clearly,
for he was sightless with his tears.

"But," he roared, and