my mind.
He took his text from Romans, "That ye may with one mind and one mouth
glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." He applied the
duty thus enjoined to the Fontaine family, saying,--

"For many weary months was our father forced to shift among forests and
deserts for his safety, because he had dared to preach the word of God to
the innocent and sincere people among whom he lived, and who desired to
be instructed in their duty and to be confirmed in their faith. The
forest afforded him a shelter and the rocks a resting-place, but his
enemies gave him no quiet, and pursued him even to these fastnesses,
until finally, of his own accord, he delivered himself to them. They
loaded his hands with chains, a dungeon was his abode, and his feet stuck
fast in the mire. Murderers and thieves were his companions, yet even
among them did he pursue his labors, until God, by means of a pious
gentlewoman, who had seen and pitied his sufferings, relieved him."

To my childish imagination, the picture thus painted was a real and
living one, and filled me with a singular exaltation. I think each of us
at some time of his life has felt, as I did then, a desire to suffer for
conscience' sake.

The preachers of Virginia were, as a whole, anything but admirable, a
condition due no doubt to the worldly spirit which pervaded the church on
both sides of the ocean. The average parson was then--and many of them
still are--coarse and rough, as contact with the forests and waste places
of the world will often make men, even godly ones. But many of them were
worse than that, gamblers and drunkards. They hunted the fox across
country with great halloo, mounted on fast horses of their own. They
attended horse-races and cock-fights, almost always with some money on
the outcome, and frequently with a horse or cock entered in the races or
the pittings. And when the sport was over, they would accompany the
planters home to dinner, which ended in a drinking-bout, and it was
seldom the parson who went under the table first. One fought a duel in
the graveyard behind his church,--our own little Westover church, it
was,--and succeeded in pinking his opponent through the breast, for which
he had incontinently to return to England; another stopped the communion
which he was celebrating, and bawled out to his warden, "Here, George,
this bread's not fit for a dog," nor would he go on with the service
until bread more to his liking had been br