Annals of our ancestors; one hundred and fifty years of history in the ...

36
ANNALS OF OUR ANCESTORS
object ahead in the road. He made haste to discover what
it might be, when on coming nearer he recognized an old German
whom he had seen in his audience, and here he found
him carrying on his back his wife, a noted scold. Peter Cartwright
inquired the reason of this unusual performance, when
the old man explained :
"You told us in your sermon we must
take up our cross, and she is my greatest one!"
Peter Cartwright was a born leader of the backwoods
people, and no man was more quoted among the simple-
hearted settlers than he. He was prompt in action, and once,
when passing a cabin where a man and his wife were having a
quarrel, he dismounted and went in, and demanded silence;
nor did he leave the house until they had not only stopped
fighting, but were soundly converted, and with singing and
praise had made the woods echo.
Barton W. Stone was an educated man, and so was that
other Presbyterian divine, Alexander Campbell, who accepted
the no-creed doctrine with the addition of "the union of all
Christians." Our people liked this addition, believing it a
step in advance, and they accepted the teaching as supported
by the prayer of Christ Himself, "that they all may be one."
The "Stone Reformation" was also called the "Old Christian
Order" and "Bible Christians," but eventually they all came
under the name Christian, the adherents of both the Stone and
Campbell reformations. Barton W. Stone himself dechned
to preach for a congregation that refused to unite with the
branch calling themselves simply Christians. As a very
young man, so interested did our father become in Bible study
and religion that before he was aware, when but seventeen,
the people were calling him "preacher."
WHAT MY MOTHER SAID
With Her Father's Spectacles in Her Hand
If I could write with this pen of mine,
This pen so lifeless and hard.
That which my soul sees through mists of years
And with first time glows bright starred;