"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 as he spoke he struck the Bible repeatedly
with his clenched fist, "by the Almighty, I will build a church of
my own to Him! To Him! do you hear? not to your opinions of Him nor
mine nor any man's! I will cut off a parcel of my farm and make a
perpetual deed of it in the courts, to be held in trust forever.