which even now, less than half a century later, can scarce be
understood; so rapidly has developed meantime that modern spirit
which is for us the tolerant transition to a yet broader future.
Had Kentucky been peopled by her same people several generations
earlier, the land would have run red with the blood of religious
persecutions, as never were England and Scotland at their worst. So
that this lad, brought in from his solemn, cloistered fields and
introduced to wrangling, sarcastic, envious creeds, had already
begun to feel doubtful and distressed, not knowing what to believe
nor whom to follow. He had commenced by being so plastic a medium
for faith, that he had tried to believe them all. Now he was in the
intermediate state of trying to ascertain which. From that state
there are two and two only final ones to emerge: "I shall among
them believe this one only;" or, "I shall among them believe--
none." The constant discussion of some dogma and disproof of some
dogma inevitably begets in a certain order of mind the temper to
discuss and distrust ALL dogma.

Not over their theologies alone were the churches wrangling before
the lad's distracted thoughts. If the theologies were rending
religion, politics was rending the theologies. The war just ended
had not brought, as the summer sermon of the Bible College
professor had stated, breadth of mind for narrowness, calm for
passion. Not while men are fighting their wars of conscience do
they hate most, but after they have fought; and Southern and Union
now hated to the bottom and nowhere else as at their prayers. David
found a Presbyterian Church on one street called "Southern" and one
a few blocks away called "Northern": how those brethren dwelt
together. The Methodists were similarly divided. Of Baptists, the
lad ascertained there had been so many kinds and parts of kinds