The Reign of Law; a tale of the Kentucky hemp fields by James Lane Allen
page 81 of 245 (33%)
page 81 of 245 (33%)
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in their usual hymn:--
"How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, Is laid for your faith in His excellent word." Up in his room, a few hundred yards away, the lad that moment might be trimming his lamp for a little more reading. More than once he waited, listening in the darkness, to the reliant music of the stalwart, stern old poem. How devotedly he too had been used to sing it! That summer through, then, he kept on at the work of trying to settle things before college reopened--things which involved a great duty. Where the new thought of the age attacked dogma, Revelation, Christianity most, there most he read. He was not the only reader. He was one of a multitude which no man could know or number; for many read in secret. Ministers of the Gospel read in secret in their libraries, and locked the books away when their church officers called unexpectedly. On Sunday, mounting their pulpits, they preached impassioned sermons concerning faith-- addressed to the doubts, ravaging their own convictions and consciences. Elders and deacons read and kept the matter hid from their pastors. Physicians and lawyers read and spoke not a word to their wives and children. In the church, from highest ecclesiastic and layman, wherever in the professions a religious, scientific, scholarly mind, there was felt the central intellectual commotion of those years--the Battle of the Great Three. |
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