They found everywhere the Sabbath profaned, only a few good people in any one place, and Bibles rare possessions. In some places the people were longing for the Gospel. In all the leading towns they formed Bible societies, and everywhere preached and distributed Bibles, which were gladly received.
From Nashville they went down the Cumberland and Mississippi with General Jackson and fifteen hundred volunteers. In New Orleans they gained the consent of Bishop DeBury to distribute the Scriptures in French to the French Romanists, who made up three-fourths of the population of the state. They found no Protestant church in the city. They here organized a Bible society, and remained several weeks to preach and to hold prayer-meetings.
CHAPTER VII.
MILLS' SECOND TOUR.
In the year 1814 Mr. Mills having obtained the assistance of some of the eastern Bible societies, and having chosen as companion the Rev. Daniel Smith, started on another tour through the South and West. They went laden with Bibles and the prayers of Christian friends. They went through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Missouri. In all these states they found the people "exceedingly destitute of religious privileges," and a "lamentable want of Bibles and missionaries." They found "American families who never saw a Bible, or heard of Jesus Christ." There was only one minister to ten thousand people if equally placed; but there were districts containing from twenty to fifty thousand "without a preacher." These men were light-bringers to this "valley of the shadow of death," as Mills called it. They found English soldiers, French Romanists, colored slaves, our own dear countrymen, greedy for the bread of life.
They traveled more than six thousand miles; they passed through a variety of climates; they endured "perils in the city, perils of the wilderness, perils on the rivers and on the sea," that they might cast that bread upon the waters which you and I are finding after many days.
Mills arrived for the second time in New Orleans, soon after the celebrated battle of January 8, 1815, and cheered many hearts by his coming. He visited the soldiers in prison, the sick and wounded in the hospitals; kneeling on the bare floor where they lay, he prayed and talked with them, sang for them, and gave them Bibles; he preached in camp. The Philadelphia society had given him a quantity of French Bibles. The people were clamorous for them. They thronged the distributor's door, and remained even after the notice had been given that no more could be had until the following day. They came sometimes from great distances. In one week a thousand copies were given away. In one instance a Romish priest assisted in this work. The bishop acknowledged the deplorable state of the people, and preferred their having the Protestant version to none at all.
When these adventurers in Christ's kingdom visited St. Louis, they found it a place of two thousand inhabitants,—"a tumble-down French village,—built mainly of wooden slabs and poles set vertically, and well daubed with mortar mixed with straw, though there were many log houses." In a school-room they delivered the first Presbyterian or Congregational sermons ever preached on the west side of the Mississippi. They were gratefully received, and had crowded audiences. The people would gladly have supported either one could he have stayed.
But the immediate duty of these explorers for souls was to return to the churches which had sent them out, to report what they had discovered, and to beg that men be sent to these waste places which were waiting to be made to blossom. All New England was roused to effort by their appeal, and the next year ten or twelve men responded to the summons.