"No, Aunt Jane, please take the long, roundabout way," I urged.
"Well," she laughed, "come to think about it, it don't make much difference which way I take, for if I start on the short road, it'll be roundabout before I git through with it. You know my failin', child. Well, I reckon the old church is as good a startin'-place as any. You ricollect me p'intin' it out to you the day we went to town, and tellin' you about Martin Luther and the bell. That buildin' was put up when Brother Wilson was pastor of the Presbyterian church. Before his time they'd been without a preacher for a good while, and things was in a run-down and gone-to-seed sort o' condition when he come up from Tennessee to take the charge.
"Brother Wilson's father and mother was Georgia people, and I ricollect one of his brothers comin' through here with all his slaves on his way to Mizzourah to set 'em free. The family moved from Georgia to Tennessee because there was better schools there, and they wanted to educate their children. They was the sort o' people that thought more of books and learnin' than they did of money. But before Brother Wilson got his schoolin', he took a notion he'd go into the army, and when he wasn't but sixteen or seventeen years old, he was fightin' under Gen. Andrew Jackson, and went through two campaigns. Then he come home and went to college, and the next thing he was preachin' the gospel.
"It's sort o' curious to think of a man bein' a soldier and a preacher, too. But then, you know, the Bible talks about Christians jest like they was soldiers, and the Christian's life jest like it was a warfare. The Apostle tells us to put on the whole armor of God, and when he was ready to depart he said, 'I have fought a good fight.' And I used to think that maybe Brother Wilson wouldn't 'a' been as good a preacher as he was if he hadn't first been a good soldier. He used to say, 'I come of fighting stock and preaching stock, and the fighting blood in me had to have its day.' The preachin' blood didn't seem to come out in Martin Luther and John Calvin, but the fightin' blood was there mighty strong. Folks used to say that one or the other of 'em had a fight every day in the week, and if they couldn't git up a fight with some other boy, they'd fight with each other. The druggist said that after Brother Wilson come, he sold as much court-plaster and arnica in a month as he used to sell in six months, and Mis' Zerilda Moore used to declare she never had seen Martin Luther but once when his eyes and nose was the natural shape and color. Some of the church-members was scandalized at havin' their preacher's sons set such a bad example to the rest o' the town boys, and they went to Brother Wilson to talk to him about it. But he jest laughed and says he, 'There's no commandment that says, "Thou shalt not fight," and I can't whip my boys for having the spirit of their forefathers on both sides of the house.' Says he, 'Their great-grandfather on their mother's side was a fighting parson in Revolutionary times. He was in his pulpit one Sunday morning when news was brought that the British were coming, and he stepped down out of his pulpit and organized a company from the men of his congregation, and marched out and whipped the British; and then he went back to the church and finished his sermon.' Says he, 'My boys can't help fighting like their mother's grandfather any more than they can help having their mother's eyes and hair.'
"Now here I am talkin' about Martin Luther Wilson's great-grandfather when I started out to tell you about the old church. Le's see if I can't git back to the straight road and keep on it the rest of the way.
"When Brother Wilson first come, the Presbyterian church was in the old graveyard in the lower part o' town. Maybe you ricollect seem' it the day we went to town. Mighty dismal-lookin' place, all grown up in weeds and underbrush. And he took a look at it and saw jest how things was, and says he, 'You've got your church in the right place. A dead church,' says he, 'ought to be in a graveyard. But,' says he, 'when the spirit of the Lord breathes over this valley of dry bones, I expect to see the dead arise, and we'll build a house of the Lord amongst the habitations of the living.' And bless your life, he went to work and got up a revival that lasted three months, and spread to all the churches—the Babtist and the Methodist and the Christian—till every sinner in town was either converted or at the mourners' bench. And before it was over in town, it started in the country churches and kept up till Sam Amos said it looked to him like the preachers would have to go out o' business for a while or move to some other place, for there wasn't any material in the county for 'em to work on. Mother used to say it was pretty near equal to the big revival they had 'way back yonder in 1830. She said every seat in a church then was a mourners' bench, and such shoutin' and singin' and prayin' never was heard before or since. Some o' the converts would fall in trances, and you couldn't tell whether they was dead or alive. Uncle Jim Matthews's father, Job Matthews, stayed in a trance for two days and nights, and mother said he never seemed like the same man after that. He never could tell what he'd seen when he was in the trance, and when folks'd question him about it, a sort of a wild look'd come into the old man's eyes and he'd say, 'I've seen things of which it is not lawful for me to speak.' He didn't take any more interest in his farmin' or the family affairs, and when his wife'd try to stir him up and persuade him to work like he'd been used to workin', he'd say: 'The things of this world are temporal, but the things of the other world are eternal. The soul of man is eternal, and this world can never content it. I've seen the abiding-place o' the soul,' he'd say, 'and I'm like a homesick child.' Mother said nobody appeared to understand the old man, and his wife'd be so fretted and outdone with him that she'd say that if a person went into a trance, they might as well stay in it, for Job hadn't been any use to the world since he come out of his.
"Well, when the revival was over, and all the converts had been received into the church, Brother Wilson called a meetin' o' the session and says he, 'There's two things to be done now. We've got to come up out of that old graveyard, and build a church in town that'll stand as a monument to this generation of Presbyterians long after their bodies have gone back to the old graveyard and moldered into dust; and while we're doing that,' says he, 'we must bring this congregation up to the standards the church has set for its members.' And he got the session to pass resolutions sayin' that all sinful and worldly pleasures like cyard-playin' and horse-racin' and dancin' was forbidden to church-members, and that the Sabbath day must be kept holy and no member of the church could ride or walk or take a journey on the Sabbath unless it was to do some work of necessity or mercy. Says he, 'This flock has been without a shepherd so long that the Good Shepherd himself could hardly tell which are the sheep and which are the goats. But,' says he, 'the time has come when every man has got to take his stand on the right hand or on the left, so the world can know what he is.'
"Well, of course these strict rulin's went mighty hard with some o' the church people, for, havin' been without a preacher so long, they'd got clean out of their religious ways. I ricollect they elected old Mr. Joe Bigsby superintendent of the Sunday-school, and the very first Sunday he was examinin' the children to see if their parents had taught 'em the things they ought to know, and he called on Johnny West to say the Lord's Prayer, and John was talkin' to the boy next to him and didn't hear. The old man was mighty quick-tempered, and he hollered out: 'John West! You John! Confound you, sir! Stand up and say the Lord's Prayer.' And then he ricollected himself, and he turned around to Brother Wilson, and says he, 'Now, I know that ain't any way for a Sunday-school superintendent to talk, but,' says he, 'jest give me a little time, and I'll git the hang o' this superintendent business.' Says he, 'When a Presbyterian's been without a church of his own for three years and been driftin' around loose amongst the Methodists and the Babtists, you've got to make some allowance for him.'
"Well, after he'd got the Sunday-school and the weekly prayer-meetin' started, and all the church-members comin' regular to preachin', and everything runnin' smooth, Brother Wilson set about havin' the church built.
"The way they build churches now, child, is mighty different from the way they used to build 'em. Now nobody gives anything but money. It's money, money, money, every which way you turn. But in the olden time the way they built a church was like the way the Israelites built the tabernacle. You ricollect the Bible says, 'Every one whose heart stirred him up, and every one whom his spirit made willing, brought an offering to the Lord.' The rich men brought gold and silver, and the rulers brought onyx stones and oil and incense, and the poor men brought wood for the tabernacle and goats' skins and rams' skins, and the women they spun and wove and made purple and scyarlet cloth and fine linen. There wasn't anybody so poor that he couldn't give somethin' if his heart and his spirit was willin'. And that's the way it was when that Presbyterian church was built in the old time.