By this time religious privileges were few and religious liberty greatly abridged by the operation of the “new Constitution.” Ministers were afraid to preach, and the membership discouraged and depressed. The party in power were very vigilant in hunting out and dragging before the civil courts all non-juring ministers.
Mr. Breeding could not take the oath, and he contented himself for some time with an occasional exhortation to the faithful few who still kept the altar fires burning in a quiet way.
The meetings for prayer began to attract the attention of those in authority. They concluded that Mr. B. must be preaching, as the meetings were so regular and so well attended. The super-loyalists determined if such was the case they would take the law into their own hands and see what virtue there was in powder and ball.
The next Sabbath found eight armed men on the front seat to enforce the authority of the new Constitution. There appeared an equal number of orderly citizens prepared to protect the peaceful worship of the congregation. For a time matters wore quite a menacing aspect.
The usual prayer meeting exercises were had, and Mr. Breeding closed up with a warm and an earnest exhortation. The services were somewhat abbreviated, that the unfriendly parties might the sooner be separated.
The next Sabbath the same armed super-loyalists were present, but the friends of peace and order were absent. The preacher had great liberty in the service, and felt in no way intimidated by the presence of armed men on the front bench. During his earnest exhortation, founded upon a favorite text, the men became somewhat excited, but they had either not chosen a leader or the leader showed the white feather. They kept calling one upon the other to start—“You start, and I will follow.” “No, you start, and I will follow,” were expressions, though whispered, that could be distinctly heard by those near them. Such things did not deter the preacher. They could not browbeat him down, and finally, in their shame, they vented their pique on a luckless dog that lay stretched out on the floor near them.
After this fruitless attempt to frighten these faithful and devout men and women, and to get some pretext for adding another name to the list of Missouri Martyrs, they surceased their persecutions, modified their prejudices, toned down their spirit, and from enemies some of them have become the fast friends and even the zealous converts of the sect that was “everywhere spoken against.”
Such scenes of suffering, trial and danger, simply because the victim was a minister of the gospel, recalls the persecutions of other times, and re-enacts a history which we had vainly hoped would not darken the annals of the nineteenth century.
While the details of these dark scenes are stripped of all extra coloring that the naked facts may appear, the ever active imagination will, despite our soberest efforts, supply the want, and memory will be busy with the history of other times and other countries until Missouri is forgotten; the finest model of human government ever devised by man crumbles into dust; the much vaunted religious liberty expires upon its own desecrated altars; the light of a boasted civilization fades into darkness; the noblest and freest institutions go down in hopeless barbarism; a pure, non-political Christianity, with a non-juring ministry, are called upon to reproduce the agony of the Garden and the tragedy of Calvary without repeating the work and grace of atonement, and in memory we are living over the times of Charles the Fifth, Montmorenci and the Duke of Alva. The spirits of the French Huguenots, the Waldenses, Vaudois Martyrs and Bohemian Protestants have been reproduced in the ministry of Missouri. “Why do the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his annointed, saying, ‘Let us break their bands asunder and cast away their cords from us.’”