Five years had flitted by since Jake Benton was converted down in the hills.  The battle between holiness and sin-you-must religion had waxed hotter and hotter.  Masked mobs had scoured the country at different times, threatening the very lives of enemies.  The sin-you-must group had decreased in number, but had increased in wickedness.  It could truthfully be said that every member of Mount Olivet church was at this time a positive force for evil.  The membership had dwindled to one-fourth its former size.  Somebody is responsible for the statement that the blackest deeds known to the world have been done in the name of religion, love, and liberty.  Mount Olivet Church did her blackest deeds in the name of religion.  She was determined to crush her adversaries, and she was not particular as to the means she used.  Every member who had even the tiniest spark of God’s love in his heart had either cast his lot with the holiness movement or given up his religious profession altogether.  Preacher Bonds had grown more and more zealous in his fight against holiness.

Deacon Gramps had preached his doctrine everywhere, in his home as well as in the church, and he had already seen its fruits manifested right in his home.  One of his sons who had now become of age had built a sort of philosophy of life on his father’s teaching.  He had reasoned something like this:  “Since Father sins, and Mother sins, and the preacher sins, and everybody else sins, and nobody can keep from sinning, then it follows that one is not responsible for the sins he commits whether they be large or small, few or many.  Then why not have a good time in this life?  Why not go the full length into sinful pleasure?” And go the full length he did.  He had become involved in one criminal scrape after another, and he would have landed in the penitentiary before this time had it not been for Deacon Cramps’ financial backing.  And by this time it had come to be common knowledge in the community that the son’s profligacy was almost certain to involve the Deacon in financial ruin.  It was a fact much discussed in inner business circles at Dobbinsville that Mr. Gramps’ farm was heavily mortgaged, and that unless some crook or turn unforeseen favored him he would soon face bankruptcy.  He had been unable to pay the interest on the notes he had been obliged to obtain in order to keep his son from going where he really belonged.

As for Jake Benton, during these five years since his conversion, his poverty had stuck closer to him than a brother; but thanks be to his persecutions, he had grown immensely rich in spiritual resources.  He had become a mighty man in prayer.  The sick were healed in answer to his prayer of simple faith.  And it seemed only a natural thing for him to pray for his enemies.  And as for love, Jake loved everybody and everybody had found it out.  If anybody in the community wanted a favor done them, all that was necessary was to mistreat Benton and he would do them a favor.  He had also developed into quite a preacher.  Ever since the meeting closed in the brush arbor he regularly gathered the saints together on Sunday in the school house, and encouraged them in the things of the Lord.  His life was simply exemplary, and even his bitterest enemies were compelled to acknowledge that God was with him.