CHAPTER VI.

That sermon was preached almost thirty-three years ago.  It was an extemporaneous discourse, and no notes were preserved.  Nevertheless, there were circumstances attending its delivery, that have indelibly impressed its leading points on the memory of the writer.

S. J. H. Snyder was a Lutheran from Pennsylvania, and at that time was a resident of Atchison county.  He had traveled to see the world, and was a writer of books.  He heard the sermon, and was greatly taken with it.  He wrote out a report of it, and handed his report to me for criticism and correction.  He intended to send it for publication to a paper in Pennsylvania.  I said to him that his report left out the most essential and vital part of the sermon, and proposed myself to write out an abstract of it for his use.  This I did, but my friend Mr. Snyder concluded:  “This is a hard saying, who can hear it?” He was not willing to be counted unsound in the faith by his brethren in Pennsylvania, and forwarded the original manuscript.

There were also in the audience two young gentlemen, recently come from the New England States to seek their fortune.  They were just of that age to think that what they did not know, or at least what the people of New England did not know, was not worth knowing.  Such a meeting in the open air; such an audience, in which the dress of every man and woman was got up according to their own notions, and that, too, without consulting Mrs. Grundy; such a preacher! and such a sermon!  Certainly these all were new to them, and did not command their highest admiration.  These young gentlemen kept up a sort of running commentary between themselves, on what they saw going on, until, becoming tired of their misbehavior, I turned and said to them in effect:  “Young gentlemen, you profess to be men of good breeding, and it is understood that well-bred people will behave themselves in meeting.”  They were very angry, and one of them wrote me a saucy letter about it.  But finding little sympathy in the settlement, they went to Atchison, and there they found abundant sympathy and open ears to hear.  A man who was a preacher, and a pronounced free State man, had come from Illinois and had settled on the Stranger Creek; and who could tell the mischief he might do to his brethren who were squatters from Missouri?  When these same New England gentlemen were in their turn stripped of all they were worth by the “Border Ruffians” it changed their feelings toward their free State brethren “mightily.”

And now that feeling of dissatisfaction that had been all along festering in the hearts of the people, began to come to the surface.  An inside view would have revealed a perpetual murmur of discontent.  The Territorial Legislature was now in session, and doing its work, and copies of the laws they had enacted were coming into circulation.  No legislature in America had ever been elected as they had been,