Peter Cartwright boasts that, on a certain occasion, he “shook his brimstone wallet” over the people.  Mr. Soden could never preach without his brimstone wallet.  There are those of refinement so attenuated that they will not admit that fear can have any place in religion.  But a religion without fear could never have evangelized or civilized the West, which at one time bade fair to become a perdition as bad as any that Brother Sodom ever depicted.  And against these on the one side, and the Brother Sodoms on the other, I shall interrupt my story to put this chapter under shelter of that wise remark of the great Dr. Adam Clark, who says “The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, the terror of God confounds the soul;” and that other saying of his:  “With the fear of God the love of God is ever consistent; but where the terror of the Lord reigns, there can neither be fear, faith, nor love; nay, nor hope either.”  And yet I am not sure that even the Brother Sodoms were made in vain.

On this evening Mr. Soden was as terrible as usual.  Bud heard him without flinching.  Small, who sat farther forward, listened with pious approval.  Mr. Soden, out of distorted figures pieced together from different passages of Scripture, built a hell, not quite, Miltonic, nor yet Dantean, but as Miltonic and Dantean as his unrefined imagination could make it.  As he rose toward his climax of hideous description, Walter Johnson trembled from head to foot and sat close to Bud.  Then, as burly Mr. Soden, with great gusto, depicted materialistic tortures that startled the nerves of everybody except Bud, Walter wanted to leave, but Bud would not let him.  For some reason he wished to keep his companion in the crucible as long as possible.

“Young man!” cried Mr. Soden, and the explosive voice seemed to come from the hell that he had created—­“young man! you who have followed the counsel of evil companions”—­here he paused and looked about, as if trying to find the man he wanted, while Walter crept up close to Bud and shaded his face—­“I mean you who have chosen evil pursuits and who can not get free from bad habits and associations that are dragging you down to hell!  You are standing on the very crumbling brink of hell to-night.  The smell of the brimstone is on your garments; the hot breath of hell is in your face!  The devils are waiting for you!  Delay and you are damned!  You may die before daylight!  You may never get out that door!  The awful angel of death is just ready to strike you down!” Here some shrieked with terror, others sobbed, and Brother Sodom looked with approval on the storm he had awakened.  The very harshness of his tone, his lofty egotism of manner, that which had roused all Bud’s combativeness, shook poor Walter as a wind would shake a reed.  In the midst of the general excitement he seized his hat and hastened out the door.  Bud followed, while Soden shot his lightnings after them, declaring that “young men who ran away from the truth would dwell in torments forever.”