'£ THE LIGHT OF DAY 



difference of views between them, and begin to 

 quote his texts. Trumps called for trumps, and 

 father could match every one of Jerry's texts with 

 one of his own. Jerry was the most ready and 

 smooth of tongue, but I think father had the great- 

 est depth of religious feeling. I can see him now 

 as he sat with the Book open on his knees, a 

 tallow dip in his hand, his face flushed, his voice 

 loud, hurling Paul's predestinarianism at his neigh- 

 bor's free salvation Methodism. Back and forth 

 the disputants, like two fencers, fought the ground 

 over. Sometimes one clearly had the advantage, 

 sometimes a telling text gave it to the other. Both 

 looked upon the Bible as the infallible Word of 

 God, but neither took it in a "soft and flexible 

 sense," to use the words of Sir Thomas Browne, but 

 in a rigid, dogmatic sense. Both were, or thought 

 they were. God-fearing men, but each looked upon 

 the religious belief of the other with the utmost 

 contempt. The sect to which my father belonged 

 was especially narrow and harsh in its judgments 

 of other sects, particularly of the Methodists, who 

 on nearly all points were exactly their antipodes. 

 The name of Methodism, with its cheap and easy 

 terms of salvation, always made father's lip curl and 

 his nostrils dilate. He would not have been caught 

 in one of their churches on any account whatever. 

 The old school Baptists look upon themselves as 

 the elect, the chosen few, the remnant that is to be 

 saved, and they treat all other claimants to an inter- 

 est in the Celestial City as pretenders. It was to 



