United States or Ukraine ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He did not think that any wrong was ever done in England. And then: 'You are a Brûtestant? he asked. I answered that I was a member of the Church of England. 'Ah, thank God! he cried. 'I also am a Brûtestant a Babtist. He seemed to think that my avowal made us brothers.
Brother Rice asked Sam Amos once if Marthy and Amos Matthews was Christians. And Sam says, 'No; my Lord! It takes all o' Marthy's time to be a Babtist and all o' Amos' to be a Presbyterian. They ain't got time to be Christians. "Some folks wondered how they ever got time to do any courtin', they was so busy wranglin' over babtism and election.
We'uns air Babtists ourselves, but, thank the Lord, not o' your kind. Babtists air honest people. Babtists don't go about the country robbin' and murderin' and stealin' folks' corn. Don't tell me you air a Babtist, for I know you air a-lyin', and that's the next thing to killin' and stealin'."
I gethered a bunch o' honeysuckles to put on Marthy's table, and when I got back, Marthy and the baby was both asleep, and Amos looked as if he was beginnin' to have some little hopes of the child's salvation. "Marthy named him John; and Sam Amos said he reckoned it was for John the Babtist. But it wasn't; it was for Marthy's twin brother that died when he was jest three months old.
Old Brother Gyardner got up, and says he, 'Brethren, there's a question that's been botherin' me for some time, and I'd like to hear it discussed and git it settled, if possible; and says he, 'If a man should be babtized accidentally, and against his will, would he be a Babtist? or would he not? And they begun to argue it, and they had it up and down, and some was of one opinion and some of another.
"Everybody give a jump when he first started, and he'd got nearly through the verse before we took in what was happenin'. Even the Babtists jest looked surprised like the rest of us. But when Miss Penelope begun the third time and Uncle Jim jined in with his hollerin', I saw Bush Elrod grin, and that grin spread all over the Babtist crowd in no time.
I went over and helped Hannah with the cake, and Brother Morris said as pretty a ceremony over 'em as any Presbyterian or Babtist could 'a' said. "Well, the next Sunday everybody was on the lookout to see which church the bride and groom'd go to. Bush Elrod bet a dollar that Marthy'd have her way, and Sam Amos bet a dollar that they'd be at the Presbyterian church.
Sam Amos used to say Sam wasn't a church-member himself that there was some advantages about bein' a Babtist after all; you did have to go under the water, but then you had the right to grumble. But if a man believed that everything was predestined before the foundations of the world, there wasn't any sense or reason in findin' fault with anything that happened.
"Nobody ever could see," she continued, "how it was that Amos Matthews and Marthy Crawford ever come to marry, unless it was jest as I said, to have somebody always handy to quarrel with about their religion; and I used to think sometimes that Marthy and Amos got more pleasure that way than most folks git out o' prayin' and singin' and listenin' to preachin'. Amos was the strictest sort of a Presbyterian, and Marthy was a Babtist, and to hear them two jawin' and arguin' and bringin' up Scripture texts about predestination and infant babtism and close communion and immersion was enough to make a person wish there wasn't such a thing as churches and doctrines.
Twins run in the Crawford family. Amos had him babtized in infancy jest like he said he would, and such a hollerin' and squallin' never was heard in Goshen church. The next day Sally Ann says to me, says she, 'That child must 'a' been a Babtist, Jane; for he didn't appear to favor infant babtism.
Word Of The Day