Messenger of Peace--June 1912

 indication of better weather. A gentleman rode up to our gate and requested us to keep him over night. We were not keeping people as a business, but I thought we ought to let him stay, so we put his horse away and he came in out of the storm. We lived then at Buena Vista, Ind., and our church house was in sight. He asked me what kind of a church it was.
I answered, “It is an Old School Baptist church.”

“Well,” said he, “I thought they were all dead long ago.”

I told him there were a few of them yet, and asked him if he knew anything of them.

“Yes, I used to see them and hear them often.”

I asked him what they believed.

He said, “They preached infants to hell not a span long.”

I told him the same was said of these. “What else?”

“Well, they were ignorant, and did not believe in good works;” and “They held that what is to be will be.”

I told him that all this was said of these people. He was surprised to find any of them alive. He talked much of the ignorance and queer ways of our people.

At supper I did not call on him for thanks, and after I had given thanks he asked me what church I was of. I told him I belonged to these people he had been talking about.

I really felt sorry for him. He regretted so much what he had said, and tried to apologize. I told him to let it go and eat his supper.

The next morning he asked what we charged him for lodging. We utterly refused to take anything, and it seemed to add to his discomfort to find that we would not let him pay anything. He said he would never speak evil of any one’s church, after this, and it served as a lesson to me never to speak in terms of reproach of any one’s church. It does no good to do so, and harms him that does it.