me. Then our old-fashioned camp-meetings--where are they? They are
things of the past. I recollect leaving a camp-ground at a late hour of
the night, just as the congregation divided up into groups, and the groups
went out into the woods in different directions to engage in secret
prayer. We heard them when we were three miles away--_strange secret
prayer_! Do you know anything of that kind of secret prayer at the present
time?

The common pulpit teaching of those times was wonderful(?), but it was the
best they had. It was common for preachers to make war upon education.
They often boasted of their ignorance. They claimed that education was not
necessary to qualify a man for the pulpit. The best school teachers in our
country received twelve and fifteen dollars per month for teaching, and
boarded themselves. Teachers who now pay five dollars per week for board,
can't see how those old teachers got along upon such wages. In those times
it was very common for teachers to get their board for seventy-five cents
per week. The farmers claimed that it was unnecessary to educate their
daughters, and only necessary to educate their sons sufficiently well to
enable them to keep their accounts. Beyond this it was often claimed that
an education was of no value--that it only made rascals. I recollect a very
zealous old man who preached for the German Baptists; he is now "across
the waves." Once, in my presence, he disposed of a grammatical argument
that was put against him, by saying, "It is the wisdom of the world, and
it is sensual and devilish." It was common forty years ago for preachers
to say, "I don't know what I shall say, but just as the Lord gives it to
me I will hand it to you." As a general thing those men knew no better,
and the masses of the people knew no better. The people were living in an
Emotional period, with the exception of a few brave thinkers, and they
were governed by their emotions.

Prosperity grew with the growth of our country, and the standard of
education was elevated. The free-school system took the place of the
old-fashioned subscription schools, which were worth twelve dollars per
month to the whole community, and the brave thinkers continued stirring up
thought in religion, and giving the fathers and mothers trouble about this
thing of confounding religion with passion, and our country is now fairly
at sea in an Intellectual period. Religion is now a thing to be learned
and lived--_to be done_. T