Part 25 (2/2)
”There wouldn't have been half so much delay if the man hadn't been a deserter,” said one of his enemies--one as a foree was upon his feet, his eyes aflaely declamatory style he launched into a detailed account of the late colonel's life and services, his wounds, his long sufferings and final death in poverty, winding up with a vivid word picture of a battle (Antieta and coreat excite in his favor, but he rather weakened the effect by at once de to coainst the man who had uttered thereat was the bitterness engendered by this that the Post was now practically divided, and being unable to coned Subsequently he took issue with his for satirically on their church regularity and professed Christianity, as opposed to their indifference to the late colonel, and denouncing in various public conversations the double-s of the ”little Gods,” as he termed those who ran the GAR Post, the church, and the shi+pyards
Not long after his religious affairs reached a cli the lead of the dominant star, Mr
Palmer, publicly denounced him from the pulpit one Sunday as an enemy of the church and of true Christianity!
”There is a ation,” he exclaimed in a burst of impassioned oratory, ”who poses as a Christian and a Baptist, who is in his heart's depth the church's worst enes of evil against the faith than he, and he doesn't sell tobacco, either!”
The last reference at once fixed the identity of the person, and caused Burridge to get up and leave the church He pondered over this for a ti visited Graylock one Sunday drove there every Sabbath thereafter, each ti this for six -place, and finally allied hiht possibly have res over his wrongs, a calust with those whoion in his on finally caused hi of the Bible This doubt, together with his own desire for justification according to the Word, finally put the idea in his mind to make a study of the Bible himself He would read it, he said He would study Hebrew and Greek, and refer all questionable readings of words and passages back to the original tongue in which it had been written
With this end in view he began a study of these languages, the ilected his business Day after day he labored, putting a Bible and a Concordance upon a pile of soap-boxes near the door of his store and poring over the care of itself He finallythe word ”repent” frequently used, and that God had ht and wrong, he gravitated toward the belief that therefore his traducers in Noank knehat they were doing, and that before he needed to forgive theht cover all--theyto end with this one feeling subconsciously do one another, forgiving your brother seventy tiood for evil, selling all that you have and giving it to the poor, were ive this interpretation at Eustis, where he was allowed to have a Sunday-school, until the minister came and told him once, ”to his face,” as the local report ran: ”We don't want you here”
Meekly he went forth and, joining a church across the Sound on Long Island, sailed over every Sunday and there advanced the same views until he was personally snubbed by thethere he went to A now that he held distinctive views about so In this congregation he was still comfortably at rest when I knew him
”All sensitiveness,” the sail- account ”There ain't anything the rieved He wanted to be the bigof this and of his tender relationshi+p with children as I had noticed it, and of his service to the late colonel when one day being in the store, I said:
”Do you stand on the Bible coe?”
”Yes, sir,” he replied, ”I do”
”Believe every word of it to be true?”
”Yes, sir”
”If your brother has offended you, how ive hiive your brothers?”
”Yes, sir--if they repent”
”If they repent?”
”Yes, sir, if they repent That's the interpretation In Matthew you will find, 'If he repent, forgive hiive the en up enive them”
I looked at the man, a little astonished, but he looked so sincere and earnest that I could not help s
”How do you reconcile that with the command, 'Love one another?' You surely can't love and refuse to forgive theive them,” he repeated ”If John there,”