Page:Benjamin Fisk Barrett, an Autobiography.djvu/21

Rh one of the "Select Men" to manage the business affairs of the town. He was never a member of any church (nor was my mother), thinking himself not good enough or religious enough to belong to a church. Yet very few church members, I think, lived a more upright or truly religious life than did my father. There were no Sunday-schools in that part of the country when I was a boy; and only occasional preaching in a school-house two or three miles distant by a Methodist minister on his circuit. I remember well the first time I was taken to one of these meetings. The expected minister did not come, and the time was occupied chiefly by a lay “exhorter,” who pictured in the most graphic and glowing style the burning lake into which all the unconverted would be cast by an angry God, there to writhe and groan in agony through endless ages. I took it all to be true, because said by one whom I thought was a minister, and I was terribly frightened. The fearful picture of those lurid fires of hell into which I was liable to be plunged any moment remained with me for years, often harassing me with fear and trembling during the hours of night, and racking my soul