Before he had finished, Barton Stone was beside him grasping his hand, but too overcome to utter a word. The congregation sat a moment in breathless silence, tears of sympathy and thankfulness in the eyes of even the most stolid. Then Mason Rogers, striding down the aisle, and facing the people, with one arm thrown over the shoulders of his old friend and comrade, lifted up his voice in thanksgiving. He prayed in his own homely words, but with fervency and fire as though his lips had indeed been touched with "a live coal from the altar." "Amen!" and "Amen!" were the exclamations from all parts of the building. Then, in a clear, full voice, he started the hymn: "I'm not ashamed to own my Lord, Nor to defend his cause." The congregation quickly joined in; and as the melody of noble old "Arlington" resounded through the building, the people left their seats, and, filing down the aisle, each in turn grasped the hand of the returned brother, and welcomed him again into fellowship. Thus, like a sincere and peace-loving Christian, Hiram Gilcrest once more took his place among his brethren, humbly and lovingly, with never again a trace of his former spirit of prejudice and dogmatic intolerance. As for the various other characters of this story, little more need be said. Barton Stone labored for many years in various fields of usefulness in Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana and Missouri. In 1843 he returned for a last visit to Cane Ridge. He was then an old man, bent and palsied, and so feeble that he had to be helped into the pulpit; but his eyes kindled with the old-time light, his bent form straightened with something of the old-time vigor, and his voice became full and vibrant as he stood facing that assembly where many seats were now occupied by the children and grandchildren of those who in this old meetinghouse forty years before had as a church renounced all human authoritative voice in matters of religious worship, and had resolved that henceforward the Bible should be their only rule of faith and practice, and belief in Jesus as the Christ their only creed. Stone preached this last sermon from the text of Paul's farewell to the brethren at Ephesus, "And now behold I know that ye all among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God shall see my face no more." He was truly the old man eloquent as, standing for the last time in that pulpit, he reviewed the past, spoke approvingly of the present, and admonished to future zeal. He died in 1844 in Missouri, and the following spring his remains were brought to Kentucky by the members of Cane Ridge Church, and reinterred in the old churchyard.