Morton led old Blaze up to the stile and helped his mother to mount, gallantly put her foot in the stirrup, arranged her long riding-skirt, and then mounted his own mare. Dolly sprang forward prancing and dashing, and chafing against the bit in a way highly pleasing to Morton, who thought that going to meeting would be a dull affair, if it were not for the fun of letting Dolly know who was her master. The ride to church was a long one, for there had never been preaching nearer to the Hissawachee settlement than ten miles away. Morton found the sermon rather more interesting than usual. There still lingered in the West at this time the remains of the controversy between "Old-side" and "New-side" Presbyterians, that dated its origin before the Revolution. Parson Donaldson belonged to the Old side. With square, combative face, and hard, combative voice, he made war upon the laxity of New-side Presbyterians, and the grievous heresies of the Arminians, and in particular upon the exciting meetings of the Methodists. The great Cane Ridge Camp-meeting was yet fresh in the memories of the people, and for the hundredth time Mr. Donaldson inveighed against the Presbyterian ministers who had originated this first of camp-meetings, and set agoing the wild excitements now fostered by the Methodists. He said that Presbyterians who had anything to do with this fanaticism were led astray of the devil, and the Synod did right in driving some of them out. As for Methodists, they denied "the Decrees." What was that but a denial of salvation by grace? And this involved the overthrow of the great Protestant doctrine of Justification by Faith. This is rather the mental process by which the parson landed himself at his conclusions, than his way of stating them to his hearers. In preaching, he did not find it necessary to say that a denial of the decrees logically involved the rest. He translated his conclusions into a statement of fact, and boldly asserted that these crazy, illiterate, noisy, vagabond circuit riders were traitors to Protestantism, denying the doctrine of Justification, and teaching salvation by the merit of works. There were many divines, on both sides, in that day who thought zeal for their creed justified any amount of unfairness. (But all that is past!) Morton's combativeness was greatly tickled by this discourse, and when they were again in the saddle to ride the ten miles home, he assured his mother that he wouldn't mind coming to meeting often, rain or shine, if the preacher would only pitch into somebody every time. He thought it wouldn't be hard to be good, if a body could only have something bad to fight. "Don't you remember, mother, how you used to read to me out of that old "Pilgrim's Progress," and show me the picture of Christian thrashing Apollyon till his hide wouldn't hold shucks? If I could fight the devil that way, I wouldn't mind being a Christian."