He was the grandson of the minister, and while minister’s sons are not always well behaved, it is said their grandsons are; at least John Calvin, an infant non-conformist, knew better than to talk to a daughter of the conformist church during meeting. He remained quiet with his eyes fixed on the preacher with a sleepy stare, while Dorothy’s voice grew louder and more insistent; to the amusement of the younger members of the congregation, until the thought occurred, that now all peep holes would be hunted out and plugged by Deacon Cressler, the carpenter. The schoolmaster, knowing the ways of and accustomed to interruptions by children, did not waver in the fervency of his prayer, except as the child’s voice grew louder his own was raised in seeming greater earnestness. With eyes apparently fixed on a small gable window in the front church wall, through which a beam of sunlight made a slanting bar of silver he began his sermon: “When a stranger far out in the Valley of Virginia sees this church he is struck by its location and impressed by its look of age and permanence. He asks its history and is told: ‘It is the Jackson River Meeting House, built by Dissenters, Presbyterians, who came to this wild land from far Scotland and Ireland, counting the cost and danger nothing, if they might but find a place to worship God as conscience told them God should be worshipped. But they have found that even the groves of the wilderness are not God’s free and holy temples.’ “Christ’s mission was to wipe out persecution, to tear out the partitions of prejudice in his kingdom, to establish a universal faith; yet history shows that persecution, the murderous offspring of prejudice, remains; that all that is necessary to unleash it, start the rack creaking and the stake burning is a minor doctrinal divergence; it may be as to the form of baptism, belief in trans-substantiation or predestination. “Churchmen clothed with a little brief authority become venomously intolerant; instigate the sovereign to acts of oppression, particularly against kindred sects; against other spiritual warriors serving under the banner of the cross; leading lives much as theirs were before they occupied the seats of the mighty and struggling as they once did against religious intolerance. The commission, ‘Go ye into all the world,’ is neglected and the torch of evangelism kindled in the white flame of sacrifice to light the way, is perverted to light the pyre of martyrdom of believers, as they, that the Son of God was crucified that Jew and Gentile, Greek and barbarian might live.