life had been wild and reckless, until he found the Saviour in a
meeting led by an A.M.A. missionary. He was an intelligent man of some
education. He found others ready to join him in a movement for the
elevation of the people. They established a church and organized a
Sunday-school. We pushed over the mountain on horseback, after the
other visiting brethren had left the mountain region, to inspect
personally this field. We found it even as the men had represented it
to be. A little church had been organized and Sunday-school gathered.
I could learn of no other Sunday-school in that region. I heard
afterwards, that one of the old-time preachers warned the people
against the Sunday-school, saying, "It war a heap worse than a dancing
place." This same preacher had a vision, and gave an account of it to
his people. "Two devils," he said, "had been in that country getting
up some sort of an institution that they called a church." He warned
his people against them.

The two men who visited us at Jellico, together with others who had
joined with them in this effort to Christianize and educate this
community, we found busy on a hillside, laying the foundations of the
new "church house." They were enthusiastic in this new movement, which
promised so much to their community. They had drawn up a confession of
faith and covenant, which were evangelical and Congregational. They
reported {pg 204} three thousand people living in the coves and
valleys radiating from the point upon which they had planted their
"church house," absolutely without intelligent Christian instruction
of any kind. There were hundreds of square miles without a church
building of any denomination. This little company had been stirred up
by God's Spirit, and were almost starving for spiritual food. There
was a pathos even in their peculiar mountain vernacular, as one of
them said to me, "I don't understand scarcely a word you uns say. I'm