Pine Bluff daily graphic. (Pine Bluff, Ark.) 1893-1942, 1914-07-08
HILLS PREACHER
ALSO A farmer
He Thinks Out Sermons Be
tween Horns of Plow, With
Lines About His Neck.
STRICTLY ORTHODOX
Horny. Handed Follower Of Christ
breaches Unauthorized Scripture
and Believes in it Clear Down
to His Toes.

ltuCUCS HUuuutldtVu scripture
and Believes in it Clear Down
to His Toes.
Mountain Home, Ark, July e.
The working preacher of the hills is
now preparing for his next years
crop. The preacher of the hills dis
courses every Sunday at the Happy
Hollow, Quality Ridge, Chigger Hill,
Possum Trot, Loafers' Glory and
hundred other little churches with
quaint names, set on green ridges or
in secluded covers. fitting places for
the worship of God, close to Mother
Nature. His sermons are inspired
between the horns of the plough, with
the lines around his neck, urging Old
Beck down the corn or cotton rows;
or to the music of resounding blows
of his axe as he splits his 400 rails a
day to fence the new clearing. He
reads of Billy Sundays $1,000 SER
mons as he reads a fairy tale. He
asks little for his work and gets less.
He breaches for the good he can do
and for the glory of God.
Always he is man of mature of
declining years, with his age sitting
lightly on his countenance, with hair
white or streaked with gray, with
kindly eyes, and an ever ready hand
outstretched to help the lowly in
spirit or the suffering neighbor. In
variably we find him living high up
on some ridge or plateau, cultivating,
with the help of his family, little
hill farm, from which his real living
comes. He never lives in the bottoms.
He is old-fashioned and orthodox. HA
breaches the doctrine of the Bible I'M
adulterated. He'll is a place of ever
last perdition and heaven a celestial
place. He believes it clear down to
the toes of his high-top boots. And
he makes his congregations believe it.
Simple El0qnence.
Some of the old white-haired par
sons of the hills, with their simple
language, their unassuming manner
of delivery, their quaint expressions
and their deep and undying faith in
their religion, could convert whole
of the most arrogant type with two
sermons.
He farms the~way he breaches. He
has the same strong faith in his land
as he has in his religion. His place is
we'll kept always, a residence clean
and neat, with a coy little front yard.
His barn is full of hay, his cribs full
of corn and there is always meat in
| the smokehouse. He works hard, gen.
orally having a large family to sup
port.
Prayers are held every night in
winter around the old fireplace full
of swapping. burning logs in the front
room, and out on the front proch in
the summer time. The neighborhood
| looks up him not only as a spiritual
| adviser but as a physical ne as we'll.
He is called in to settle disputes that
! would lead to lawsuits, family squab-
bles that would end in divorces, to
advise as to seed and planting, to sit
up with the sick, to lecture the way
ward young, to administer the last
sad rites of death and to console the
bereaved. He is the busiest man in
the neighborhood.
The MOurners' Bench.
At II o'clock every Sunday morning
her little flock gathers in at the meet
ing house. If the community is pros
porous a wheezy little organ accom-
panies the strong voiced lads and las
ses that make up the choir. He
breaches in good, strong voice that
carries WE'LL He exhorts, pleads,
urges and expounds the gospel, that
good old religion our grandfathers
knew.
AS he wakes warm he is answered
by amens, sometimes shouting. He
calls on members of his flock for
prayers. They are fervent and from
the heart. He closes his sermon with
hymn and calls for mourners. They
come forward to the mourners' bench,
confess their sins and are converted.
Next Sunday, maybe, there will be a
big baptizing at the creek that winds
it way around the foot Of mountain.
The folks from three townships come
to see the service; to see possibly
some neighborhood bully, now sub
dued and penitent, baptized IN the
clear, cold water into useful and
conscientious citizen of the commun-
ity.
After crops are laid by in July the
revival meetings are held. In some
shaded wood the parson and a few
faithful followers erect an arbor out
of boughs of immense dimensions.
Rough boards are laid on chunks for
seats, or, If near some tie job, ties are
used for seating purposes.
Revival Meetings.
| The revivals last as long as the in
terest lasts. and the interest lasts
generally as long as any sinner holds
out against conversion. In course OF
time they all fall before the logical.
religious argumentsof the parson and
the pleadings of his flock. When the
sinners are all converted and the
backsliders repent and are taken back
into the church the meeting ends.
The average hill preacher knows
little of theology in the theoretical
sense. Practically he is a competent
student He knows his Bible from