evening and coming back next day. Church edifices being scarce, these meetings were held in the woods, and a large encampment was formed by the people in attendance. This was the origin of the camp-meeting system, which for many years was the only effective way of spreading the Gospel in the West. It was at a camp-meeting that Peter obtained religion, and he has ever since been a zealous advocate of, and a hard worker at, them. From the first he was successful. The fame of the "boy preacher" went abroad into all the land, and people came in to the camp from a hundred miles around to hear him. He had little education, but he knew his Bible thoroughly, and was a ready speaker, and, above all, he knew how to deal with the people to whom he preached. He made many converts, and from the first took rank as the most popular preacher in the West.
Peter not only believed in the overruling power of God, but he was firmly convinced of the active and personal agency of the devil in human affairs. Many of the follies and faults of the people around him took place, he averred, because they were possessed of devils. Each camp-meeting was to him a campaign