One must not infer from the irregularity of religious services that the people in these new regions were wholly without religion. Professor Buck says:
"The spiritual welfare of the Illinois pioneers was not neglected. The religious observances, with the exception of those of the French Catholics, were of the familiar type. The principal Protestant denominations at the close of the territorial period were the Methodists and the Baptists, the latter classified as 'regular,' or 'hardshell,' and separating. Presbyterianism was just beginning to get a foothold. The ministers were of two types--the circuit rider, who covered wide stretches of country and devoted all his time to religious work, and the occasional preacher who supplemented his meager income from the church by farming or some other occupation."--BUCK: _Illinois in 1818_, p. 173.
Governor Ford has left an account of the unlearned but zealous frontier preachers, of their sermons, and of the results of their work, which cannot easily be improved upon:
"Preachers of the gospel frequently sprang up from the body of the people at home, without previous training, except in religious exercises and in the study of the Holy Scriptures. In those primitive times it was not thought to be necessary that a teacher of religion should be a scholar. It was thought to be his business to preach from a knowledge of the Scriptures alone, to make appeals warm from the heart, to paint heaven and hell to the imagination of the sinner, to terrify him with the one, and to promise the other as a reward for a life of righteousness. However ignorant these first preachers may have been, they could be at no loss to find congregations still more ignorant, so that they were still capable of instructing someone. Many of them added to their knowledge of the Bible, a diligent perusal of Young's _Night Thoughts_, Watts' hymns, Milton's _Paradise Lost_, and Hervey's _Meditations_, a knowledge of which gave more compass to their thoughts, to be expressed in a profuse, flowery language, and raised their feelings to the utmost height of poetical enthusiasm.
"Sometimes their sermons turned upon matters of controversy; unlearned arguments on the subject of free grace, baptism, free-will, election, faith, good works, justification, sanctification, and the final perseverance of the saints. But that in which they excelled, was the earnestness of their words and manner, leaving no doubt of the strongest conviction in their own minds, and in the vividness of the pictures which they drew of the ineffable blessedness of heaven, and the awful torments of the wicked in the fire and brimstone appointed for eternal punishment. These, with the love of God to sinful man, the sufferings of the Saviour, the dangerous apathy of sinners, and exhortations to repentance, furnished themes for the most vehement and passionate declamations. But above all, they continually inculcated the great principles of justice and sound morality.