A little Old Baptist humor

From The Life and Writings of Rufus C. Burleson, p. 385 

In 1842...preachers went armed, not only in Texas, but in Georgia and the other States. In Georgia they went with a Bible and hymn book in one hand, and in the other--no, in their saddlebags--something, I am ashamed to tell what it was, but instead of carrying that in Texas they carried in the other saddlebag a shot gun. Well, some of them may have been like one old Hardshell. They said to him: "Brother Doodlee, don't you believe that everything is ordained, and that it will be just as it is ordained?" "Yes." "Then, what do you always carry your gun for? If your time has not come the Indians can not kill you." "Well," he says, "I know that is the way, that my time is fixed, but now, brother, what if I should be going to an appointment and meet an Indian and I did not have my gun, and his time had come; what a great pity that would be."

I don't know what was in the Georgia preacher's saddlebags -- might have been whiskey. According to Augustus Longstreet the “honest Georgian...preferred his whiskey straight and his politics and religion red hot.” (Religion in America, p. 125)