In 1862 our yearly meeting was held at Emporia, and in 1863 at Ottumwa. These meetings were little better than failures. Yearly district meetings were kept up in Northeastern Kansas, in which more vigor was manifested.
And now the writer began to feel the pressure of hard necessities. For five years I had kept myself in the field on a salary utterly inadequate to my needs, and had been gradually running into debt, and these debts had to be paid. In anticipation of the future wants of my children, I had invested my available means in land; but as this land was not improved, it yielded me no return. In the distress that came on the people in those days, one means of making money presented itself, and many availed themselves of it. Gold had been discovered at Pike's Peak, and thitherward had flocked a great multitude of people. There were no railroads, and all supplies had to be carried across the plains in freighting wagons. This business was carried on by the roughest class of a rough and frontier population; still, it was an honest business, and honest men might lawfully engage in it, provided they had the hardihood to face the dangers and exposures of such a life.
During the years 1862, 1863 and 1864, I went into this business with a small freighting outfit. This certainly was not just the thing for a preacher to do, but necessity knows no law. In the spring of 1862, Bro. James Butcher was going to Denver with a freighting train, and he with myself agreed to go in the same train for mutual convenience.
The President, Abraham Lincoln, had ordered a draft, and many young men in Missouri had found themselves in a sore strait. In the South were their kindred, and they felt that they could not and would not fight against their own flesh and blood; and to avoid this they determined to flee to the gold mines in the mountains, where every man did what was right in his own eyes—and so they came to Atchison or Leavenworth and engaged to drive these freighting teams to Denver. Many of them were sons of rich fathers, well educated, and had never engaged in manual labor, much less in such menial work as this, and when these proud and high-spirited fellows felt what an ignoble life they had been reduced to, the reader may well believe they did not feel good-natured over it. And now, when these young gentlemen came to understand that they were to be associated with a man that was reported to be the representative of the hated Yankees, who had made war on the people of the South, and set free their slaves, they bitterly attacked me in wordy warfare. Of course I defended myself. And so day after day, in the intervals while our cattle were grazing, we debated every question relative to slavery that has been debated within the last fifty years. Their hearts were bitter; they were passionately excited, and would often end the talk, which they themselves had begun, With noisy profanity. They seemed to think they had this advantage of me, that they could swear and I could not.
We were now traveling up the valley of the Platte River. It was the month of June. The weather had become rainy and there were frequent showers. One night we had corralled our train on an almost dead level bottom, and I was sure, from the appearance of the heavens, that we should have a storm. Bro. Butcher had been taken sick and had returned home, and, except myself, there were none to think or care what was coming; and yet it was plain to be seen that the air was thick and sultry, and the heavens overcast with clouds, and that everything betokened a tempest. Our canvas-covered wagons had been so crowded with merchandise that we could not get into them, and we had slept on blankets on the ground; but here on this dead level bottom, in case of a heavy rain, we would be drowned out by the flooding of the ground. I dragged under my wagon a number of ox-yokes, and with these and some strips of boards I made a platform, and on this I laid a narrow pallet, and crept under the wagon, where I would be sheltered from the rain by the wagon-bed above me. During the night there fell frequent showers, and the boys were soon drowned out from their pallets on the ground. They were tired and sleepy; they were homesick and in bad temper at their mean and unaccustomed surroundings, and were inclined to hold the Yankees responsible for it all, and they began to curse and swear in rough and bitter speech. Then there came on the most awful thunder storm I ever witnessed. Vivid flashes of lightning kept the whole heavens illuminated with a blaze of light, while a thousand electric lights would not so have turned night into day around our corral of train-wagons. Crashing peals of thunder were in the air, and the bolts seemed to descend to the earth around us. Then there came down a flood of rain that was as if a water spout had burst above our heads. I looked out from my narrow bed, and could see the boys gathered in groups, standing leaning against their wagons, soaked to the skin, and their faces white with ghastly paleness; but not a word was spoken. They had forgotten to swear. Then there was a lull in the storm, which subsided into a drizzling cold rain, and I went to sleep.
When morning came we were a sorry looking lot. The boys were soaked, and chilled, andblue, and dreadfully homesick. Words would not tell what these poor fellows would have given if they could have been where they could have been coddled and petted by their mothers and sisters. I saw that a warm cup of coffee and a substantial breakfast would do them good, and I hastened to have it provided. They came with alacrity at the call for breakfast, for they were hungry. When a good square meal had somewhat thawed them out, I said, "Boys, what made you quit swearing last night?" The one who was usually their spokesman, and who knew how to be a gentleman if he had a mind to be, said reverently, "We were afraid." From this time forward our debates over slavery and the Southern Confederacy were at an end, or if we had them it was in a friendly way. Given a fair chance, these boys were not so bad as they seemed.
In the summer of 1864 we had reached the "Cutoff," and were within eighty miles of Denver. It was late on Saturday afternoon when we got to the Bijou Ranch. We were tired and our teams were tired, and we debated for some time whether we should drive ten miles further, where we would find better feed for our oxen. We did so, though it took us till midnight; and there we rested on Sunday. This was providential; for it was on this Sunday that the Cheyenne Indians made their memorable raid and plundered the trains, burned the ranches and stole the horses for three hundred miles along the Platte River. They attacked the Bijou Station that we had left on Saturday, but they did not venture any nearer Denver; consequently we were safe. On our return we saw how the people had been murdered, the trains plundered and the ranches burned along our route; and it presented a terrible spectacle. A man named Butler was killed and scalped on the Little Blue River, and the people in Kansas got the word that it was myself. Immediately on my return home I rode up to the church at Wolf Creek, in Doniphan county, where we had a district meeting appointed. It was to them as if I had come from the dead. I went home for dinner with my old friend, Bro. John Beeler. I noticed his little boy peering attentively at me; he climbed upon a bedstead close behind me, then, jumping down, he ran to his mother, and, pulling Sister Beeler by the apron, said, "Ma! Ma! The Indians did scalp Bro. Butler; I can see it on the top of his head." The reader must know that, like "Old Uncle Ned," I have no hair on the top of my head.
But, in spite of disasters and hardships, and dark and stormy days, our churches continued to grow and prosper, and we kept up a vigorous and aggressive church organization. On Sept. 27, 1864, the churches of the State came together at their fifth annual State meeting at Tecumseh, Shawnee county. Here the brethren organized a missionary society, fashioned after the plan of our General Missionary Society, and in which life directorships, life memberships and annual memberships were obtained by the payment of a sum of money.
The writer of these Recollections will explain that the formation of this Society was not his work. He doubted whether the brethren were prepared for it. Nevertheless, he was willing to be governed by the majority. By resolution of the State meeting, the writer was requested to prepare for publication with the minutes of the meeting an address, of which the following is a copy:
ADDRESS TO THE CHRISTIAN BRETHREN OF THE STATE OF KANSAS.
Beloved Brethren: We present to you in these pages the details of the organization of the Christian Missionary Society of the State of Kansas. We hope for your approval and ask for your contributions.
The warrior may fight for his country on the battle field; the statesman may seek to develop its resources and improve its laws; the husbandman may make its fields heavy with their weight of golden grain; and those who love domestic life may seek to create in that place they call home a second paradise; but broader, deeper, more comprehensive and sweeter far, is the work of Christianity. It underlies all good, and is the only sure basis of progress.
For two thousand years China and Japan have been without the Bible, and what they were then, that they are now. For two thousand years the millions of India have been left without God and without hope in the world, and they have only progressed into infinite degradations. The aboriginal inhabitants of America, left without the Bible, have only gone down deeper and deeper into a night as black as that which brooded over old chaos.
No Herschel counts the stars, numbers the planets, measures the length of their years and computes the number of their days, unless his observatory is illuminated by the rays of the Sun of Righteousness. No Luther thunders against priestcraft, shakes the thrones of tyrants, and wakes the nations to a new life and a new progress, save that Luther that finds a Bible in his cell. No Franklin calls down electricity from the clouds to carry messages across a continent swift as the lightning flashes through the sky, save that Franklin whose fathers brought the Bible with them from their native land, and prized it more than all the gold of Ophir. No mother country has had such reason to be proud of any colony that was ever planted on the face of this green earth, as Great Britain has had reason to be proud of her colonies in North America, and no colonies ever so loved the Bible. Judson, Howard, Wilberforce, and Florence Nightingale drew the inspiration of their benevolence from a dying Saviour's cross, and learned of him who, "though he was rich, yet for our sakes become poor, that we through his poverty might be rich."
Christianity, as it was given by Jesus to the apostles, and by the apostles to mankind, was as perfect as the God who gave it. Our whole duty then is this, that we should restore primitive and apostolic Christianity again to the world. Many reformers have sought to do this; but they have only reformed in part. Though they fled from Babylon they stopped short of Jerusalem.
We can not pause in this work which we have begun. We can not allow ourselves to grow cold and our churches to die. We must go forward in that path in which the rays of our glorious sun—the Sun of Righteousness—grow brighter and brighter unto the perfect day.
God does not make Christians as he created Adam out of the dust of the earth. He works bymeans: "How shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard?" God works through the voice of the Bible scattered over the world. If any doubt this, let them reflect that among all the millions of men that inhabit the whole earth not one becomes a Christian save him who either hears or reads of a crucified Saviour.
Money is the sinews of this war. True, there is peril in money. It is not safe to be rich; and it is admitted that by wealth preachers may be corrupted. But this is not the present danger. The present peril is, that haggard want, stalking in at the preacher's door, will paralyze his tongue, make his knees feeble and his hands heavy, and turn away his heart from his proper work to the question, What shall I eat? and what shall I drink? and wherewithal shall I be clothed? The preacher is told to put his trust in the Lord. But when, after long waiting, no ravens come to feed him, he sometimes loses his heart, and says, "I go a fishing." Surely the brethren will not have a controversy with the Lord. They will not deny that he has appointed that "they that preach the gospel shall live of the gospel."
It is by no weak, sickly, faint-hearted, lukewarm, languid, and spasmodic efforts that the cause is to be kept alive. God will have all or nothing. This is an age in which, if never before, both good men and bad men are truly in earnest. The devil is fearfully and terribly in earnest "Therefore rejoice you heavens, and you that dwell in them Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down to you, having great wrath, because he knoweth he hath but a short time."
We must give till we feel it. The widow's mite was most precious in the eyes of Jesus, because it was her all.
The objects we aim at are unquestionably scriptural. "Go disciple all nations." This was the Saviour's last command. To sustain our missionaries by the free-will offering of our brethren—this is also scriptural.
In the year 1865 the State meeting was held at Prairie City. Meantime, however, a vigorous local district organization had been maintained from the first in Northeastern Kansas. This year its annual meeting was held at Leavenworth City, continuing from the first till the 4th of June. In addition to the ordinary purposes for which this meeting was held, it undertook to perfect the Missionary Society that had been organized the preceding year at Tecumseh.
Among all the conventions held in Kansas, whether of State or District, this must be regarded as the most notable:
1. It offers devout thanksgiving to the Lord for the return of peace to the nation: "Resolved, That with hearts full of gratitude to Almighty God, we hail the return of peace to our long distracted country."
2. After seven years of labor, beginning in 1858, and ending in 1865, notwithstanding the disorders of the period, this Convention is able to give a tabulated report of seventy-nine churches organized in the State with their bishops, deacons and evangelists, and having an aggregate of 3,020.
3. It is able to report a missionary society, that in the eight months intervening between the Tecumseh State meeting and the present Convention, has collected and paid over to its four evangelists—J; H. Bauserman, Pardee Butler, S. G. Brown and J. J. Trott—the sum of $827.
4. The Convention was able to adjourn, full of hope and enthusiasm, and to promise itself that it would do a still better work in the time to come.
The names of the following persons appear as the accredited messengers of the churches: Leavenworth—J. C. Stone, G. H. Field, S. A. Marshal, H. Allen, J. T. Gardiner, Calvin Reasoner. Ottumwa—J. T. Cox, Wm. Gans, J. Jenks, Peter Smith. Tecumseh—J. Driver, M. Driver, A. J. Alderman. Americus—W. C. Butler, S. S. Chapman. Le Roy—S. G. Brown, Allen Crocker. Little Stranger—J. H. Bauserman, S. A. Lacefield, J. Adams, J. P. Bauserman. Iola—S. Brown. Nine Mile—N. D. Tyler, J. T. Goode, H. Dickson. Garnett—J. Ramsey, H. Cavender. Holton—E. Cope, J. P. Nichols, T. G. Walters, A. B. Scholes. Pardee—Pardee Butler, N. Dunshee. Belmont—J. J. Trott. Monrovia—J. N. Holliday, John Graves, Caleb May. Mt. Pleasant—Joseph Potter, Thomas Miller, Joseph McBride, N. Humber. Olathe P. E. Henderson, John Elston, Martin Davenport, Addison Bowen. Lanesfield—O. S. Laws, Wm. Maxwell, H. C. Maxwell. Prairie City—H. H. Johnson. Buck Creek—C. M. Short, Thomas Finch, Martin Stoddard. Grasshopper Falls—James Ritter, S. Smith. Winchester—Cyrus Taylor, A. R. Cantwell.
But we wait for a period of seventeen years, then Eld S. T. Dodd, of Topeka, is appointed by the Kansas Christian Missionary Society to write a history of the work of the Christian Church in Kansas, which he does in a tract of thirty-eight pages; and Bro. D., writing under date of 1882, makes the following summary of the work done:
From 1856 to 1865 anything like church work was as good as thrown away, except as affording temporary privileges.
Finally a time came when the clatter of arms and the clatter of raiders were ended; railroads were built, and emigration poured in from all States and nations, among which were many Disciples of Christ, who should have been builded into existing churches, or collected into new ones; but many were permitted to drift along in carelessness and irresponsibility until their identity as members has been lost.
During the past five years there has been a general awakening among our brethren, which has resulted in very many new organizations and the possession of Atchison, Topeka, Wichita, and several other strongholds.
Bro. Dodd makes report of the following State meetings as having been held in Kansas:
In 1869, Grantville; in 1870, Le Roy; in 1871, St. George; in 1872, Emporia; in 1873, Topeka; in 1874, Olathe; in 1875, Ottawa, in 1876, Manhattan; in 1877, Emporia; in 1878, Gates Center; in 1879, Emporia; in 1880, Manhattan; in 1881, Salina; in 1832, Emporia.
To the above summary the writer will add the following list of the earlier Territorial and State meetings:
In 1860, Big Springs; in 1861, Prairie City; in 1862, Emporia; in 1863, Ottawa; in 1864, Tecumseh; in 1865, Prairie City; in 1866, Ottawa; in 1867, Olathe.
To the above statistics we will append the following reflections:
1. Among the preachers that prominently appear in the first seven years of our work, there are none remaining, save the writer of these Recollections, Some are fallen out by the way. Elders S. G. Brown, Wm. Gans, N. B. White, S. A. Marshal and Allen Crocker have died in the faith and hope of the gospel. The name of J. H. Bauserman does, indeed, appear, but he had only just begun his work; but having put the armor on, he has never laid it off. The name of J. B. McCleery does not yet appear on the minutes of our yearly meetings, still he was already an evangelist. He had been in Ohio the friend and companion of James A. Garfield, and soon came to be known as one of the first pulpit orators of the State. The government, like death, "loves a shining mark," and claimed Bro. McCleery for its service, and he is now an army chaplain. The churches will never cease to regret his choice, and yet he had a right to make it.
2. The facts do not bear out the remark of Bro. S. T. Dodd, that "from 1856 to 1865 anything like church work was as good as thrown away." With seventy-nine churches organized, and with upwards of three thousand church members in the State, work could scarcely be said to be "as good as thrown away."
3. Notwithstanding, the facts bear witness that there were grave imperfections in our work. After a heroic battle, fought under insuperable difficulties, and when there was every promise of still more brilliant triumphs, the cause went into an eclipse, from which it emerged only after many years of disaster.
From and after the year 1875, the churches spread themselves over a territory of two hundred miles in width and four hundred miles in length, and a great number of men became responsible for the good or the evil that should come on the cause of primitive and apostolic Christianity. It is probable that since the period of which we are speaking, 100,000 Disciples have located somewhere in these Western Territories. If the church should now undertake to make inquisition for these church members, and make inquiry into their present condition, temporal and spiritual, the story of their wants and woes would be full of pathetic eloquence.
Since the days of the apostles an enthusiasm never has been known greater than that which was felt by the men who, under God, are responsible for this Reformation. In the beginning of the present century the missionary spirit among Christians was dead, and their zeal was wasted in disgraceful squabbles over inoperative and metaphysical opinions, or over modes of church government of which the Bible knows nothing.
The Protestant sects were divided into two hostile camps, known as Calvinists and Arminians. The Calvinist dogma was that Jesus died only for the elect, who were chosen in a by-gone eternity; that all men are spiritually as dead and helpless as was the cold dead dust of the earth out of which Adam was created, but that God will quicken into a new life dead sinners who are of the elect, and will give them evidence of their acceptance by the joyful emotions which he will create in their hearts. And so the supreme interest of men centered in this, that they were to seek in their own hearts those raptures and ecstasies that were evidence that they had experienced this spiritual change. The Arminians gloried in a free salvation. Christ died for all. But they demanded identically the same evidence of pardon demanded by the Calvinists, and men found it just as hard to get this Arminian evidence of pardon as to get the experience that assured them that they were of the elect, according to the gospel of Calvinism; and so it game to pass that this lethargy of Christians over missionary work, and these wranglings over human opinions, had, before the Revolutionary War, covered the American colonies like a blanket with the spirit of infidelity. The corruption of Christianity by the Roman Catholic Church issued in the atheism of the French Revolution, and has created the infidelity of modern European nations; so like causes had precipitated a similar result in America. Men were groping as the blind grope in darkness, and then came, during the first half of the present century, the proclamation of primitive and apostolic Christianity. Alexander Campbell, John Smith, Jacob Creath and Samuel Rogers in Virginia and Kentucky, and Walter Scott, the Haydens and John Henry in Northeastern Ohio, made the people understand that the plan of salvation is as simple as the primer of our childhood; that it is all comprehended in this, that we must bow to the authority of Jesus, that we must believe in him and keep his commandments, and that the whole story is told in the four gospels and in the Acts of the Apostles with such simplicity that he that runs may read, that he that reads may understand, and that he that understands may act.
Alexander Campbell has said that a persecution made up of defamation, proscription and slander may be as hard to hear as that which issues in bonds and imprisonments; and this these early Disciples had to bear. But the world was ripe for reformation, and the cause spread like fire on the prairies.
Those who originally planted these churches in Kansas were, in large part, men and women who had drawn their inspiration directly from the founders and leaders of this Reformation. To some of them it had been given to sit at the feet of Alexander Campbell. Others had listened to John Smith, and had been magnetized by the inimitable wit and wisdom of that marvelous man, and their hearts had drawn heroic courage from his heart. Others still had been captivated by the boyish and unstudied drollery of Walter Scott, only to be swept away by a whirlwind of passionate appeal and terrible invective, or to be melted with the tenderness of his portrayal of the love of Jesus. And all these came to Kansas bearing a great cause in their hearts, and determined to build up here such churches as they had left behind them. But this was not all. Here were not only people among the most refined, well informed, and pious in the nation, but here were those who had been born in a storm of religious fanaticism, and could only live in a whirlwind of excitement. These were the "big-meeting" Christians. There were also those whose truthfulness was doubtful, whose business methods were questionable, who could, on occasion, indulge in coarse and vulgar jokes and smutty jests, and whose religion scarce kept them outside the grog-shop. Added to all this, there were many whose hearts were yet bleeding with wounds they had received in that terrible struggle out of which the nation had just emerged. And now, afflicted with poverty, drouth, grasshoppers and starvation, we were left an agglomeration of heterogeneous materials, to fight our own battle as best we might. We might hope for help from the Lord, but not from our brethren in the older States. They were too busy debating the divine plan of missionary operations to help us.
The reader may well believe that the writer of these Recollections did not find himself carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease while this was going on, nor did he find himself reposing on a couch soft as downy pillows.
Whatever may have been thought by a certain class of men, when the writer began his work in Kansas, it is now universally admitted among the Disciples that temperance work is legitimate church work—that the saloon being an enemy to our homes and our families, and the greatest peril that confronts the church and nation, its extinction is a legitimate object of Christian endeavor.
There was a young evangelist prominently engaged with us in our early work whose history is so sad, and whose relations, who are of the excellent of the earth, have already had their hearts so wounded because of him, that I have not been able to bring myself to write his name. He was of Irish descent, and before he became a preacher, or even a disciple, and while learning his trade, he had formed the drinking habit. He was not a young man of brilliant gifts, but they were solid. Moreover, he was humble, patient, industrious and persevering, and, having excellent health and a good physical organization, he gave promise of enduring usefulness. In short, he belonged to that class of young men that, while the people do not spoil them with flattery, yet the church set a great store by them. I can not write the history of his fall, for it was not made known even to his friends; only this, that the time came that he seemed hesitating whether he should continue a preacher, and finally he wholly abandoned the ministry. His wife, who was a most estimable and Christian lady, was paralyzed with grief. At length the shameful truth came out—he was a drunkard! A brother undertook to admonish him of the awful fate that awaited him in the future world, but this apostate and disgraced preacher turned fiercely around and said: "don't talk to me of hell! I am in hell now!"
There was living in the neighborhood of the writer a Christian family—though not of the Disciples—who had a boy that they regarded as of great promise, and they did what they could to give him a good education. After he had been for a while a school teacher, he became a lawyer, resident in Atchison, and finally became a politician. He was talented, social, companionable and ambitious, and soon made himself a man of mark, and was petted and courted by the people, and was the idol of his father and mother. All this brought him much into company. But at that time the brewers and saloonkeepers exercised a despotism over the politicians and public men of the city as absolute as is the despotism of the Czar over the Russians. But there was this difference: instead of being slaves to a great monarch, these politicians were tools and lick-spittles to a set of coarse, brutal, low-bred liquor dealers, who were exceptionally ignorant, degraded and vile. These wretched and vicious corrupters of the public morals insisted on controlling every caucus, and that the candidates, of whatever party, should be men well pleasing in their sight. If not, then the fat was in the fire, and the candidate was forthwith slaughtered. The writer of these Recollections has been a Republican as long as there has been a Republican party, and has probably loved the party as well as it has deserved. This party, as is well known, has assumed to be "the party of moral and religious ideas." Now I have known, in cases not a few, men to be nominated for office by this party—men who were respectable and Christian men, and they have told me, and they have made the confession with shame and humiliation—that the party managers have come to them and said, "You are assessed so much for campaign expenses." The pretext was, that this was for legitimate campaign work; and yet they knew that the pretext was a lie, and that it was to constitute a corruption fund, to be put into the saloons. And these men were thus made candidates, to give respectability to the saloonkeepers' party, and, though they did not go into the saloons themselves, they must pay toll to the devil all the same.
It was under such circumstances that this boy, who had been raised in our neighborhood, but had grown to be a man, and had entered upon public life, now became a center of attraction to the hale-fellows-well-met of the saloon and the caucus. The reader need not be told that this gifted young lawyer was walking into the very jaws of death. There were soon alarming rumors that he was becoming dangerously addicted to drink, and his friends entreated him to save himself while he could, and he made promise to his mother and wife to reform. But, alas! it was too late!
I was traveling home from Topeka, and on the railroad train I met a gentleman from Atchison—an intimate friend of this young lawyer—and I was congratulating him on the reformation of our mutual friend. He shook his head, and said: "don't deceive yourself. He tells me that he can remain sober two or three months, but that then he can held out no longer, and, not wishing to make a public spectacle of himself, he buys a bottle of liquor, locks himself up in his room, and goes into a regular debauch. Then, after three or four days, he is able to appear on the streets again."
After a while the friends of this young man buried him. The doctors gave his sickness a respectable name, and reported that he had died of such a disease as decent people may die of, but his friends, with heart-breaking sorrow, knew they were burying a man who had died of a drunken debauch.
I have spoken freely of the evils wrought by our border troubles; but now we had to realize that, taking all the men murdered in our early feuds, and comparing them with the men murdered by strong drink in the city of Atchison, counting man for man, there have been more men murdered by strong drink than by all our border troubles. There have been more women that have had their hearts broken, more children turned into the streets, more fortunes squandered, in the single city of Atchison than in all the Kansas war. But there is another point of comparison. The men who wrestled with each other in that early conflict verily thought they were right. They may have been mistaken, but they thought they were in the right; they therefore maintained their own self-respect. But those who have died in this battle of the bottles and the beer glasses have lost everything—self-respect, reputation, honor, everything; and they went to the dogs and their souls went to perdition.
I have been a somewhat voluminous writer on many subjects now for forty years, but all this would scarce exceed in amount what I have written in Kansas newspapers, during a series of years, on the single subject of temperance. Besides, I spent much time in lecturing, for the welfare of the church and of the nation was at stake; and yet, what was done by myself was only a drop in the bucket compared with what went to make up, year after year, a great agitation. At length the people became so aroused that the lawmakers at Topeka came to understand that something must be done in the way of temperance legislation; and they gave us a local option law. But crafty politicians obtained that cities of the first and second class should be exempted. This was nothing but mockery. The cities were the very places where the law was most needed, for men from the country went into the city and there they encountered their old enemy, the saloon. And so we kept up the agitation, and demanded that the saloon should be prohibited throughout the State. At length the pressure became so great that the politicians understood a second time that something must be yielded to the popular demand, and they tried another dodge. They said: "We will give you the privilege to vote an amendment to the constitution incorporating prohibition into the constitution of the State." This would at least put off the evil day for two years, for it would take two years before such an amendment could go into operation. But here again was seen the usual treachery. The amendment to be voted on read as follows: "The manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors shall be forever prohibited in this State, except for medical, scientific and mechanical purposes." This was a stumbling-block laid in the way of feeble-minded Christians, for was not this an attack on their Christian liberty to use intoxicating wine at the Lord's table, and would not this be awful? Moreover, it forbade a farmer to manufacturehardcider from his own orchard, and would not this be ahardand tyrannical law? This was vexatious, for we were fighting the saloon, and were not seeking to palter with such frivolous and intermeddling legislation. Nevertheless, in spite of these crafty attempts to excite popular odium against the amendment, it was adopted by a majority of more than eight thousand, and it became the duty of the next Legislature to enact a law enforcing the amendment. Then some of us waited on these "conscript fathers" at Topeka, and entreated them, and supplicated them, and almost got down on our knees to them, beseeching- them to use a little courage and common sense. The House of Representatives was largely made up of farmers and men from the country, and was overwhelmingly in favor of an honest temperance law; but the Senate was largely made up of lawyers and men from the city, and was full of treachery and open and secret enmity. And so the Senate took the lead in making the law, and got up a bill that they purposely made as full of imperfections as a sieve is full of holes, and sent it down to the lower house. It was manifestly the duty of the House of Representatives to amend the bill, but now a great scare was got up. The cry was raised: "There is treachery! treachery! You must adopt this Senate bill without amending it, to the extent of changing the dot of anior the crossing of at; for if it goes back to the Senate it will certainly be killed."And yet the Senate had adopted it by an almost four-fifths majority!
The fact was, that these Senators, with all their bluster and bravado, were trembling in their boots, and dared not face their constituents at home while voting against any temperance law, however stringent, and this gave the friends of the law good warrant to make just such a law as was needed. And so the bill became a law; and then there followed such a farce in the courts as might make us lose faith in our Christian civilization and in our civilized jurisprudence. And it came to be understood that a coach-and-four could be driven through the loopholes that had been left in the law, and saloonkeepers began to remark, "Prohibition don't prohibit." But from this evil we had what must be regarded a providential deliverance. A judge was found who made up in his own integrity and courage whatever was imperfect in the provisions of the law, and his good example was followed throughout the State.
John Martin, a lawyer, resident in Topeka, is a solid, sensible and honest man. His brethren of the Democratic persuasion wanted to make him a candidate for Governor, but because they would not insert in their platform a plank affirming that the law—because it was the law—ought to be enforced, he declined to accept the nomination, and Geo. W. Glick was nominated and elected. Then Mr. Glick, to reciprocate this courtesy, appointed Martin to a vacant judgeship in the Topeka judicial district; and a whisky case came before Judge Martin. The principal witness undertook to play the usual dodge of perjury and equivocation, but Judge Martin stopped the witness and said: "Sir, you are to tell whether the liquor you bought was whisky."
The witness again began to repeat his story of equivocation: "Well, I called forcold tea, and I suppose I got what I called for."
"Stop!" said the Judge in a voice of thunder. "This witness is lying! Sheriff, take the witness and lock him up in jail."
The Sheriff had got as far as the door when the witness called out: "Judge, are you going to lock me up?"
"Yes, and I will keep you there till you rot unless you tell the truth."
"Well, I will tell."
The witness was placed again in the witness box. "Now," said the Judge, "was it whisky you bought of this saloonkeeper?"
"Yes, it was whisky."
The example of Judge Martin was imitated by all the courts, and incredible sums of money have been collected as fines from the saloonkeepers, who, with the brewers, fought the battle to the bitter end, and appealed their cases to the Supreme Court of the United States. But it has ended in their absolute defeat, and even these gentlemen do now admit that prohibition does prohibit—in Kansas. Since that time the law has been greatly amended, and the saloons have been driven out of the State.
One evil yet remains. Just across the Missouri River from Atchison is East Atchison, and here whisky and beer are as free as water. Of course, this is a great calamity to us, but we wait in expectation and hope that prohibition will yet be achieved in Missouri.
John A. Brooks lives in Missouri; we live in Kansas. This man was once a rebel; we were loyal men. Yet we pray the Father of Mercies to spare the life of this man, to prosper him and keep him, until he shall achieve this great good, not only to Missouri, but to ourselves.
This reformation in the rapidity of its growth is without parallel in the history of Protestant parties. Those acquainted with its history need not be told that a large number of its members were at first drawn from the Baptists. It is indeed a matter of wonder that a Presbyterian minister, but a short time identified with the Baptists, should exert such an influence over them as to induce a great multitudeofchurches and church members to resolve that when he was driven out of the Baptist Church they also would share his fortune, and accept loss of reputation and exclusion from their former brotherhood for the sake of the principles they had learned from him. Now, when we reflect that this embraced not only young men, but old men—men already arrived at that period of life at which it is most difficult to change our habits of thinking and acting, it becomes a question of profoundest interest; were these men able to make a change so radical as to plant themselves completely on reformation principles, and to abandon everything in their old Baptist order incompatible therewith?
When we remember that this movement embraced gray-haired Baptist ministers, who all their lifetime had been accustomed to lead and not to follow, we curiously inquire, Did they do this, or did they locate themselves on a sort of half-way ground which was a compromise between reformation principles and old Baptistism?
Let us briefly notice wherein they changed, and wherein they did not change.
1. They laid aside the name Baptist and took the name Christian.
2. They built upon the Bible alone, instead of the Philadelphia Confession of faith.
3. They taught that the church began at Pentecost, rather than with the preaching of John the Baptist.
4. They baptized men into a profession of faith in the Lord Jesus, that he is the Messiah, rather than into a Christian experience, made up of voices in the air, marvelous and strange sights, trances and rapturous feelings.
5. They taught that in conversion and sanctification, the Holy Spirit operates through the truth.
Thus far the change was radical, but here a large minority paused and brought with them into the reformation their old Baptist Church usages. The Baptists in the Great West and South are known as "Missionary Baptists," and "Old Baptists," or "Hardshell Baptists." Adoniram Judson and Luther Rice, who had been sent to Burmah by a Congregational Missionary Society, made known to the Baptists that they themselves had become Baptists, and had been repudiated by their own society, and asked for help. The Missionary Baptists are by far the most enterprising in all that pertains to the spread of Christianity. They are the most numerous, most wealthy, best educated, and most liberal. In translating the Bible into all languages, in carrying it into all lands, and in sending the gospel to all nations, they have made some amends for that unrelenting bitterness which they have shown toward our brethren from the first day till now. We shall glance at what has hitherto been their order by making certain extracts from theCentral Baptist, published in the year 1870. The reader must bear in mind that we are writing of those old days:
In Arkansas there are but four Missionary Baptist Churches that sustain a regular pastor, or sustain preaching more than once a month. In North Alabama, two; in the whole of Alabama, twelve; in Missouri, twenty-seven. Missouri has six hundred white churches, with a membership of fifty thousand, which have preaching once a month. Once a month preaching by secularized ministry! Is it any wonder that the cause does not go forward faster? Not more than two dozen out of seven hundred churches in Missouri have service every Sunday.
Let us pause a moment over this picture of Southern and Western Baptist Churches, drawn by themselves. In Arkansas but four churches had at this time preaching every Lord's day; in Alabama, twelve, and in Missouri twenty-four out of seven hundred! Well may the writer ask, "Is it any wonder that the cause does not go forward faster?"
But if this was the order of the Missionary Baptists in the year 1870, what must have been the order of the Old Baptists seventy years before, when "Raccoon" John Smith was groping his way out of darkness into the light of the gospel, all unconscious of his utter blindness, that the reading of the Scriptures would conduce, either directly or indirectly, to his regeneration or sanctification.
The people known as "Hardshell" Baptists do not wish to be called by that name. They wish to be known as Old Baptists, or United Baptists, for they allege that they are the lineal descendants of the United Baptists, and that the Missionary Baptists have apostatized, and gone away after strange gods. The Old Baptists had long been declaiming against college-bred preachers and a hireling ministry. They had certain pet theories concerning man's inability and God's sovereignty concerning a certain special, supernatural, immediate and efficacious work of grace on the heart of the sinners. They said, "If God wants a missionary, he can send him, and maintain him, too. He needs no human help in the conversion of sinners, whether at home or abroad. We can find no Scripture for Sunday-schools, Bible classes, prayer-meetings, weekly meetings, hireling preachers, missionaries or missionary societies." So they kept to their monthly meetings and monthly preaching.
They have no schools of learning, few educated men, no well-educated men, no missionaries, no contributions for missionary purposes, no weekly meetings, no weekly preaching, no weekly breaking of the loaf, no Sunday-schools, no Bible classes, no prayer-meetings. But they have monthly preaching, by a man who is reputed a pastor over four churches, and who, in the nature of things, can not reside in three of the four churches over which he professes to preside. He obtains but meager pecuniary reward for his preaching. He therefore provides for his own sustenance and that of his family by the labor of his own hands. For this reason he must needs go to his appointments on Saturday, and return on Monday morning, and is therefore comparatively a stranger to the greater part of his four several flocks. He can not know their daily life. A few preachers among the old Baptists preeminently godly, self-sacrificing, and devoted to the Lord's cause, have left their families to suffer poverty and want, and have spent their lives in looking after the stray lambs of the flock; but this is not the general rule. This Baptist bishop has no authority whatever in any matter of discipline, his function being that of a moderator in a Saturday business monthly meeting. The sitting in judgment on the alleged acts of disorderly members belongs to the whole church, men and women, boys and girls.
We are now prepared to take the measure of the means of spiritual culture enjoyed by this people. It is just one sermon a month; or, if they are peculiarly favored, it is three sermons a month. The children are left at home. They run wild like so many young apes, and wander along the streams or through the forests; or, if they are brought by their parents to the meeting, there is nothing especially for them.
It will be well for us to ponder well the inevitable consumption and slow decay that is surely wearing out these Old Baptist churches. Like the house of Saul, they are growing weaker and weaker. What a contrast between their condition now and seventy years ago. Then the United Baptists were the most powerful religious body in the great West. Then Jacob Creath and Jeremiah Vardeman could, if they had been so disposed, have elected the Governor of Kentucky. Then the Baptists were strong in the affections of the people, and strong in the memory of those men who had, through incredible toil, obloquy, poverty and loss of goods, planted the Baptist cause in the American wilderness. Alexander Campbell, with his eminent gifts of eloquence and learning, was welcomed among the Baptists almost as an angel from heaven. But his well-meant efforts to work a reformation in the Baptist churches were despised, and he was thrust out as a heathen man and publican.
What treasures untold reside in the Lord's house, the Lord's day, the Lord's book, and the ordinances of the Lord? It is the glory of Christianity. Now let the members of a Christian Church fail to meet at the Lord's house for Christian worship on the Lord's day, and to what snares and temptations do they not subject themselves and their children? What temptations to idleness and to wasting the Lord's day in visiting and gossiping, or in drowsy lethargy!
The sanctification of the Lord's day by meeting in honor of the resurrection of the Saviour, and especially with a reference to the celebration of the Lord's supper, is essential to the edification, spirituality, holiness, usefulness and happiness of the Christian community. It is not designed to throw into the shade any other duties of the Christian Church while contending for those above stated; but because no society save the Disciples of Christ so regard, observe and celebrate the Lord's day. We endeavor to arrest the attention of our fellow professors to the great design of it and of the coming together of the members of Christ's family on that day. When assembled for this chief purpose, the reading of the Scriptures, teaching, exhortation, prayer, praise, contributions for the poor, and discipline when called for, are all in order and necessary to the growth of the Christian Church in all the graces of the Spirit, and in all the fruits of holiness.—ALEX. CAMPBELL, inMillennial Harbinger,Vol. I., p. 534, New Series.
And what an audacious wrong and unutterable blunder would it be for God's chosen people to adopt an order that should defraud themselves, their children, their neighbors and their neighbor's children of such a glorious privilege.
If we could imagine two communities, one of which should, with their children and their children's children, diligently devote the Lord's day to purposes of moral, religious and intellectual improvement, while the other community should waste the day in idle and frivolous dissipation, what unmeasured progress would ultimately be made by one beyond that made by the other. And to which of these two classes will that favored people belong to whom will be awarded the high privilege of introducing among jarring sects and parties the true millennial church?
And do not these considerations go far to explain the contrast that is everywhere seen to exist between Protestant and Catholic countries? Among Protestants the day is a day to be sanctified to purposes of religious worship, among Catholics it is a holiday.
The peculiarity of our position creates an invincible necessity that we shall make the largest possible provision for the moral, intellectual and religious training and development of our people. This provision is largely found in keeping the ordinances of the Lord's house and the Lord's day. We have made a vow, and that vow is recorded in heaven, that we will meet together every first day of the week to break bread. To do otherwise—to show a good-natured imbecility of purpose—to drift helplessly along in the usages of the Old Baptists, conscious in our own hearts that this is not the ancient order of things, and having sternly demanded conformity to the apostolic order, at whatever sacrifice of peace, now to suffer our own brethren to travel on in the old ruts, rather than hazard the pain and trouble that will be the price of reform, would be a folly so inexcusable, a shame so unutterable, that the very stones might well cry out against us.