Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler Part 2

"Yes."

"Wall, don't you know thar's a woman thar that's goin' to skin you?"

"Well, I don't know. We shall see how it will be?"

At Rushville I had done my best, and now, being withdrawn from the excitement of the meeting, felt exhausted; and determined not to touch any debatable question that night. The house was crowded with eager and expectant listeners. My fame had gone before me, and the "woman preacher" was present, ready for a fight. But, alas! My sermon was a bucket of cold water poured on the heads of my brethren. At any other time it would have been accepted as a good and edifying exhortation; but now, how untimely! The meeting was dismissed and the buzzing was as if a hive of bees had just been ready to swarm. The woman's disciples were jubilant; and, above the din and hurly-burly, I heard a thin, squeaking voice say, "Give that woman a Bible, and she would say more in five minutes than that man has said in his whole dis-c-o-u-rse." This was Billy Greenwell.

Brother Brown said nothing that night; but the next morning he said to me:

"Bro. B., the people were disappointed with you last night."

"Why, Bro. B., was it not a good sermon?"

"Yes; but it was not what the people expected."

"Bro. B., did the people expect me, uninvited, to pitch into a quarrel with which I have nothing whatever to do?"

"Oh, is that it? Well, wait a little and you shall have an invitation."

Bro. Brown went out, and soon returned with a request that I should discuss the question that Mr. Chapman and his wife had been debating. I sat down and wrote out a statement of the subjects on which I proposed to speak in all the evenings of the coming week. The first commanded universal attention: "Does the spirit die when the body dies?" They had never thought of that. They had been thunderstruck when this woman told them that the Bible says nothing about the immortality of the soul, but beyond this they had never gone. There was probably more Bible reading that day in Ripley than any day before or since.

At night the house was jammed, and "the woman" was there, Bible in hand.

I began: "The Bible speaks of a man as composed of body, soul and spirit. The body is that material tabernacle in which a man dwells, and which Paul hoped to put off that he might be clothed with a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. The soul is that animal life we have in common with all living and material things. Thus Jesus is said to have poured out his soul unto death. But what of the spirit? G.o.d is spirit, and G.o.d can not die. The angels are spirits, and the angels can not die; Jesus says so. Man has a spirit, and can man's spirit die? But spirit sometimes means breath. Yes, and heaven sometimes means the firmament above our heads, where the birds fly. But does it never mean more than this? Paradise sometimes means the happy garden where Adam and Eve dwelt; but does it never mean more than that? So, granting that spirit sometimes means breath, may it not also mean more than that?

"When Jesus said, 'Into thy hands I commend my spirit,' did he mean, 'Into thy hands I commend my breath'? So, when the disciples saw Jesus walking on the water and cried out, 'It is a spirit,' did Jesus say to them, 'This is an old wives' fable; there is no such thing as a spirit'?

Did he not rather say to them,--'It is I; be not afraid.' So, also, when he appeared to them in a room, the doors being shut, and they cried out, 'It is a spirit,' he said to them, 'Handle me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.' In all this Jesus encouraged the disciples to hold the idea which was then popular among the Jews, that the spirit may exist apart from the body, and after the body is dead."

I thus discoursed to them for one hour in development of the Bible teachings concerning human spirits; and in my turn ridiculed the persons that had ridiculed the ideas that had evidently been held by Jesus and the apostles.

Mrs. Chapman had always invited objections; but she was sure to make an endless talk over them. I said, "We will not have an endless confabulation to-night; but I will quote one pa.s.sage of Scripture, and on that I will rest my case. Any other person may then quote one pa.s.sage of Scripture and on that rest the case. I have preached one sermon; the other party has preached twenty. So far we will count ourselves even, and it only remains that I should quote my Scripture, and let the other party quote the one Scripture on the opposite side, and then we will be dismissed." I gave the views of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees as detailed by Josephus, and then quoted Luke in the Acts of Apostles: "The Sadducees say there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit; but the Pharisees confess both." And Paul says, "Men and brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee." So I also say, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee, and hold to the existence of human and angelic spirits.

When I announced that I should call for objections, I saw Mrs. Chapman take up her Bible in a flutter and nervously turn over its leaves. When I sat down all eyes were turned on her, and there was a death-like stillness in the house. Then she rose up, and in a moment was out of the house. She left the town the next morning and never came back. Then it was "Old Bob Burton's" turn to speak. He said to Billy Green, "Your chest is locked, and the key is lost in the bottom of the sea."

The brethren were gratified that the power of this "soul-sleeping"

delusion was broken. Billy Green never recovered from his infatuation.

He afterwards built a house that, in the number of rooms it contained, was wholly beyond his necessities. But he thought that when the Lord should come, and he should own all the land that joined him, and should have children to his heart's desire, then he would need all the room.

CHAPTER II.

From Ripley I went to Mt. Sterling, the county-seat of Brown County.

This church had fallen into decay for want of the care of a competent evangelist. Here I remained some weeks; and the church was very much revived, and there was a large ingathering. This was originally the home of Bro. Archie Glenn, now conspicuous in building up the University at Wichita. From the first Bro. Glenn, though modest and un.o.btrusive, was known as a solid and helpful member of the church. He always had the confidence of the people of Brown County, and was by them elected to various public offices, at last becoming Lieutenant-Governor of the State. But his business not prospering to suit him, he removed to Wichita, which was at that time a straggling village of uncertain fortunes, situated on a river of doubtful reputation, and located in a country concerning which the public were debating whether it should be called "The Great American Desert," or a decent place, where civilized men could live and thrive.

But Bro. Glenn did not lose faith in the Lord nor in his country. He went to his new home to be a live man. Wichita has decided to be a city, and not a straggling village of doubtful and cow-boy reputation; the Arkansas River has agreed to behave itself and to co-operate with human hands in giving fertility to its valley, and the geographers have unanimously agreed to strike the "Great American Desert" from the map of the United States. Sister s.h.i.+elds has grown up since these old days to be a woman, then a widow, and now a true yoke-fellow with her father in these great undertakings.

Bro. Lewis Brockman was pointed out to me, when first I came to Mt.

Sterling, as a disaffected member; but, on a better acquaintance, it became apparent that his disaffection was that the church members had made a solemn vow to keep the ordinances of the Lord's house, and did not do it. When better order was obtained, he was once more in harmony with the church; came to Atchison County, Kansas, and died, a pattern of fidelity to his conscience and to every known duty.

During the period of three years in which I remained preaching in the Military Tract, I visited almost all its churches. The number of disciples was large. They had a large amount of wealth at their disposal, and were not averse to using it to promote the advancement of the cause. But the children of this world are, in their generation, wiser than the children of light, and there is a certain practical wisdom that has been abundantly learned by other religious communities that has only come to our churches through a sore and bitter experience; and it was through the fire of this experience they were pa.s.sing at the time of which we write. "Billy Brown" had been a notable evangelist among them. Indeed, he had been the father in the gospel of the churches in Brown and Schuyler Counties. He was popularly described as having a head "as big as a half bushel," surmounted by a great shock of hair. He was an iconoclast, and devoted his life to the business of image-breaking, and, of course, the breaking in pieces of the idols of the people created a great tumult. There was this difference, and only this difference, between the work of Billy Brown and Sam Jones; Sam Jones declaims against sins already condemned by the popular conscience, but Billy Brown a.s.sailed convictions enshrined in the innermost sanctuary of the hearts of the people. He did so because these popular superst.i.tions stood in the way of the acceptance by the people of the apostolic gospel. Of course, the work of such a man carried with it an inconceivable excitement. At Mt. Sterling a man in the audience made some objection.

"What is your name?" said Billy Brown.

"My name, sir, is Trotter."

"Well, come forward, and I will knock your _trotters_ out from under you."

But Billy himself sometimes found his match. At Ripley he had been preaching after his accustomed style, and riding away from the place of meeting--it was in the spring of the year when the mud was deep--he saw an old man painfully and with difficulty making his way through the mud.

Knowing that he was a preacher from his white cravat, his broad-brimmed hat and single-breasted coat, he said to him:

"Well, old Daddy, how did you like the preaching?"

"Haven't heard any," stiffly replied the old gentleman.

But when the tumult and excitement of this conflict had pa.s.sed away, and his converts were brought face to face with the grave duties of a religious life, and with the serious work of keeping the ordinances of the Lord's house, they did not know how; they had been born in a whirlwind and could only live in a tempest. Notwithstanding, they loved the Lord's cause, and they trembled for themselves and their children, if they should not be found faithful.

If these churches are not able at the present time to exhibit a growth adequate to their opportunities, it must be remembered, on their behalf, that they have sent to the West an incredibly large number of disciples to serve as the nuclei for other churches throughout that mighty empire that within the past thirty years has grown up between the Missouri River and the Pacific Ocean.

The days I spent in these churches are the golden days of my life. There has been no field in which my labor as an evangelist has yielded a richer harvest; none in which there have been bestowed on me more flattering or more kindly attentions. It was the bright and joyous suns.h.i.+ne of a spring morning, before the bursting of the storm.

Though each year increased my attachment to the people, and apparently added their good-will to myself, there had been coming to the front a difficulty that could not any longer be thrust aside or disregarded. I was one hundred and fifty miles away from home, and from my wife and children. On holding a council of war to consider our future tactics, in which Mrs. Butler, was commander-in-chief, and myself, second in command, she said to me, "Pardee, I am willing to go wherever you say, only when we go there we must go to stay. We must not put our house on wheels. We must not leave our children without settled employment, exposed to all the hazards of a city life, or a life without a permanent habitation."

Under such circ.u.mstances the settling on a home in reference to which it could be said, "Here we are to stay," was not an easy matter. The people of the Military Tract were, almost all of them, Kentuckians.

There were evidently impending storms in the political horizon. I could not bend my sails to suit every favoring gale; and if, in the future, there should come a time that my conscience should lie in one direction, and my popularity and pecuniary interest in the other, I did not like to invite such a temptation. At any rate, I did not like to place myself in such a position that to bring down on my head popular odium would be to invite pecuniary ruin. These counties in the Military Tract were old settled counties, and land was high; and I was not rich. At this time the Kansas-Nebraska bill had been adopted by Congress, and Kansas had been opened for settlement. It was certain that Eastern Kansas, in the matter of fertility of soil, and all the elements of agricultural wealth, would be a desirable location.

"But there might be a political and social conflict." Yes, and there might be a political and social conflict in Illinois; or, for the matter of that, it might cover the West as with a blanket. It was certain that Eastern Kansas would be early settled from Missouri; and in no State was there a larger percentage of the people known as Disciples. I would, therefore, be among my brethren; and, if I had kept the peace for three years with Kentuckians in Illinois, could I not do the same thing with Missourians in Kansas? In any case, there was a fair prospect of gaining in Kansas a position of pecuniary independence; and any man can see that such a position was worth all the world to Alexander Campbell, when he was constrained by his conscience to bring down on his own head the utmost wrath of his Baptist brethren.

I started in the spring of 1855 to ride on horseback through Missouri; but was soon made to feel that there were more things in this world than were known in my philosophy. I had determined to remain over Sunday in Linnville, Linn County, Missouri, the county-seat of the county, as here was a congregation of Disciples; and called on a merchant of the place, who had been mentioned as one of the leading members. He remarked that he had become acquainted with me through the _Christian Evangelist_, published by Bro. Bates, in Iowa; but, on learning my destination, seemed strangely oblivious that anything more should be due from him to me. And so, having waited patiently about for a goodly time, I mounted my horse and rode on till dark; then seeing a light, and having called at the house, I found an old man who kindly received and lodged me. In the morning it appeared that his house was surrounded by negro cabins.

Having inquired my destination, he began to talk to me concerning the subject that seemed to be in every man's heart. I replied, submitting to him such views as were held by a majority of Northern men. To my surprise he flared up in anger, and said:

"If you talk that way when you get to Kansas you will never come back again; they will hang you."

The thing was so absurd I only laughed in the old man's face, and said to him:

"Well, you can not teach an old dog new tricks. I have spoken my mind so long that I shall continue to do it if they do hang me," and so bade him good-bye.

It was Sunday morning, and it was eighteen miles to Chillicothe.

Arriving at the hotel, the people were getting ready for meeting. On questioning them where they were going, the landlord replied:

"To the Christian Church. Will you not go along with us?"

On asking my name he said:

"O yes; I have seen your name in the _Christian Evangelist._ You have been preaching in Illinois. I will introduce you to our preacher, and we will make an appointment for you this afternoon."

This landlord was a brother to that Congressman Graves that shot Cilley, a member of Congress from Maine, in a duel with rifles, at Was.h.i.+ngton.

The people described "mine host" as one of "fighting stock "; and spoke of him as being as thoughtful of the comfort, health and welfare of his slaves as of his own children. To me he seemed simply a genial, jovial, friendly and traditional "Boniface," chiefly intent on furnis.h.i.+ng comfortable fare and an enjoyable place for his guest.

By the members of the Christian Church I was kindly received, and was invited to take dinner with the preacher. After dinner two brethren came in, to whom I had been introduced at the meeting-house. After some desultory talk, they asked me: