Memoir of Rev. Joseph Badger: Fourth EditionHolland, E. G. (Elihu Goodwin)
History
Memoir of Rev. Joseph Badger: Fourth Edition
Holland, E. G. (Elihu Goodwin)
Badger, Joseph, 1792-1852
"The 1st and 2d of March I stayed at Newmarket; the 3d,
held meeting at Mr. Sanborn's, of Epping; the 4th, at
Newmarket, I was taken sick with the measles; the 5th, rode
to Lee and preached a funeral sermon, also baptized one;
the 6th, attended meeting in the evening at Nottingham;
the 7th, through much infirmity, arrived at Deerfield and
preached at the house of J. Hilton, where I received the
kindest attentions during my severe sickness of one week.
May their generosity be largely rewarded! As soon as I was
able to ride, I started for Farmington, where I arrived on
the 17th. After tarrying a few days, I went to Middleton
and Brookfield for the first time. At the latter place, my
first meeting was held on the 24th, at which time several
afterwards dated their convictions. The 26th, held meeting
at Middleton Corner. It was a solemn time. That night I
could not sleep, as the people of Brookfield were so much
in my heart and mind. The 28th, I attended the ordination
of J. L. Peavy, at Farmington, and heard an appropriate
sermon from Rev. Elias Smith, of Portsmouth. It was a
glorious time."
A sickness like the one here narrated would in these days have made a
greater break in the journal of a month than it did with this hardy
young minister. His body does not rest at the mere assault of disease,
but moves on till the heavier blows fall; then surrenders but a week--is
up again and doing as ever. Though his command of Greek and Latin may
have been incomparably less than those who have passed their years in
careful study, it would terrify the mass of graduates to attempt his
labors.
The month of April was busily and successfully employed, each day being
occupied with an appointment to preach, or with visiting from house to
house, in which he carried a countenance of calm and cheerful light to
all he met. Sometimes three meetings a day was his order of action. At
Wakefield he spoke on the 28th to hundreds of attentive hearers, among
whom was a respectable young woman, Miss Lusena Guage, and who within
seventeen hours of the time of his public address, departed this life; a
circumstance that impressed itself on all, from the fact that the
speaker that day had uttered, almost in an oracular manner, that the
whole of his assembly would never meet him again. In Brookfield, he
ended this month in the same evangelical spirit that brightened all his
arduous labor, thanking God for what he had seen among the people.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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