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
Rather difficult, was it not, to get this young man into a net? He
stands yet erect upon his mission, prays, weeps, preaches by night and
by day; and old men and young, mothers and maidens, acknowledge his
right to lead them in the "new and the living way" by falling into his
line of march, and finding words of life in his speech. This refusal to
pledge himself to creed and sect, grew out of nothing unsocial, for his
whole being was social and brotherly. Interest could not so have
dictated. An innate greatness of mind it was that gave him this high
position for a young man as early as 1814, aided no doubt by the free
and generous impulses of the religion of Jesus, which, in his experience
and in his Testament, alike declared the oneness of the body of Christ,
and of whatever is essential and saving. This position seems not to
have hindered him; the faithful still rally under the banner he bears.
Mr. Badger was a man of great facility for carrying his points, having a
persuasive eye, will, and speech; nor is it at all surprising that among
his early commendatory letters, there should be some from clergymen of
different denominations; one I remember signed by three _class leaders_,
in the Province of Canada, and others from those who had obeyed his call
to the new life, and to whom he became as an apostle and father.
At Gilmanton, Barnstead, Stratham, Portsmouth, Rye, Northampton, he held
forth in the name of the victorious Christ; and though there is no
record of dogmatic speculation and "disputations of science," the fires
of reformation were kindled, the young convert and the steadfast
believer rejoiced together, bringing forward their golden treasures, not
from the cold chambers of the intellect, but from the mines of the soul,
as wrought by experience and refined by the agencies of the Holy Spirit.
One more touching paragraph from this letter, we cannot withhold. Those
who recollect the calmness and the pensive music of the pine-grove, its
unison with the deeper feelings, will vividly realize the passage which
refers to the lonely and dependent spirit which there sought relief in
prayerful utterance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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