Personal Recollections of Pardee ButlerButler, Pardee
Religion
Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler
Butler, Pardee
Kansas -- History -- 1854-1861
Ovid Butler had set his heart on this, that the brethren in Indiana
should have personal knowledge of the man that himself and others were
sustaining in Kansas. I found myself greatly misunderstood, and was
often hurt at the slights that grew out of these misunderstandings;
and I tried hard to make these brethren know just what was in my
heart, and what were the objects I was seeking to accomplish.
In the early spring of 1860 I returned to Kansas and resumed my work.
Geo. W. Hutchinson had been a preacher in what was known as the
"Christian Connection" in the New England States, and had been
eminently successful in winning converts. But these churches were
poor, and he having married a wife, his compensation did not meet his
necessities, and like many others he went to California with a hope of
bettering his fortunes. Afterwards he came to Lawrence, in Kansas,
under the auspices of the Emigrant Aid Society. But his freighting
teams having been plundered of a stock of goods, which they were
bringing for him from Leavenworth to Lawrence, he was left to fight
his battle as best he might. It was at this conjuncture that he made
the acquaintance of the brethren at Big Springs, and became impressed
with the simplicity and scriptural authority of our plea. It is well
known that there never was more than a paper wall between ourselves
and "The Old Christian Order," and there seemed nothing in the way of
Bro. Hutchison. He had in his heart no theory of a regeneration
wrought by a miracle, and which gives to a convert a supernatural
evidence of pardon before baptism, and that should, therefore, compel
him to reject the words of Jesus: "He that believeth and is baptized
shall be saved."
The Christian Brethren have been supposed to have some leaning to
Unitarianism, but he betrayed no such leaning. But while he had no
love for the barbarous language in which Trinitarians have sometimes
spoken of the divine relation subsisting between the Father, Son and
Holy Spirit, yet he was willing to ascribe to our Lord all that is
ascribed to him in the Holy Scriptures. Thus joyfully he accepted this
new brotherhood he had found in Kansas, and our churches just as
joyfully set him to preaching. We needed preachers, and here was one
already made to our hand.
Early in the spring of 1860 the weather came off exquisitely fine. It
was like a hectic flush--the deceptive seeming of health on the cheek
of the consumptive. It was a spring without rain, in which the sun was
shining beautiful and bright, in which the evenings were balmy and
pleasant, and the road good; but to be followed by a summer of
scorching heat, of hot winds that burned the vegetation like the
breath of a furnace, leaving the people to starve. The inhabitants of
Kansas will never forget the year 1860, the drought and the famine.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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