Personal Recollections of Pardee ButlerButler, Pardee
Religion
Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler
Butler, Pardee
Kansas -- History -- 1854-1861
For reasons that we have already mentioned, the General Missionary
Society had done nothing for us, but seeing that we were fighting a
brave battle, and that we were keeping the peace with each other, they
felt themselves moved to help us. Eld. D. S. Burnett was at this time
employed preaching in Western Missouri, and was deputed by the
Missionary Board to visit G. W. Hutchinson at Lawrence, who was
winning golden opinions as an eminently successful evangelist. Bro. H.
was not at home, but was away holding a protracted meeting, and Bro.
Burnett therefore called on his wife. Mrs. Hutchinson was a pious,
refined, and educated New England woman, who had married her husband
after he had become known as the most successful evangelist in the
"Old Christian Order" in the New England States. She had with pain
seen him turned aside from his chosen work by hard necessities, and
was now greatly rejoiced to see him once more a preacher. Bro. B. was
an accomplished gentleman, whose polished and cultivated manners
sometimes laid him open to the charge of a proud and aristocratic
exclusiveness; but this Yankee lady herself knew how to queen it, and
stood before him with no sense of inferiority. She frankly said to him
that herself and husband were abolitionists, but that they knew the
value of peace, and would do what could be done, in good conscience,
to make peace and keep it. Bro. Burnett evidently went away from
Lawrence with a good opinion of this family of Yankee abolitionists,
and Bro. H. was immediately accepted as a missionary of the General
Missionary Society. He used quietly to indicate to me that, as
touching this interview, his wife was a better general than himself,
and that it was lucky for him that he was not at home.
And so we two became missionaries, sustained by two different, and, in
one particular, antagonistic missionary societies. Of course we did
not quarrel; why should we? If I was sometimes charged with
abolitionism, was not this man blacker than myself? We often traveled
together, and held protracted meetings under the same tent. I had for
a lifetime studied this plea which we make for a return to primitive
and apostolic Christianity, and it was, therefore, my business to
press upon the people the duty to yield a loyal obedience to the Lord
Jesus Christ as our only Lawgiver and King, and thus to renounce all
human leadership and the authority of all human opinions; and it
became the business of Bro. Hutchinson to win the people by his
magnetic power, and fill them with his own enthusiasm, and thus induce
them to act on the convictions that had been already formed in their
hearts.
I take on myself to say there never have been two more diligent
evangelists than were Bro. Hutchinson and myself in the year that
followed the Big Springs Convention. Looking over the whole ground, I
am able to see that in that year was laid the foundation for that
abiding prosperity that has distinguished our effort down to the
present time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account