Personal Recollections of Pardee ButlerButler, Pardee
Religion
Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler
Butler, Pardee
Kansas -- History -- 1854-1861
It will be well for us to ponder well the inevitable consumption and
slow decay that is surely wearing out these Old Baptist churches. Like
the house of Saul, they are growing weaker and weaker. What a contrast
between their condition now and seventy years ago. Then the United
Baptists were the most powerful religious body in the great West. Then
Jacob Creath and Jeremiah Vardeman could, if they had been so
disposed, have elected the Governor of Kentucky. Then the Baptists
were strong in the affections of the people, and strong in the memory
of those men who had, through incredible toil, obloquy, poverty and
loss of goods, planted the Baptist cause in the American wilderness.
Alexander Campbell, with his eminent gifts of eloquence and learning,
was welcomed among the Baptists almost as an angel from heaven. But
his well-meant efforts to work a reformation in the Baptist churches
were despised, and he was thrust out as a heathen man and publican.
What treasures untold reside in the Lord's house, the Lord's day, the
Lord's book, and the ordinances of the Lord? It is the glory of
Christianity. Now let the members of a Christian Church fail to meet
at the Lord's house for Christian worship on the Lord's day, and to
what snares and temptations do they not subject themselves and their
children? What temptations to idleness and to wasting the Lord's day
in visiting and gossiping, or in drowsy lethargy!
The sanctification of the Lord's day by meeting in honor
of the resurrection of the Saviour, and especially with a
reference to the celebration of the Lord's supper, is
essential to the edification, spirituality, holiness,
usefulness and happiness of the Christian community. It is
not designed to throw into the shade any other duties of
the Christian Church while contending for those above
stated; but because no society save the Disciples of
Christ so regard, observe and celebrate the Lord's day. We
endeavor to arrest the attention of our fellow professors
to the great design of it and of the coming together of
the members of Christ's family on that day. When assembled
for this chief purpose, the reading of the Scriptures,
teaching, exhortation, prayer, praise, contributions for
the poor, and discipline when called for, are all in order
and necessary to the growth of the Christian Church in all
the graces of the Spirit, and in all the fruits of
holiness.--ALEX. CAMPBELL, in _Millennial Harbinger,_
Vol. I., p. 534, New Series.
And what an audacious wrong and unutterable blunder would it be for
God's chosen people to adopt an order that should defraud themselves,
their children, their neighbors and their neighbor's children of such
a glorious privilege.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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