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It is nearly sixty years
since, to the north of the Ohio, a traveller might have been seen pursuing
his course in a region, smiling it may be now under every token of human
industry and cultivation, but then comparatively bare, rough, and
uninviting. If the scene was strange, no less was the traveller. In form
stalwart and muscular, in countenance strongly marked with the proofs of
nervous energy, corresponding with his broad, manly person; he had for the
moment, nevertheless, the air and appearance of one somewhat perplexed as
to his present circumstances and prospects. He had been absent from home
for three years; a journey of five hundred miles lay before him ere he
could reach it; his horse had gone blind; his saddle was in a sad state of
disrepair; the patched bridle might snap anew at the next jerk; his
clothes bore ample traces of the backwoods through which he had torn his
way; and, to crown this dearth of all comfort, the money, on the strength
of which he was to travel homeward, amounted only to seventy-five cents.
It was a Methodist preacher
on his way home from one of his earliest circuits. Cured of his passion
for such work, he might be supposed ready to exchange it for an easier
life. Continuing in it, he might have been expected soon to have fallen a
martyr under his fatigues and dangers—fording rivers waist-deep, or
floating across them on a rolling log, or miserable "dug-out;" doing
battle for life and purse in lonely roads, and, worse still, in places
where there was scarcely any road; preaching no brief homily, but for
three long hours at a time, to audiences ranging from a single hearer to
ten thousand, and with a voice that startled the echoes of the old
forests, and swelled in thunder along the 1 prairies. Neither of these
results ensued. Our preacher stuck to his duties like a Christian hero,
and has attained to a good old age, with sufficient vigour left him to
indite an autobiography, peculiar, yet most racy, full of thrilling
incidents, and supplying glimpses into a strange life, now fast vanishing
under the advancing wave of riper civilisation.
His life previous to the
journey homeward which we have just mentioned, fitted Peter Cartwright—
"the backwoods preacher," to give him his own title—for the rough work he
had to do, and the rough scenes in which his early lot was cast. Born in
Virginia about 1785, he was removed by his parents, with the rest of the
family, to Kentucky. At that time it was much of a wilderness, where the
bear and buffalo roamed in freedom, and the Indians did their best, by war
and massacre, to exclude the whites. Of the party to which the Cartwrights
belonged, seven families one night insisted on remaining at Crab Orchard,
instead of proceeding further. Before the morning they had all, with the
exception of one man, fallen under the tomahawk of the Indians. Logan
County, in which his father ultimately settled, was the Texas of that
time, and bore the name of "Rogues' Harbour," as the place to which all
refugees from justice made their escape. The boy's morals were not likely
to be very correct under the training of such society around him. "We have
his own confession for it that he was a wild, wicked boy," fond of races
and dancing, and a very successful gambler.
Peter is another instance
of what the Church of Christ owes to pious mothers. His mother warned him
against his youthful follies, and, with little help from the father, did
what she could to imbue him with right principles. He had otherwise scanty
opportunities for education. Log-cabins and cane-brakes were all the
colleges he ever knew.
About the year 1801, a
sacramental meeting was held by some Presbyterian ministers at Cane Ridge.
It was the first of those camp-meetings which have constituted so peculiar
a feature of American religious life. The effect produced by it led to
meetings of a similar nature. At one of these Cartwright attended; but he
had already experienced some awakening of conscience. During three months,
he had been in great distress. As in the case of Bunyan, a vivid fancy
wrought in him all manner of horrors, till on one occasion, like Luther,
he deemed himself in personal conflict with the devil. It is easy to
account for the shape which conviction took with him, from his past life,
strong imagination, and slight education; and his case shews how foolish
the inference, so commonly drawn in such conversions, that, because of the
extravagant fancies connected with them, there could be no root of genuine
repentance underneath. It does not follow that, because the great change
ensues under circumstances and characteristics different from our own, we
have any warrant to disparage its reality. Wretched under a sense of
guilt, Peter listened, amid weeping multitudes, to the preaching of the
gospel. As he prayed, the sense of pardon came to him—light and joy filled
his mind—it was the hour of his deliverance;—never since has he doubted
that then and there the Lord forgave his sins, and, to use the peculiar
phrase of American Methodism, "gave him religion."
Having received licence as
an exhorter in 1802, he addressed large congregations; and at length,
abandoning secular work, he went on circuit. Large numbers under his
preaching became, as he describes it, "soundly converted unto God." Year
after year he renewed his itinerancy, varying the circuit, but meeting
with the same success. He married in 1808; and, in the same year, was
ordained elder by Bishop M'Kendree. In the Tennessee Conference, 1812, he
was advanced to the dignity of presiding elder. He had no ambition for the
honour; for, in spite of a stern energy of character, which would have led
him to mount the forlorn hope in behalf of Methodism, there seems about
him an essential vein of modesty, and he made efforts to induce Bishop
Asbury to recall the official dignity to which he had been appointed. He
had no difficulties on the score of the work assigned him. He was ready,
at a moment's notice, for any amount of it; and the Wabash district seemed
more than enough for any spiritual Hercules,—ranging, as it did, over the
States of Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky, and obliging him, in order to
overtake his circuit, to cross the Ohio sixteen times in the course of the
year.
No proper conception can be
formed of the adventurous life which Cartwright was compelled to lead,
without some reference to the thrilling incidents with which his biography
teems. Take two samples of the trials which this brave, good man had to
meet in his perilous journeys through the wilderness. On. his way to a
conference in Sangamon county, his waggon was overturned. By the time it
was set up again and reloaded, night had fallen; and as he was exhausted
with his efforts to raise and reload the waggon, he struck a fire at the
root of a tree, and encamped for the night. The sad result must be given
in his own simple words:—
"Just as day was
reappearing in the east, the tree at the root of which we had kindled a
small fire fell, and it fell on our third daughter, as direct on her, from
her feet to her head, as it could fall; and I suppose she never breathed
after. I heard the tree crack when it started to fall, and sprang, alarmed
very much, and seized it before it struck the child, but it availed
nothing. Although this was an awful calamity, yet God was kind to us; for
if we had stretched our tent that night we should have been obliged to lie
down in another position, and in that event the tree would have fallen
directly upon us, and we should all have been killed, instead of one. The
tree was sound outside to the thickness of the back of a carving knife,
and then all the inside had a dry rot; but this we did not suspect. I sent
my teamster to those families near at hand for aid, but not a soul would
come nigh. Here we were in great distress, and no one to even pity our
condition. My teamster and myself fell to cutting the tree off the child,
when I discovered that the tree had sprung up, and did not press the
child, and we drew her out from under it, and carefully laid her in our
feed trough, and moved on about twenty miles to an acquaintance's in
Hamilton County, Illinois, where we buried her."
On another occasion, after
a conference at Indiana, he was seized with a bilious fever. Returning
home, that he might recover his strength by rest and quiet nursing, he had
to cross a prairie; but the effort was too much for him. He was reduced to
the utmost extremity of sickness and weakness:—
"I was immensely sick, and
the day was intensely warm. At length I found a little green bush that
afforded a small shade. Here I lay down to die. I saw a house a little way
off over a field, but was unable to get to it. In a few minutes a lady
rode up to me, and, although I had not seen her for twenty years, I
instantly knew her, and she recognised me, and after a few minutes she
rode off briskly after help.
"In a little time there
came a man and buggy and a small boy. The boy mounted my horse. The man
helped me into the buggy, and drove up to his house, and took me in, and
placed me on a bed between two doors, where I had a free circulation of
air. This was the house where the lady lived. The man was her husband.
They took all possible care of me till I got a little better; then I
started, and got safe to Brother M'Reynold's."
It is amusing to find that
such was the elasticity of his character, that Cartwright, unshaken by all
such difficulties and trials, resolved, in 1826, on adding political
office to his spiritual work. He became a candidate for a seat in the
legislature, and twice represented the Sangamon county. One fellow, in
order to create a prejudice against him, defamed him bitterly, and brought
against him a charge of perjury. Cartwright caught him amid a group in a
public square retailing the charge, and broke in suddenly upon his
harangue with a stern inquiry as to the report he had been circulating:—
"'Who are you, sir?' said
he. 'I don't know you.'
"'Did you ever see me
before?'
"'No, sir, not that I know
of.'
"'Well, sir, my name is
Peter Cartwright, about whom you have circulated the lying statement that
I, in your presence, in Kentucky, offered to swear off a plain note of my
indebtedness; and I have proved to this large and respectable company that
you are a lying, dirty scoundrel; and now, if you do not here acknowledge
yourself a liar and a dirty fellow, I will sweep the streets with you to
your heart's content; and do it instantly, or I will give you a
chastisement that you will remember till your latest day.'
"The crowd shouted, 'Down
him, down him, Cartwright ; he ought to catch it.'
"After the crowd was a
little stilled, my accuser said, 'Well, gentlemen, I acknowledge that I
have done Mr Cartwright great injustice, and have, without any just cause,
lied on him.' At this the crowd gave three cheers for Cartwright.
"Now, you see, gentle
reader, the muddy waters that a candidate for office in our free country
has to wade through; and well may we pray, ' Lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.'"
In the course of his
journeys, Cartwright had a stiff encounter with the famous, or rather
infamous, Joe Smith. The debate closed with a solemn warning from the
former, which in a short space afterwards received a singular fulfilment.
"Yes," said I, "Uncle Joe, but my Bible tells me the bloody and deceitful
man shall not live out half his days; and I expect the Lord will send the
devil after you some of these days, and take you out of the way."
The remainder of his
autobiography is occupied, to a large extent, with details in regard to
the disputes on the subject of slavery, and to the secession from the
Methodist Episcopal Church in 1844. Peter sincerely detests slavery. He
often denounces it, directs against it what he would call "the grapeshot
of truth," and speaks of it "as the abomination that maketh desolate."
When a bishop, by marriage and otherwise, had become the owner of slaves,
the fact came upon our friend "with the darkness and terror of a fearful
storm." Still, he dislikes rabid abolitionism, would "not meddle with
slavery politically," and mourns over the division which rent the
Methodist Church on this point.
The sum of his labours is
given us at the close of his work. He has seen fifty-three sessions of
annual conferences, all of which, with a single exception, he has
personally attended. He has travelled eleven circuits and twelve
districts, received into communion 10,000, and baptized 8000 children and
4000 adults. For twenty years, he seldom had rest free from duty more than
one day in the week. For the last thirty-three years, he has averaged four
sermons. The highest allowance to a single preacher when he started was
eighty dollars per annum. In spite of scanty emolument and abundant
losses, Peter emits no groan or grumble of discontent. He tells us very
naively, "Strange as it may appear to the present generation, we got along
without starving or going naked."
It is clear that a very
diversified estimate will be formed of Peter Cartwright. The odd
idiosyncrasies of his character and life will shock various prejudices.
The mind must lift itself out of the narrow groove of the common and the
conventional to do justice to the real excellence of the man.
To many, his own prejudices
will prove a stumbling-block. His contempt for pews in churches is very
profound. Literary institutions and theological institutes fare no better
at his hands. He "turns away sick and faint,"—the words are his own—from
educated preachers, some of whom he scruples not to compare "to a lettuce
growing under the shade of a peach-tree, or a gosling that had got the
straddles by wading in the dew !" Colleges, universities, seminaries,
academies, agencies, editorships, are all to localise and secularise the
ministry. He ejaculates over such growing evils and worse prospects,
"Verily, we have fallen on evil times!' If every man were a Peter
Cartwright, perhaps his theory comes near the truth. It rather puzzles us
to reconcile such principles with his own step of defection, when, even
after he had become an exhorter, he slipped into a school taught by a
Seceder minister, under the risk of imbibing heresy with his other
lessons. Nevertheless, it is refreshing to find a man not ashamed to speak
out his prejudices bluntly. There is no apologetic tone in announcing
them; what is more, under all the extreme views he enunciates, there is
occasionally a strong vein of common sense —some shrewd and suggestive
remarks. The physician blunders in prescribing a remedy, but he is
successful in the detection and diagnosis of a serious ailment.
Offence may be taken at the
rough vigour of his character and actions. We should not forget that, if
there was a John whose privilege it was to lean on the bosom of Christ,
and teach, by gospel and epistle, the one great homily of love, there was
another John, whose church was the wilderness, and whose message was,
"Repent." At a camp-meeting in Tennessee, where "some tall sons and
daughters of Belial," were brought to repent of their sins, a plan had
been contrived by the "rowdies " to disturb and disperse the meeting. It
was defeated by the courage and determination of our preacher:—
"Saturday afternoon was the
time appointed for them to drive us from the ground; but, in the meantime,
we found out their plans, and many of their names. Their captain called
his name Cartwright; all their officers assumed the name of some preacher.
We made our preparations accordingly, and were perfectly ready for them.
They drank their whisky, mounted their horses, armed with sticks and
clubs, and then came, almost full speed, into our camp. As I was captain
of the interior, I met the captain of the Philistines, and planted myself
near the opening between the two tents where they were to enter the
enclosure. As the mounted captain drew near the entering-place, I sprang
into the breach; he raised his club, bidding me to stand by, or he would
knock me down.
"I cried, 'Crack away.'
"He spurred his horse and
made a pass at me, sure enough; but, fortunately, I dodged his stroke. The
next lick was mine, and I gave it to him, and laid him flat on his back,
his foot being in the stirrup. His horse got my next stroke, which wheeled
him "right about;" he dragged his rider a few steps, and dropped him, and
then gave this redoubtable captain leg-bail at a mighty rate. The balance
of the mounted rowdies, seeing their leader down and kicking, wheeled and
ingloriously fled. We took care of the captain, of course, and fined him
fifty dollars. This gave us entire control of the encampment, and peace in
all our borders during our meeting."
The results of the meeting
were worth the struggle so gallantly made to secure its continuance. It
may seem scarcely decorous for a preacher of the gospel to have acted
thus. Better employ the constable. But if no constable was to be had, or,
worse still, if the constable was himself a rowdie, commend us to a
Nehemiah who, to build the wall of Jerusalem in troublous times, can
handle the sword as alertly as the trowel.
The overflowing humour of
the man, sometimes finding vent in dry wit, and sometimes in drier
sarcasm, may seem to damage the enamel of clerical reputation. His friend
and admirer Milburn—and it speaks volumes in favour of Cartwright, that he
won the deep admiration of that singularly-gifted mind, as well as
constrained the respect of General Jackson—tells us that when the
sarcastic question was put to the preacher of the backwoods—"How is it
that you have no doctors of divinity in your denomination?" the prompt
reply of Cartwright, giving more than he got, was—"Our divinity is not
sick, and don't need doctoring." It does not follow, though the vulgar
fallacy to the effect is widely spread, that a man who is never humorous
is always and really grave. Deep feeling has a tendency to rebound as in a
cycloid. From the days of Elijah to Knox, and from Knox to Spurgeon, men
raised up for great work have dealt in sarcasm. Left in their hands, the
weapon would be safe. The danger is, that small men, by such example,
attempt to wield it, and the result is more harm to their friends than
execution upon the enemy. Still, the bow that is never unbent is rarely
the most elastic and effective.
We could conceive many
readers bitterly irritated at honest Peter's diatribes against principles
and doctrines opposed to the creed of Methodism. The Baptist will not
relish the allusion to his peculiar tenet, when he speaks of "a mighty
controversy whether we get to heaven by water or by dry land." Nor will
the sound Calvinist deem it a very just and charitable representation of
his own character, when a predestinarian is described "as believing, or
professing to believe, that God has decreed all things which come to
pass." Still, we must take Peter as we find him, "an outspoken man who
loves everybody, and fears nobody." And withal, there are redeeming
touches of kindly feeling to men of other Churches, when the faith of the
Christian triumphs over the pride of sect.
The scenes at camp-meetings
will scarcely approve themselves to the staid conventionalism of our
religious habits. The revival in Ireland, with its cases of prostration,
has excited disgust in one-sided minds, who look less to the essential
good effected, than to the incidental evils inseparable from every
movement that concerns and affects man. We would not advise readers of
this spirit to read the autobiography of Peter Cartwright, in which, not
merely prostrations, but jerkings, howlings, shoutings, are mentioned as
incidents in conversions. Such readers might themselves, under the vivid
delineations of these scenes of excitement sink under an attack of
hysteria. The question, however, must be honestly faced, in spite of
theories in the Lancet, and thunders from the Times; is it not possible
that, under much that is painful, disgusting even, offensive to the
refined feelings which superior education elicits and develops,genuine and
substantial good—a change pervading the character, and amending the
life—may be accomplished? Is gold less gold because it is the unshapely
nugget, not the coin stamped by art into a form that meets the
conventional requirements of society? Shall truthful Peter Cartwright be
believed when he tells of all that was eccentric and extravagant in the
Methodism of the Par West? Shall we disbelieve him when he tells how,
through this paroxysm of terror, and process of agony, souls emerged, to
all outward seeming, purified and transformed for life? A paramount rule
in all science is, that to frame an induction, all the essential facts
must be taken into account.
Who can doubt that Peter
Cartwright, whatever errors and prejudices he may be held to entertain, is
in the main, a good man and true? His perilous adventures in the
prosecution of his work, the trials which attest his power of indomitable
endurance, the earnestness of heart and soul with which he has devoted
himself to his peculiar mission, the simplicity and single-heartedness of
his views, his unfeigned desire for the conversion of sinners, all bespeak
qualities of character exceedingly rare and worthy of all esteem. The
truths he preaches may not be sound according to our creed, but crystal
though split, may sometimes retain the wine. It may not be in the canons
that a preacher should floor a rowdie with a blow, but the cause of truth
has sometimes need of a Samuel who can hew an Agag into pieces, as well as
a Jeremiah who can weep his soul away over the slain of the daughter of
his people.
The general effects of his
preaching are evidences that he has done good work for his Master. We can
get over our aversion to the demonstrative, which forms so prominent an
element in the Methodistic type of Christianity— to the camp-meetings with
their questionable excitements, to the jerks, the prostrations, the
howlings, and the public agony in the anxious seats,—we look beyond all
these, as we are bound in honesty to do. When we read affecting cases of
women sunk in profligacy, moved and melted under the appeals of our
preacher, and giving the evidence of their whole subsequent life how real
had been the change they professed, we shall not quarrel with the outward
forms under which the change transpired, the convulsions in which it
began. Of old, order and beauty sprang from the womb of a cataclysm. Peter
tells us in what spirit he preached, and preaching in that spirit with
only half the point with which he writes, the effect would be good, and
the usages of the camp-meeting might be more adapted to the rough life of
the forest and prairie, than the smooth homilies that please fastidious
critics. Taking his stand, as he tells us, on some old stump, or empty
waggon, Cartwright thundered forth the law, or offered the gospel, till
scores at a time sank under the power of truth. We question the validity
of some of his reasonings in a passage in which he announces his
"confident belief in an immediate superintending agency of the Divine
Spirit." We put in no demurrer to the truth of what follows:—"In the
agency of the Holy Spirit of God, I have been a firm believer for more
than fifty-five years, and I do firmly believe that if the ministers of
the present day had more of the unction or baptismal fire of the Holy
Ghost prompting their ministerial efforts, we should succeed much better
than we do, and be more successful in winning souls to Christ than we
are."
It may be well to add, that
the religion of Peter Cartwright is not confined to the camp-meeting; does
not evaporate in mere outbursts of emotion; does not sicken and die with
the fire of the pine torches that illumine those strange assemblies amid
the ebon gloom of old forests, where he won as a stump-orator, if you will
so sneer at him, triumphs compared with which the literary garlands of
Carlyle are poor, tame things. He carries religion faithfully into
practice. Only on the question of slavery does he seem to falter—at least,
he would not expel the slaveholder from the Church. Otherwise he seems
exemplary. He fights a stern battle for faithful discipline against the
drunkard. He sees more deeply than most revivalists of our day into the
intimate connexion between domestic and public religion. He is urgent for
family prayer. His hope of a revival over the whole Church rests, in the
first instance, on a revival of family religion. He closes an appeal on
the latter point with the pregnant and significant words:—"I long to see
the time come when God shall abundantly revive family religion; then, and
perhaps not till then, shall we see better and more glorious times of the
work of God among us."
We have in our literature
"Dialogues of the Dead," in which much of the effect depends upon the odd
contrast presented in the characters introduced. Would that we could
summon upon the same stage, for a single interview, Cartwright and the
great reviler of his creed, Sydney Smith. Both have great powers—singular
fertility of wit and humour. We fear, however, that the polished rapier of
the English wit would be shivered under the first blow from the club of
the Backwoods Preacher. In his presence, Sydney Smith would not have
ventured on the ridicule in which he indulged at the expense of the
Methodists. But as regards all the higher purposes of life—the real and
eternal welfare of the race —for which Cartwright has toiled so earnestly
and perseveringly, on what a pedestal of superiority, for all time, above
the brilliant wit, dying according to his own last joke—stall-fed—stands
the loving and large-hearted, yet humble and self-denied Apostle of the
Prairies! |
