Life and Letters of Rev. Aratus Kent Introduction

The condition of things on this wise, Lowell is feeble and Granville and Hennipin are very feeble. The latter us ground occupied by Methodists and Universalists giving but little promise of success to our efforts. The former weakened by the secession recently of a majority of the Church on account of their abhorrence of the Home Miss. So. Describing the reason on their dislike to Br. Clark who has embraced Cedar Point as one of his posts of missionary service. Br. Swan of Cedar Point being present the question of the propriety of organizing a church which would weaken still more the Lowell & Granville Ch. This brought up a survey of the whole field. And the Brethren at G. said they were agitating the question of giving up the ground to the majority and uniting with Father Dickeys Ch. at Union Grove. Brs. Clark and Swan and myself opposed that plan for the following reasons. Granville is central, they have a flourishing academy having 60 scholars and a pious excellent teacher. His valuable auxiliary is now in the sails of the ministry and would go down or go under another influence. The minority has bid off the meeting house at $1000 which is less than its value. And the united judgement of the caucus was that if they could get under way and show the aspect of strength the other party would break in pieces from its own inherent evils..Hence the conclusion was reached unanimously (whether Br. Clark should be employed again or not in that field) that Granville church must be sustained (at present at least).

After this discussion I came to the River (9 miles) and crossed in safety. Called on Br. Lathrop and Baldwin of Lasalle and spent the night with Rev. McMillan by whose comfortable fire I am writing, and to whom I will give a letter of introduction to be delivered in Feb.

I has a long and anxious conversation with Br. McMillan respecting the state of Religion in Peru and in their church. Here is a population of 1500 or 1800 and no other centers of moral influence but a feeble Methodist and a very feeble Presbyterian Church which last exhibits but little vitality and exerts but little influence. There is a doubt on the minds of ministers in this vicinity on the mind of McMillan and my own and on that of Br. D. also (evidently from his letters to me) whether he ought to occupy this field. He is greatly respected but seems to fail in the energy, tact and boldness and directness and pungency necessary for such a station as this. He has laboured under a great depression of spirit since the death of his wife and he is apprehending another similar trial which has taken him away to South Port and prevented me from meeting him here and I have left a line for him suggesting that in view of his trials and the embarrassments of his field, he ought to feel at liberty to change his position if he thinks it promotes his usefulness and comfort and to presume that another man may occupy his place at Peru, or at least if his mind inclines him to but he can ask advice of his Presbytery, I have conversed considerably with Brs. Baldwin and Lathrop who tell me that ..they want a Cong. minister of some force and experience to come and organize and build them up. They have written to Br. Clark of Elgin. he has consulted me about leaving his people and I advised him first to them and state his embarrassment which I understand he has done. The question of relative importance of these rival villages is an open question. You have doubtless heard one side from Br. Baldwin. You can if you choose, hear Mr. McMillan’s views. I feel anxious for Peru. They want a man there who can move a heavy load and carry it along.

We have at this moment several vacant churches where Congregational Ministers of great promise may find fields of usefulness worthy of their attention and other vacancies where ministers of other denomination would be alike acceptable. But what shall we do? we cannot get men from the East and we are opposed in our project to establish a Theo. Seminary among ourselves. What means the apathy of pious parents that there should be such a decrease of candidates for the ministry. Have they forgotten the prayer the Redeemer has put into their mouths. Hence they lost sight of the territory stretching off northward and southward and westward to the Pacific.

What means the sad tidings which are wafted to us from California. why are the intervening barrens strewed with deserted waggons, and the...I feel for our increasing destitutions and I am painfully reminded of a remark in a letter of our lamented Br. Dr. White: “Young men must be brought into the ministry in greater numbers of Salvation must wait.”

My dear wife has forwarded here several letters. I forward Br. Hildreths letter. He came to Galena to see me. he appears heartily tired of his present situation and very anxious to be employed. I could think of no field adapted to him but told him of Savanna, its present destitute and unpromising condition and its prospective importance as the point on the Central R.Road where it touches the Mississippi.

Br. Pearson’s letter I enclose as it contains information but which you need not presume.

Having done all I can here in the absence of Br. D. I am ready to go and call at Dover and Lamoille.

Yours affectionately,

A. Kent

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Dr. Badger, Dear Br.,

I take pleasure in making you acquainted with Mr. John H. McMillan an excellent Brother who goes to New York to purchase goods in Feb. and will give you an opportunity to make further enquiries respecting the moral condition of this village of one who is able to answer them.

Yours very affectionately,

A. Kent

 

[1851]

TO THE HOME MISSIONARIES OF NORTHERN ILLINOIS

The Agent of the American Home Missionary Society after expressing his unfeigned regard and tender sympathy would remind them that much is expected of them. The community expects they will be upright and exemplary men, that they will be honest, benevolent, diligent and self denying, meek and forbearing.

The churches expect much. They look to them as leaders in every good work, and will be disappointed if they do not speed the progress of benevolent enterprise by every practicable means. They expect them to be spiritually minded themselves, and to be foremost in every effort to promote the higher tome of piety in others.

The Society expects that Home Missionaries will expend all their energies in the service of the Church, while they draw as little as possible from the Lord’s treasury. True, they must provide for their families and must be allowed seasons of relaxation. But yet it is expected of them that they will practice a rigid economy, that they and their families will be examples of frugality, neatness and thrift: that they will submit cheerfully to such privations or positive self-denial as Providence assigns them, and that they will both in public and in private urge upon the feeble churches the duty of making such strenuous efforts to support the Gospel without foreign aid, as will foreshow and foster their future growth and efficiency.

The Society expect[s] they will be so devoted to their appropriate work that their minds and their hands, their professional studies and their general reading, their public services and parochial visits, their cogitations by day and their dreams by night will all lead of in that direction.

They will be expected to preach with plainness and pungency, in season and out of season, on Sabbath and on week days, by daylight and by moonlight, and by private visits and exhortations to train their people to active service. By promoting Temperance and every species of moral reform, by establishing Sunday Schools, Prayer meetings and Bible classes, and by laboring unremittingly in the neglected work of catechising the children and youths, and thus furnishing them with a knowledge of the doctrines and duties of our holy religion, and for their encouragement they may be cited to Baxter’s R. Pastor, a volume which may be had of the American Tract Society by application. They will be expected to advocate revivals and to foster and direct them. In a word they will be expected to lay themselves out to advance the cause of Christ by every practicable method and for these several reasons,

1) They are entirely consecrated to the work. They have not only chosen this service to the exclusion of all else that may interfere, but they have been spart [sic] to it by the laying on of the hands of the Presbytery, and we look for high achievements from one who devotes the entire energies of body and mind, and that for a whole life, to a single object.

2) We have a right to expect that such men will be devoted and successful because they are employed and paid to do that very work.

3) Much is expected of Home Missionaries because they have many facilities. It is then if ever we look for zeal and efficiency when a man serves a good master and loves his work.: He carries with him credentials which ensure respect and constitute his passport to a favorable regard even though he presses unwelcome truths upon their attention, and indeed the church (not to say the community at large) will complain of him if he does not visit them and converse upon personal religion.

4) His efficiency is facilitated by the auxiliaries furnished to is hands. The publications of the Bible, Tract, Sunday School, Temperance and Peace Societies are all coadjutators with him: The officers and private members of the church are pledged to help him. He has moreover the influence of the Divine Spirit and the public sentiment of a Christian nation and the conscience of each individual transgressor on his side. And then he too is an agent of Government. That government is an absolute monarchy whose empire is the universe and the whole power of the throne is eternally pledged to sustain him.

He may therefore and ought to call often and loudly for help, and while he is thankful for single drops he should expect and pray for bountiful showers. Such an one may well endure hardships as a good soldier of Jesus Christ in the execution of his high trust.

The Agent of the American Home Missionary Society feels justified in addressing a word of exhortation to the churches aided by its funds.

The men whose services you enjoy are either chosen by yourselves or sent you by that benevolence which seeketh not her own. As messengers of God make them fell that they are welcome. They have a burden of duty to discharge, and the churches owe reciprocal duties to their missionaries.

Allow me then while I sympathize with you in the embarrassments which press upon feeble churches of the West (for I know both how to be abased and how to abound,) allow me to suggest some of these reciprocal duties which grow out of your mutual relations.

You ought to esteem them very highly in love for their work. As accredited Ambassadors of your Sovereign they are entitled to respect, and if you love the Commissioner, you will love those whore are commissioned by him. You may perhaps detect in them some foibles but throw your mantle over them at once, for love covereth a multitude of sins, Let your conviction of their worth and your high estimation of the value of their services induce you to obey their instructions, to sympathize in their trials, and to exercise forbearance when they seem to you to have committed errors and even when the time they are tenacious in adhering to them.

It will also be your duty to contribute to their support. If they are true men they will lay themselves out to promote by all the energies they possess your spiritual advancement, and you in turn will do what you may to facilitate their temporal comforts. You cannot indeed support them alone. But you can do something:enough at least to show a willing mind, enough to lessen the burden which the Society has assumed.

Be assured your missionaries will meet with many trials and some privations, but they will seem much lighter if he perceives in you a desire to do all you can for his comfort. Make them feel that it is a pleasure to minister to their necessities. When you give do it with cheerfulness and when you curry provisions in payment of subscriptions be sure you give him a good article and in good measure, pressed down and shaken together, and if you err in any way let it be as the servant of Boaz was required to do, “let fall some handfuls of purpose.” A donation of a little present from an individual will cheer his spirits like the clear shining of the sun after rain. One thing more. Let me especially enjoin that you steadily cooperate in his plans of doing good. United action is powerful and id a church would be efficient they must act in concert with their pastor, and with one another. It may cost you some self denial especially when the service required relates to the revival of spiritual religion or when it pertains to those nominal services, such as preparing the house and the lights, which any one may do, and which are already enough to neglect, and remember if your zeal falters here it will be as when a standard bearer fainteth.

A Word to Missionaries and Churches conjointly.

It is to urge the importance of meetings for prayer. Vain are our expectations that religion will flourish while these are neglected; and I question the propriety of sustaining a missionary in places where there is no prayer meeting or even where it seems to be a forced measure.

I am not unapprised of the difficulties which must be encountered where the population is sparse, the members widely dispersed, the roads bad, their means of conveyance very illy adapted to speed or comfort, and the purpose of secular duties very great. And there is but one answer to all of these.

The prayer meeting must be sustained. It is essential to Christian fellowship and personal sanctification, and all the sacrifices it involves should be cheerfully undergone. The want of such a meeting is evidence of feebleness that should awaken apprehension. There is a leak in the ship which must be stopped, or all will be lost. To maintain a prayer meeting no turn nor effort nor sacrifice should be spared. If the roads and attendance forbid their approach in the evening they should go by day, and if they cannot ride, they should go on foot. If they are so fatigued during harvest that they cannot enjoy the meeting in the afternoon, let them assemble in the morning and devote the best hours of the day to the best work. They will lose nothing by it, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased. Oh what a refreshment to the tired nature of the harvest man to leave his fields and go on Wednesday morning to the prayer meeting. What a rebuke to that worldly minded professor whose zeal for money making hath eaten him up, and what an impression of the excellence of our religion would those singular acts of sanctified Christians make upon the ungodly around them. Will it be too much then to ask you brethren to review this whole matter and enquire what are the means that operate to keep you from such a meeting.

Is it the distance, the pressure of duty, or are there not other reasons underlying these, such as indifference, a positive dislike or perhaps an apprehension that if you attend you will be obliged to take part and thus condemn the inconsistency of your ordinary conduct?

Agent

Galena, Jan. 29, 1851

Rev. Mr. Badger

Dear Br.

Br. Wheeler’s report will accompany the other applications, and I have written advising him to make a vigorous effort to raise a subscription for his support and write us.

Yours affectionately,

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Dear Br.,

Yours of Jan. 21 has been received and I have forwarded the Commissions of Brs. Murphy & Day. Perhaps I erred in judgement when I encouraged then both to expect commissions especially without first referring it to your committee. I approve the views your com. takes of the subject and rather wonder why I should have taken so long a step and reflecting the matter over in connection with your remark that the amount of expenditure is disproportionate to what you are able to do for other destitutes. It has thrown me back upon the habit of my own mind. I have been in the habit of cherishing the idea that the great want is that of more men and that whenever I could lay hold of a good man I must not fail to secure him. I am inclining still to think that Br. Day will make his influence felt and that we shall trace results that will be permanent. With respect to Br. Murphy I know nothing but what is contained in the certificate I sent you. I have tried 3 times to see him and have been “let hitherto.” And I was influenced too by a desire to have him in our connection rather than to have an Old School Organization thrust into our field as they seem determined to be at all hazards. And in every place in this and the contiguous states I am willing they should do all the good they can but I feel somewhat indignant when they come to our members (as one of their ministers did 2 weeks since when he was about organizing a church in Stephenson Co,) and tell that we are not orthodox.

And with respect to the field they occupy, It is entirely new ground which has been neglected and I has not there seen so fully as I now do the propriety and economy of restricting missionaries to half pay and thus making it necessary for them to lean harder upon the people to whom they minister.

In relation to Port Byron, I think the field is limited for so large an appropriation but as Br. Reed had introduced a man there I did not feel at liberty to question the propriety of the course. Br. Wheeler occupies a very larger field if we count up the destitute lairs that open around him.

I have been quite concerned but I should not do the right thing in relation to Br. Hildreth. On the one hand I perceive there is a strong distrust of his adaptiveness to be useful in New York and where he is best known, on the other such evidence of repentance and a desire to be at his proper work that I could not refuse to point him to Savanna where the Com, have refused to sustain him on the alleged ground that the appropriation asked is too much. They have made a vigorous effort to raise a larger sum and are about to apply for 200 only. And unless his demerits are more serious that I have supposed I shall hope he may be commissioned both on his own account and the of the people there for it he is at all successful he will root out the influence of the Unitarian whose persevering efforts threaten to lay foundations that cannot by and by be overturned. And the fact that the very men who have sustained Woodward are so largely committed to Br. Hildreth seems to indicate that it is not yet too late to redeem Savanna form the blight of Unitarianism.

Br. Pendleton's achievements astonish me. I spent 3 days with him and looked carefully into his operations. How one little man & poor and withal a missionary preaching every Sabbath and providing for a family could within 2 years have projected, gathered on a naked prairie all the materials and all the labourers and finished a tasteful & commodious building 40 feet square and containing 21 rooms all well arranged and could have more over filled it in every nook and corner with the sons & daughters of serve at an expense of $3000 is to me a mystery.

At my request he has furnished a plain and unvarnished history of the enterprise which I enclose. I do not perceive a high exaggeration. He consented to furnish this statement because he wants by means of it to procure some aid from the East in obtaining beds and other furniture for the pupils rooms without the trouble of bringing their own furniture from a distance.

I had much pleasant conversation and endeavored to be faithful in guarding him against worldly mindedness. The church at Milo is small and poor and can raise bit $25 and he hopes to receive the same amount from individuals at Henry. And he asks 250 (i.e. 125 for Milo and 125 for preaching at the Academy.) His school of 60 together with those that come from the village make a congregation of 75. He has a very pleasant chapel and recitation room in the attic and a more interesting congregation than usually falls to the lot of Home Miss. to address. Nor is his preaching without effect for he reckons 10 as the converts of last winter, several of whom incidentally came in my way.

The family arise at 5 and the young ladies assembly with Mrs. P. and spend 1/2 an hour in silent reading of scripture and prayer (for want of room to be alone) 10 minutes being allowed at the close for their questions on what they have read. After which 40 crowd around the breakfast table, repeat each a verse and there family prayer is had before they leave/ It appears to me therefore that novel and visionary as his project seemed at first that he is evidently doing great work and he ought to have more rather than less than his modesty had solicited. And this token of our confidence will stimulate him to increase his zeal in pastoral duties. And I do not feel wiling to lose such a man from the ministry. I encouraged him to expect 250 on condition that he devote himself to his professional duties. He replied that he had now got through building and secured good teachers so that he could now give himself to his appropriate work. I do not say that your committee should sustain such enterprises ordinarily but I do say that if there is one of their members that can go and survey attentively the whole establishment and not say that he has accomplished as much as ordinary ministers, I shall be disappointed.

Things are in a very embarrassing state at Henry. The church is exceedingly weak and they have disposed of the school house so that they have not now any place for preaching except at the Seminary which is a mile distant.

Yours in the best bonds,

A. Kent

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Dear Br.,

I have just had a visit from an Elder in the church at Buffalo Grove saying that Br. Gray had not received his commission and I told him that I had my doubts whether the people has done what they could for his support and it was probably delayed because the Committee too had doubts.

He seemed to think that they had done what they could and he seemed to be more than ever encouraged in the prospect of Br. Gray’s usefulness. He says he has visited about and secured the confidence of the community more than any one they have ever had. He further says, moreover, that he draws so large congregations that they cannot get into the house and they will be obliged to build greater. I hope therefore if they are aided this year they will soon be able to support him without foreign assistance.