Fifty years as a presiding elder

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> PROVO, UTAH

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importance on account of the rapid increase of population of the West.

Of the few books of science and general knowledge that were accessible to him, by loan or purchase, he made a noble use, until his mind became a vast store-house of valuable information; although without the order and system, perhaps, known to a thorough collegiate education, yet so perfect was his command of that knowledge that at a moment, and under any emergency, in argument, debate, or in proclaiming Christ from the pulpit, he could bring it into requisition to vanquish an enemy, or convince a sinner of the error of his way.

Knowledge as obtained from books was not the only kind that was necessary in that day. There were the stern necessities and trials of every-day life, wherein a perfect acquaintance with the character of men was necessary in order to be successful; especially was this the case in the itinerancy. In this respect there were none, perhaps, more perfect than Dr. Cartwright, and to his ability to read men is attributable much of his success through life. At one time in an early Conference, when various members were strongly urging the admission of a young man, mainly on account of his literary attainments, Bishop Asbury

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quietly heard them through, and then said, “ You study books, but I study men/5 He then gave the future of the candidate, as an itinerant, and it proved very much as he said. This was to a large extent the way Dr. Cartwright viewed men ; he considered the man and not the attainments, and rarely was he mistaken in his estimate. The requirements of that day demanded this rare knowledge in men who were to occupy such positions of confidence as were intrusted to Dr. Cartwright.

In the early itinerancy, many instances occurred which called for a firmness and resolution which is now scarcely ever needed — instances wherein the physical power as well as the mental and spiritual were required, not only to subdue the ruffian and keep him from acts of violence, but to teach him the necessity of compliance with moral and religious as well as civil law. Sometimes the severest measures were necessary to convince men of the necessity of conversion ; and many times they were very effectual in producing good results.

There have been times when God has raised up men for the accomplishment of certain great results, for the opening up a needed reformation in the Church, the redemption of a nation from vice or slavery, as were Luther and Wesley for

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the Church, or a Washington for his country. And may we not regarchthese sturdy itinerants of the West as men especially prepared by the Almighty to go forward and prepare the way for the glorious truth that was to civilize and Christianize our land? They were often required to go where men of less nerve and hardihood could not go. To them this great country owes much of its present prosperity.

Soon after the struggles of the infant colonies for their independence had ceased, the father of Dr. Cartwright moved to Kentucky, where the troubles were no less than in the older States, but were different in form. Here he had to battle with the savages, then inhabiting all the West. To the many reminiscences of those dangerous times, related at the fireside of that venerable father, is attributable that noble zeal and patriotism for his country; and to the sacred and inspiring words of a pious mother, that strong love and loyalty for his Church which have ever characterized him during his life. From the earliest formation of his political creed he has been what is known as an unflinching Jacksonian Democrat. Yet during the late war, while many of his party deserted the country in the hour of her peril, he was loyal to her flag and her honor.

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Through a period of fourscore years he has been called upon to witness many calamities befall his country and his Church ; from the early dangers and difficulties of new territories, he has passed to the tranquillity and peace of a nation mature in civilization and religion.

If his life could be measured, not by the flight of years, but by the comparison in the advancement and civilization with nations in other centuries, we could not tell the age of such a man.

A distinguished orator, during the war, said that during the few years of that struggle we had lived a century. If such was the value, in time, of that short period, what would be the value, in time, of the last eighty years, when this nation has made an advancement far greater than other nations in all the eighteen hundred previous years; and what must be the age of men who have passed through the vicissitudes of this important period?

Although for a time, in his youth, he .gave way to the many frivolities and sins of the age, yet the early watch-care and tender pleadings of a fond mother and the attentions of the itinerant minister brought him into the fold of the Church. He was converted in 1801, and the same year united himself with the Methodist Episcopal

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Church, under the ministration of Rev. John Page. He was thus in the Church when Asbury and Whatcoat were the only Bishops, and when William M’Kendree was a presiding elder.

He received a license to exhort from Rev. Jesse Walker, in May, 1802, being but seventeen years of age, and for two years thereafter was pastor of circuits under the authority of the presiding elder.

When, in the Fall of 1802, he removed with his parents to the mouth Qf the Cumberland River, he received his letter from the Church. It was not simply a letter of commendation from the society, but also a commission to preach and organize societies out of the few members that were scattered over that section of country. That was a hard duty for one so young, and he trembled under the burden, but by the grace of God he performed the labor, and the next Fall met his pastor and presiding elder, with the plan and arrangement of a new circuit. This is designated in the Minutes of that year as Livingston.

Viewing the fact that he was far away from the toils of his youth, among total strangers, where there were a few local preachers and members, but no organization, his limited education, and the natural timidity of a youth in assuming such responsibilities, the task was one of

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no ordinary character; yet nobly was it performed and grand were the results.

He entered the itinerant ministry in the Western Conference, in 1804, at the session held at Mount Gerizim, Kentucky, in a log meeting-house between Louisville and Bardstown. His several successive appointments may be seen by reference to the closing chapter, containing the account of his Jubilee.

Enough reference has been made in his Autobiography to the condition of the country at that time to dispense with it here. The Church was, however, as much in its infancy as the country. There was a little establishment at Kew York, called the “ Methodist Book Concern,” struggling with adversity, for its very life. Besides this, there was not a single society auxiliary to the Church doing any thing for the progress of Christianity. Since, the Missionary, Tract, and all of the other societies, now so valuable in their various spheres of usefulness, have sprung into existence; and the Church has grown from a few Conferences to several score, and from a few thousand to more than a million members. His own Conference has grown from one containing only thirty-six ministers and nine thousand members, to eighteen Conferences, with perhaps an average

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of one hundred preachers to each, and many thousand members.

His circuits were sometimes in Tennessee, then in Ohio; one time in Kentucky, and then in Indiana; and the Western Conference was so large in extent of territory as to embrace all the inhabited country north, south, and west, and occupied the ground now covered by more than eighteen Annual Conferences, extending from the Lakes to the Gulf, and from the Alleghany Mountains to the Missouri.

He was ordained deacon by Bishop Asbury, September 15, 1806, at the Conference held at Nollichuckie, East Tennessee; and October 4, 1808, he was ordained elder by Bishop M’Kendree, at thtf Conference held at Liberty Hill, Tennessee.

On the 18th of August, 1808, he was married to Miss Frances Gaines, a very worthy and devoted young lady. She entered with him upon this life of toil and tribulation with no hope of reward, save that to be attained at the end of the race, and in a better land.

Much is often said about the hardy pioneers, and their hardships and dangers; but scarcely a mention is made of the wives of these men. It is plain to every one that there were no dangers

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or hardships; no toils or privations; no suffering or woes, through which these noble women did not pass, as well as their husbands, and many times they were the power behind the throne which kept these men at their posts. The post would often have been deserted, and the land left a barren waste, had not their counsels held the hardy pioneer to his task.

The storm that burst upon the husband fell with equal fury upon the lonely wife at her home. The agony of the husband on the prairie, or in the unbroken forest, met a corresponding sympathy in the silent eloquence of the tear, at the fireside, in that lonely cabin. The native and uncultivated eloquence of the preacher as he held up the Word of eternal life, from the puncheon pulpit, was lifted to the heavens by the wifely prayer, and the angels sealed the message upon the sinners’ hearts.

As the path in the wilderness was pressed by the husband’s foot, it was also trodden, in the secret meditations, by the fond and lonely wife.

Many have been the trials and hardships of our aged sister Cartwright. She has borne them like a hero. No complaint at her lot has fallen from her lips, but like the aged oak, when the limbs and branches fall on account of that age,

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so she fails in body; but the immortal faculties remain to bear the testimony to the life of toil and dangers, and with a lively hope of immortality.

In 1812 the Illinois and the Wabash districts were organized, with Jesse Walker as presiding elder on the former, and Peter Cartwright on the latter. This was his first year as presiding elder, lie accepted the position with great reluctance, recognizing at once the great and important responsibilities of the office, little thinking, however, that it was the commencement of such a long period in that position in the Church. There have always been men peculiarly adapted to particular stations in life, and such seems to have been the case with him in this office.

His temperament, capacity, and administrative ability, together with his great power in the judgment of men, seems to have eminently fitted him for this, above any other trust. Few men could have carried the duties of one office so long without injury to themselves or the office; but with him, he stands to-day high above every assault, and is free from injury to himself or his trust.

The office in itself has been one of the most useful in the Church. In immediate usefulness

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it has been eminently superior to every other in the Church, save perhaps the pastorate.

In that day, men of great nerve and firmness were required to perform its duties. Dr. Cartwright’s keen foresight, wisdom, and profound judgment were ever at command in all the emergencies of his long life in this high trust. There are few men who could have possessed such wit and general eccentricities as belonged to him and used them to advantage without great injury to himself and his cause. But through his life they have often been of material advantage to him ; and yet he has ever maintained the true dignity and grace of a true messenger for Christ. Without losing that dignity and grace he has maintained his ministerial integrity, usefulness, and influence. In the cabinet and in the Conference; in the pulpit and on the rostrum ; in the legislative hall and among the people; in the Church and in the world, has he possessed wit and grace, mirth and dignity; and yet with these strange combinations of character, his fame remains untarnished.

For full fifty years has he had at his disposal the living of the pastor on his district, but he has ever discharged this dutjq always guarding well

the interest of the Church and preacher. We

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would not say that in that time he has not made mistakes; for no man could pass through such a life as hisv with its responsibilities, without error ; but whatever he has done has been with a stronsr regard to consistency and conscientious principles.

In the early history of the Church its ministers had to contend in argument for the principles it advocated. Many times they were called upon to defend them in debate with the strongest intellects of other denominations. In these struggles for the maintenance of truth and right he has often been called to defend the Church. In debate he was strong — he has proved an indefatigable opponent to every antagonist. Many have fallen before his overwhelming argument. Sometimes his wit and sarcasm have called upon him the imprecation of his foe, and in anger and bitterness of spirit, with their maledictions as the sure evidence of defeat, have they retired from the contest.

Being an earnest opposer of slavery, he sought a home in the Church where it did not exist among the people as a blighting curse to their piety. He therefore took a transfer to the Illinois Conference, in the Fall of 1824, and was at its first session, held at William Padfield’s, in St.

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Clair county, Illinois. This Conference had been taken from the Missouri Conference by the General Conference of that year. He has, at this time, (1870,) been a member of the Illinois Conference for forty-six years, and in that time he has been absent from its annual sessions but once, and absent at the first roll-call but three times.

He has occupied a position upon every committee appointed by the Conference, at various times. His character has been passed at every Conference, and never has he at any time occupied any other relation than effective. He has never lost six months from active employment in the ministry.

Twice has he served as President of the Conference, during the absence of the Bishop, and both times he has acquitted himself in that capacity with great dignity and honor. For thirteen sessions of the General Conference he has been a delegate from his Conference. Partly from his great experience in that body, and partly from his great ability as a Church legislator, he has had an influence in these General Councils possessed perhaps by no other man. Many times his influence has been so great as to change the entire feeling of the Conference in

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relation to matters of great importance to the Church in general. Eight years he has served on the Committees of Examination, and as an examiner he has not only been lenient to the candidate, but judicious to the Church.

Ever honorable and noble in all the trusts the Church has imposed upon him, he has discharged his duties in the fear of the Almighty. Whether as custodian of the Centenary Fund, in 1840; as agent for the Pottawatamie Mission ; on memoirs, or select committee for the trial of a ministerial brother; as a Vice-President of the Tract Society, or President of the Conference Missionary Society, he has always possessed that noble dignity and bearing peculiar to the man, and necessary for the maintenance of true grace.

He early identified himself with the educational and literary interests of the Church, by giving all his influence to the establishment of such colleges and academies as were most necessary, in the West, giving largely of his money, and often being among the main movers in an enterprise. He, with others, after several unsuccessful efforts to establish a Church paper in the West, finally succeeded in getting the Central Christian Advocate established at St. Louis, as the organ of the Church.

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He has ever been an opposer of radical changes in the polity of the Church, and to any division of its territory. He stood firmly opposed to the establishment of the Canadian Church, and also to the secession of the Southern division from the main body of the Church. When this secession did occur, and the Church South called for a division of the Church property, he conscientiously opposed it, believing that a seceding portion had no right to make a demand for property, unless they had a sufficient cause for withdrawal, and in this, the mere desire to make slavery the basis of a Church organization was not sufficient cause. His feeling in regard to many of the proposed changes in Church government is plainly seen from the following, which we take from his pen :

“I deprecate the rude and violent attacks upon the rules and usages of the Methodist Episcopal Church, now being made by many writers.

“I have enjoyed a membership in our beloved Church for nearly sixty-nine years, and for sixty-five years have been a regular traveling preacher, and have filled nearly all the offices in the Church, from class-leader to presiding elder; have been in thirteen General Conferences, and in sixty-five Annual Conferences, and in all these

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have seen the practical working of her rules in almost every possible way, and have never seen the time when they have proved a failure. The Wesleys were called to awake a slumbering world, and to infuse spiritual life into a dead national Church. Their mission was to the masses; to the poor, and not the rich. When a settled ministry, with all the lay element appended, had proved a perfect failure, the Wesleys were called to open a new field, and to inaugurate an itinerant ministry. What profound wisdom, not to say inspiration, directed him to change himself, with all his preachers, every few months, or years at most, thereby diffusing the Gospel throughout every part of the land, and giving the people great variety of talent, and the preachers the association of all in the realm!

“When Mr. Wesley transmitted his Church polity to the American Colonies, and the Methodist Episcopal Church was organized, all the substantial rules of Mr. Wesley were retained; and under the doctrines and discipline of our Church, we have prospered without a parallel in the history of the world. We have had to contend with an ungodly world; fashion, and almost all kinds of persecution. We have had the bitter opposition of all other Churches to contend with;

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and though we have not deposed our Bishops, and they have ' appointed hundreds and thousands of preachers to their field of labor every year, and changed them at their discretion; and though we have carried the useless lumber, as some call them — our presiding elders — and have expended thousands of dollars to support them ; and though we have never had the profound wisdom and financiering skill of a lay delegation in our Annual or General Conferences ; and though we have made no German Bishop to attend to about ten thousand German members and probationers; and though we have never passed a direct rule in so many words, making slavery a universal test of membership ; and though we have never passed any rule in the General Conference to justify and encourage our members in resisting the civil laws of our happy country, is it not surprising that with all these radical defects in our Church economy, according to the saying of some, we should still have triumphed over all opposition, and swelled our numbers, in a little over a century, to near two million and a half in all the branches of the Methodist Church? And is it not more surprising yet, that if our Discipline does countenance slavery, and that if we are a pro-slaverv Church, as some say, the Meth-

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odist Episcopal Church has been the cause of the emancipation of more slaves in these United States and territories than all other religious denominations put together? and we have never stolen them, or run them off to Canada on the under-ground railroad either.

“It is said by wise and profound law-makers that excessive legislation is worse than no law.

“I recollect in Boston, in 1852, that Dr. Bond, the Old War Horse , said to the petitioners for lay delegation, from Philadelphia, who had started a paper to plead for lay delegation, that although they did not intend it, their publishing a paper to defend lay delegation would terminate in a division of the Methodist Episcopal Church ; and if this saying of Dr. Bond was prophetic, what may we not prophesy when our own Church papers admit the constant agitation of this, with kindred innovations, constantly into their columns, thereby fanning the flames of restive schism?

“My experience as a member and a minister in our Church is, that the grand defect in the Methodist Church, in ministry and laity, does not grow out of the want of new or amended rules, but because we do not keep those we have.

“ I have witnessed, for more than half a century, the power and glory that has rested on the

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Methodist ministry, in preaching our doctrines and administering our Discipline as it is and has been ; and I would have to be blessed with faith so that I could remove mountains before I can go for any very material alterations. It is true, no doubt, that no human Church government is perfect ; we may improve, and still go on improving as long as we are a Church, but let us have no radical change. I could name a number of little improvements, such as giving our preachers larger salaries — they ought to have more; and the time may soon come that we ought to have a German Bishop in Germany ; but we do not need one in America. We must watch the openings of Providence, and when he opens the way it will be time enough to enter in. Let us trust God and go on, and we will take the world.

“ Our Episcopacy is one in office, not order, and there is no constitutional power in the General Conference to create a separate Episcopacy for the foreign population in the United States and territories. If it is done the result will be disastrous to our German brethren ; for in that event they will not be Americanized, but will become a distinct and separate body from the crowding thousands of our German population in this blessed land of liberty.

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“I look upon the German department of our Church with great interest. We have liberally supported their missions, built their churches and parsonages, and I hope we will continue to aid them if possible; but there must be no separate German interest from the great Methodist family in these United States. America can not be Germanized, but the Germans must be Americanized. And in order to make one undivided body in the ministry and membership, it is my decided conviction that the German ministry and membership, as far as is practicable, ought to be attached to each Annual Conference where they live and labor; and I earnestly entreat our American brethren to help on the German work among us. They are generally poor; they are strangers in a strange land, and are worthy of your aid and sympathies ; and I hope that many of my younger brethren will live to see hundreds of thousands of our German population soundly converted to God, and safely housed in the Methodist Episcopal Church/5

Dr. Cartwright has ever been a conscientious opposer of lay delegation, and expresses himself in the following language :

“ I am surprised at the course that the late General Conference took on lay delegation after

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so large a majority of the voting members of our Church should show such perfect satisfaction with our economy, that ministers should compose the legislative department of the Church, and after so large a majority of ministers and members that did vote recorded their votes against it in a former election, that they should so persistently act as to keep the question alive, the agitation of which is so well calculated to disturb the peace of the Church — I predict, if this agitation is continued it will culminate in a division of the Churchy yet.

66 Again, I was very much surprised that the General Conference should extend the time from two to three years that a preacher might remain on the same charge. It is barely possible that there may be a few cases in which it will work well, but I say, from fifty years’ observation as presiding elder, in at least half the cases where the preachers are returned the second year it would be better for the preacher and the Church if he had been removed at the close of the first year. But my surprise is somewhat abated when I remember that of the two hundred and sixteen members of the late General Conference there were only a little over forty that had ever been in a General Conference before, and that ten or

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twelve of these were book agents, editors, missionary secretaries, etc., that had long been out of itinerant life, and no great wonder they took a tilt toward Congregationalism ; and the great majority of the General Conference being fresh recruits did not, I fear, consider the best interests of the Church, but sought ministerial accommodation. Mark it! if ever the itinerancy goes down, or is trammeled by a stationary ministry, the glory of Methodism will settle under a cloud and the days of our usefulness will, in a great measure, be numbered/5

We can not close this sketch without introducing the following notices, from Zion’s Herald and the Central Illinoian :

“In every State there are men greater than its sovereigns; in every Church there are ministers more famous than its bishops. Sometimes the highest place and man come together. But as frequently, more frequently they do not. Seward and Sumner will have a higher place among the statesmen of this age than Lincoln and Grant; Webster, Clay, and Calhoun, among those of the past generation, than any man who sat in the Presidential chair. Jefferson is the only leading statesman, the representative of ideas, who has been allowed by the American people to execute

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the views he had made triumphant. Hamilton had to yield the seat he had created to Adams, and from Jefferson’s time until now, no creator of his party has sat on its throne.

“ The same law often obtains in other spheres. If one should ask who was the foremost man of Middle States’ Methodism a generation ago, he would not be pointed to our Bishops of that section, but to Nathan Bangs; Southern Methodism was led by Capers, Smith, Winans, and Pierce, much more than by its Bishop Andrew. Sometimes these met, as in Soule and Hedding, of New England; in M’Kendree, of the West. Peter Cartwright is one of those men who i3 greater than the king. The whole West recognized his superiority, his supremacy. He was the primate of all Prairiedom. For two generations he ruled that realm. Yet not until he was well stricken in years did even a college have courage to recognize him; and though the Church honored him with elections to her Quadrennial Legislature, • and kept him steadily in the presiding eldership, which, on those wide-ranging Conferences, was substantially a diocesan Episcopate, yet he never touched the highest seat, and has remained only the greatest man that the first generation of Western Methodism produced.

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“Dr. Cartwright is supposed by many to be only a harlequin; he is really a man of extraordinary sagacity. His way of putting his point looked eccentric; it was only novel, and was in itself the most solid argument.

“In 1813 he became presiding elder, and has held that office in an almost unbroken succession for fifty years. He has been identified with the rise and progress of Christianity through the middle West. He has seen that wilderness blossom as the rose. His life as a presiding elder is simple, and to a degree monotonous — for fifty years attending a quarterly-meeting every Saturday and Sunday, and annually making appointments. But it has ranges of power. These Saturday and Sunday meetings drew great crowds, and were seasons when the preacher was stimulated to his uttermost. Then, too, the annual marshaling of men, the penetrating of new wildernesses, the witnessing, co-operating in and supervising the rise of towns and the growth of populations, all gave room and stimulus for largest talents. Those talents he has faithfully used. And at the extreme verge of life he can look back over fields won for Christ with a joyfulness that is unequaled on earth in any other vocation, and only surpassed in heaven.

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“This strong character had strong defects in culture, not only in the graces of the schools, but in the grace of enlarged social reforms. Brought up to look on a 4 Guinea negro 5 as of another order of beings, although Christianity subdued that prejudice, it did not uproot it. He patronized the negro, he did not feel