[Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler by Pardee Butler]@TWC D-Link bookPersonal Recollections of Pardee Butler CHAPTER XXXV 6/7
Marriage, religion, civil government, the rights of property, eating and drinking--in short, all liberty, of whatever kind, may be and has been abused.
Still we must use our liberty, our very existence depends upon it.
I have said it already, and I say again, if sixty millions of the American people can unite together to promote the public tranquillity, and all citizens enjoy more of personal liberty than they could enjoy if every county were an independent principality, then our whole brotherhood, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, may be trusted to meet together, by their messengers or in person, to promote necessary Christian work without endangering our Christian liberties.
If all the churches of Macedonia could unite together to send relief to the poor saints at Jerusalem, then, surely, the brethren everywhere may combine together to send relief to people perishing for want of the word of life. And so with much weariness and painfulness, and often with gratuitous and unrequited labor, with long rides by day and by night, and much exposure to heat and cold, to floods and storms, and to rough treatment by wicked men--in short, with that relentless and persistent toil which makes a man old before his time, and in which one man has carried on the work of two men year after year, I have labored on, never doubting, but always hoping for that good time coming, when churches will be just, and give honest pay to honest men who do honest work.
My hope has been that if I can not live to profit by that better order of things, it will at least be better for the men that come after me. The wife of a traveling evangelist will always be the proper object of pity and sympathy, if pity and sympathy are to be given.
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