CHAPTER XXIII
Growth of the Friends to Humanity
[p. 78]
For two years the little Cantine Creek Baptized church, Friends to Humanity, stood alone, though increasing slowly in membership and having sympathizers in the other churches. Then a great day came, February 4-5, 1810, there were three ordinations to the ministry. Benjamin Ogle was ordained on Saturday evening, and Joseph Lemen and his father on the next day. James Lemen Jr. and John Baugh were the ordaining council. We may imagine what a tearfurand happy time it was! The Lord was in the midst. Three years afterwards, June 20, 1813, James Garretson was ordained at a meeting of the church at his own residence on Ridge Prairie, and at the same meeting seven were received for baptism.
In the meantime, February, 1811, the antislavery portion of the Silver Creek church withdrew and were constituted a separate church, with seven members. In place of a regular Association the two churches met in semi-annual meetings, continuing three days. These meetings were chiefly devotional and social; much singing and prayer and preaching and handshaking and heartiness. They were in fact revival meetings, and it was hoped that conversions and baptisms would fo!low.
At the spring meeting in 1817 a letter of fellowship was read from Howard county, Mo., two hundred miles up the Missouri river, from Baptists in harmony with the principles of the Friends to Humanity, and requesting some of their preachers to come over and assist them in being organized into a church. The request was granted, and the long journey by ferry and horseback was made by James Lemen Jr. and Benjamin Ogle. The church was organized October 5, of 29 members, and was named Providence. Within ten years there were six such Baptist churches in Missouri, and in 1828 they formed a separate Association.
But the movement was not to have the success that it had in Illinois. In 1818 Missouri petitioned Congress for admission into the Union as a state, and for two years the controversy went on whether it should be slave or free. So fierce was the debate in Congress that it threatened to dissolve the Union. It was finally admitted as a slave state on condition that all future states north of the southern boundary of Missouri should
[p. 79]
be free. This was the Missouri Compromise, repealed in 1854 in order to make slave states of Kansas and Nebraska. It was a dark hour for the "Emancipationists," as the Friends to Humanity were called, when the news came that freedom was banished from Missouri. There were those of the oppressors who gleefully said, "We will have Illinois next!" And there was much prospect that it would be so. But in the meantime God blessed the Emancipation churches. There were additions at almost every monthly meeting. May 2, 1819, Josiah and Moses Lemen, James Lemen's youngest sons, were baptized in Cantine Creek. Like their brothers they at once began preaching. They were ordained together March 24, 1822.
In 1821 Elder Daniel Hilton gathered a company of Baptists in the New Design neighborhood, some of them his old neighbors from Ohio, and they were organized as the Fontaine Creek Baptized Church, Friends to Humanity. That summer the work at Cantine Creek deepened into the greatest revival ever known in Illinois up to that time. When the annual meeting was held at New Design, September 7, forty-two had been baptized, and others were being constantly added. Cantine Creek became the largest Baptist church in the state. From this time the Friends to Humanity became a power to be reckoned. with.
And about this time the churches in the old Association began to be antimission, In 1824 they closed the door. In 1822 it met at Wood River, and Elder Peck preached at the outdoor "stand" while the Association was doing business in the house. He was received with coldness. He was in a difficult position. He could not affiliate with the Friends to Humanity, for he could not but believe their radical position on the slavery question to be unwise. Their manner of preaching also, and their social meetings was too demonstrative. He said of them: "Too much stress on the grace equally given to all men, and the whole result as dependent on the improvement which they make of it. Too much disorder; too much singing and shaking hands."He chose therefore, rather, the company of the "regular" Baptists; and when they rejected him on account of his missionary principles, as they had rejected James Lemen on account, of his antislavery principles, he was alone. After 1824 he was practically in church fellowship only with his home church at Rock Spring. These isolated years were filled up with itinerant preaching, and with Bible, Sunday school and educational work up and down the land. To this he was called.
[p. 80]
The fall meeting of the Friends to Humanity was held at Joseph Lemen's, on Ridge Prairie. It was the last one attended by James Lemen Sr. His work was done. He died January 8, 1823. He frequently repeated to himself, in view of the conversion and great usefulness of all his family, and the revivals in the churches, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation!" His funeral was attended by a great multitude of people, and the funeral sermon was preached by his son, James Jr. He was buried in the family burying ground.
Their Circular Letter that year, written by Benjamin Ogle, said: "Among the worthies whom we have lost for a season is our venerable friend and father and brother in the gospel, James Lemen Sr., of blessed memory. Though called by some rigid and austere because like the prophet Micaiah he never would prophesy good concerning them but evil, for most of them like Ahab were not willing to quit their sins. As an evangelical preacher nothing could deter him from traveling by day or by night, through heat and cold, wet and dry, to bear the tidings of salvation to a world of dying men and women, doing the work of the Lord faithfully, notwithstanding the many persecutions and oppositions he had to encounter. None of these things seemed to move him, that he might finish his course with joy; and so it appeared that he did."AIl the time that he was a member at Cantine Creek, thirty-six miles from his home, it is said that he never missed a church meeting. He observed the same punctuality in his home. Family worship was regularly observed, morning and evening, and when he was absent it was conducted by his wife. She survived him seventeen years. He served for many years as Justice of the Peace, and for a time as County Judge; but he wiIl be best remembered as a Baptist preacher, the beginning of IIlinois Baptist history, and as having done more than any other man except Mr. Peck to give character to the denomination and to the state. We may praise God for such living facts of heavenly grace in human life! ==================== [Edward P. Brand, Illinois Baptists -- A History, 1930, pp. 78-80. -- jrd]
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