CHAPTER XXXIX
The State Convention at Work
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The second meeting of the Illinois Baptist State Convention was held at Carrollton, October 8, 1835; and the third at the Bethel church, St. Clair county, October 13, 1836. This last was a token of the full cooperation of the Friends to Humanity, for Bethel was the old Cantine Creek church. The fourth meeting was held at Peoria, October 12, 1837. The executive committee that year was: J. M. Peck, Moses Lemen, Geo. Haskell, Hubbell Loomis, Lewis Colby, Geo. Smith, Dwight Ives, Elias Hubbard. They were pushers, breathed hopefully the optimistic atmosphere of the good times of 1836, and worked the machine at high pressure. When the collapse of commercial credit came in '37 they had in the field twenty "missionaries," viz, preachers aided iri small amounts; one third of the appropriations payable by the Convention and two thirds by the Home Mission Society. Those aided were I. T. Hinton; Chicago; J. E. Ambrose, Plainfield; Thomas Powell, Tonica; I. D. Newell and E. Veach, Bloomington and McLean county; Alexander Riddler, Peoria and Chillicothe; A. M. Gardner, Illinois River Association; Jonathan Merriam, Springfield; William Spencer, Jacksonville, Ezra Fisher, Quincy, Norman Parks, Warsaw and Carthage; T. H. Ford, Payson; W.F. Boyakin, Salem; Calvin Greenleaf, Perry and Griggsville; John Clark, Mercer county; W. J. Cooley, Clinton, Marion, and Bond counties; Nathan Arnett and J. B. Olcott, southern Illinois; J. M. Peck, General Agent; Joel Sweet and James and Moses Lemen, for general agency work at different times.
Alexander Riddler was from Aberdeen, Scotland. Came to Canada in 1832 and to Illinois in 1837. He was permitted to labor here only one year. He died of intermittent fever at Chillicothe, October 7, 1838, and his wife died a few weeks after leaving five little children destitute and among strangers.
I. D. Newell was from Vermont, a graduate of Hamilton in the same class with Bailey and Bartlett. He came to Illinois in 1836, and settled first at Rushville but preached at many points. He was the father of the Bloomington Association; was three years pastor at Peoria and built its first meeting house. He was pastor at Batavia and Aurora, and served for a tIme as financial agent for Shurtleff College and for
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the American Bible Union. He died at Carrollton, at the home of his son-in-law, Justus Bulkley, in 1857. His son, George I. Newell, died in 1852, while studying for the ministry in Rochester University, the first student death in that institution.
Jonathan Merriam was from Massachusetts, and came to Springfield, Ill., in 1836. He was followed in 1837 by his older brother, Isaac Merriam, who settled at Tremont. Jonathan became the second pastor of the Springfield Baptist church, succeeding Aaron Vandeveer. It was under him that the church passed out from under the shadow of. antimissionism, and led in the organization of the Springfield Association. In 1840 he was pastor for one year at Upper Alton, and then removed to Logan county where he died in 1846. Isaac Merriam was during his life an itinerant preacher. He died in 1860. His son, Jonathan Merriam Jr;, was also a Baptist preacher, a graduate of Wake Forest College and Newton Seminary. He was pastor of several churches in central Illinois, and died at his home in lanark in 1872.
Calvin Greenleaf was another New Englander. He came to Pike county, Ill., in 1835, and was a useful minister in Griggsville and vicinity for nearly forty years. In 1872 he removed to Colorado, and died there in 1875.
In their report to the Peoria convention of 1837, the executive committee had this to say of "once a month" preaching: "One of the sorest evils existing among us in years past, and also now, is the habit of meeting regularly for public worship and preaching the gospel in the churches but once a month. This practice, hitherto so extensive througout the western and southern states, can be justified only on the providential contingency of a great disproportion of the number of ministers to that of churches. And even then a church is wholly inexcusable if the members do not meet regularly on the first day of the week for the worship of God. Is the plea made that there is no one to pray, read the scriptures, or preach in public? That plea if a true one decides at once the utter incompetency of the members to be formed into a church. It shows great and unpardonable neglect of the law of Christ in the Great Commission, -- "teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you." Our regular monthly meetings on Saturdays we have no desire to change, but we do hope that strenuous efforts will be made to reclaim from desecration those sabbaths that God has consecrated to himself, and that weekly meetings as in apostolic times be held in all our churches."This position is well taken, and the counsel is worthy of being heeded not only by "once a month" churches but by Baptist churches
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everywhere that suppose they cannot worship God unless they have a preacher. Observe that this is essentially the same spirit that makes the ritualist suppose he cannot worship except in the presence of altar and vestments. Note the subordination of the laity, and deference to the clergy, that is characteristic of false church systems everywhere. Remember James Lemen and his neighbors and the weekly meetings for the worship of God, With not even an annual visit from a preacher, or a clergyman; this is our oldest Baptist tradition in Illinois. Let us follow; it would build us up in the faith, and save perhaps our little church from perishing.
While the convention was being held at Peoria the Lovejoy excitement was culminating at Alton. Three printing presses had been destroyed and thrown into the river by mobs instigated from St. Louis, and a fourth press was on its way from Cincinnati. Three weeks after the convention closed the press arrived, and that night; November 7, 1837, Elijah P. Lovejoy was murdered. The story thrilled the world, and brought up an evil name on Alton which it did not deserve, and which was not removed until the civil war ended forever the abomination of slavery. Liquor however had as much to do with the crime as slavery had. The assassins fortified themselves at the drinking saloons, and did not fire the fatal shot until liquor had stolen their reason. The trade in liquor is as criminal as the slave trade.
At the Carrollton convention a special meeting was appointed at Alton, November 25, to organize an Education Society for the purpose of aiding students for the ministry at Shurtletf College. The meeting was held, but was not sufficiently attended to succeed in its object. The executive committee therefore at a conference held with Brown's Prairie church, May 21, issued a call for a special meeting of the state Convention to meet at Springfield August 19. At that meeting a committee was appointed on Ministerial Education, J. M. Peck, chairman, which reported a form for a constitution, and recommended to the Convention. to have a "recess in the afternoon to give place to a meeting to form such a society." The recess was voted and the meeting held in the Methodist church at two p.m., Saturday, August 20, 1836. Ebenezer Rodgers was elected chairman, and Calvin Greenleaf secretary of the meeting, and "The Illinois Baptist Education Society" was organized; and is still active.
The annual meeting of the Convention for 1838 was held in Jacksonville, and in 1839 in Bloomington. At this latter Roswell Kimball
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was appointed General Agent, at. a salary of $500. He was the son of a New Hampshire Baptist minister, Benjamin Kimball. He became a physician, but in 1830, when forty years of age, entered the ministry, and was pastor of several churches in Niagara county, N. Y. In 1835 he came to Upper Alton, removing in 1856 to Delavan, where he died in 1865. He was faithful in all that he did.
In 1839 the name of Peter Hagler appeared in the list of "missionaries." He was a native of North Carolina, and came with his father's family to Jackson county, Ill., in 1819, when he was twelve years old. In 1826 he married, and in 1829 the Nine Mile Baptist church was organized in his cabin, two miles northwest of DuQuoin. Here the same practice was followed as at New Design forty years before. They met regularly for worship without a preacher or a promise of one, until the Lord raised up one for them in the person of Mr. Hagler himself. The church joined the Salem Association, was excluded from it for having missionary convictions, and in 1834 joined the Saline. Mr. Hagler remained with Nine Mile church all his life, though pastor of a number of other churches. He was eminently successful as an evangelist, and is supposed to have baptized three thousand persons. He had no library for several years but his, Bible and concordance, until he secured the gift of a ten dollar library through J. M. Peck. He was always poor, preaching without salary and supporting his family by farming, yet he raised to manhood and womanhood seven orphan children: For thirty years he journeyed through heat and cold, and missed less than a dozen appointments. If poverty and toil and influence are apostolic marks he was the apostle of southwestern Illinois. He died in 1886. God has no greater earthly gift than the gift of such a man. Peter Hagler will never die! =============== [Edward P. Brand, Illinois Baptists -- A History, 1930, pp. 131-134. -- Scanned by Jim Duvall]
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