To teach, to discipline and perfect the churches we have already organized; to gather into churches the lost sheep of the house of our Israel, scattered over this great wilderness of sin; to try and help those who are still purposing to tempt its dangers; and to lay broad and deep the foundations of a future operation and co-operation that shall ultimate in spreading the gospel from pole to pole, and across the great sea to the farthest domicile of man—­this is the purpose which we set before us, and which should be pursued with the zeal and enthusiasm displayed by the followers of the false prophet of Mecca; and with the patience of the coral workers, who build for ages and cycles of ages their marble battlements in the waters of the Pacific Ocean.

CHAPTER XXIX.

In 1859 I only spent part of the year preaching in Kansas.  At the earnest solicitation of Ovid Butler, the founder and munificent patron of Butler University, I spent six months preaching in the State of Indiana.  A missionary society had been organized in Indianapolis, in which Ovid Butler was the leading spirit, and such men as Joseph Bryant, and Matthew McKeever, brothers-in-law to Alexander Campbell, together with Jonas Hartzell, Cyrus McNeely, of Hopedale, Ohio, and Eld.  John Boggs, of Cincinnati, and many others, were associated with him in the movement.  By these brethren I was for some time partially sustained as a missionary in Kansas.  The formation of this society had grown out of a difference existing between these brethren and the General Missionary Society, touching what had become the over-topping and absorbing question, both to the churches and the people of the United States.  As this question has ceased to be of any practical interest to the American people, I shall spend no time in its discussion, only to narrate, briefly, what happened to us in Kansas, growing out of the existence of these two societies.

Ovid Butler had set his heart on this, that the brethren in Indiana should have personal knowledge of the man that himself and others were sustaining in Kansas.  I found myself greatly misunderstood, and was often hurt at the slights that grew out of these misunderstandings; and I tried hard to make these brethren know just what was in my heart, and what were the objects I was seeking to accomplish.

In the early spring of 1860 I returned to Kansas and resumed my work.  Geo. W. Hutchinson had been a preacher in what was known as the “Christian Connection” in the New England States, and had been eminently successful in winning converts.  But these churches were poor, and he having married a wife, his compensation did not meet his necessities, and like many others he went to California with a hope of bettering his fortunes.  Afterwards he came to Lawrence, in Kansas, under the auspices of the Emigrant Aid Society.  But his freighting teams having been plundered of a stock of goods, which they