About a year before his death, however, owing to disagreements about the manner of conducting the Sunday-school, father resigned his eldership, and preached at other points until his death.

But his work for others was not confined to preaching, or church work.  He had never tried to make a large town of either Farmington or Pardee.  He knew too well the perils of the city.  When he helped to lay out Pardee he made it a part of the charter that if liquor should ever be sold on any lot of the town the deed to that lot should be forfeited.  His idea was to have a small village, with a good church and school, as the center of a moral and intelligent farming community.  He took great interest in schools, Sunday-schools, literary societies, and temperance work; in everything, in fact, which tended to the moral and intellectual improvement of the young, or to the well-being of society in general.

He spent much time in writing and lecturing on temperance, both before and after the passage of the Prohibitory Amendment.  His articles in the papers denouncing the violation of the prohibitory law as rebellion against the Constitution, and all the sympathizers with the law-breakers, as rebels, stirred up such an excitement that when he went to Atchison he could scarcely walk the streets on account of the people, both friends and opponents, who stopped him on every turn, to talk of prohibition.  The Germans all wanted to discuss the matter with him; but one of the leading Germans said to him one day, “You must not expect us old Germans, who have brought our habits from the old country, to change; but go ahead, Mr. Butler!  Go ahead!  The young men are with you.”

Father was sometimes accused of “dabbling in politics.”  If that means that he was an office-seeker, the charge is false.  Though often urged by his friends to run for office, he invariably refused, telling them that he considered the office of a Christian preacher the highest office on earth.  But he did think it his duty to attend elections and primary meetings, and work against the whisky ring.  He often spent much time, in the fall, speaking and writing to secure the election of temperance men for county officers.  The final effort by which he succeeded in arousing a public sentiment strong enough to compel the county officers to close the saloons, was a stirring speech he made at a temperance meeting in Atchison, in the spring of 1885,

Some have thought that father was hard-hearted.  Plain-spoken he certainly was, and sometimes harsh in dealing with those whom he thought to be doing wrong.  He was so thoroughly in earnest that when he thought a certain way right or wrong, it was hard for him to understand that some other way might be equally right or wrong.

Naturally high-tempered, with a very excitable, nervous organization, it was often a matter of wonder to me to see how much self-control he exercised, under irritating circumstances.  He sometimes lost his self-control, and said things that would better have been left unsaid; but when he saw that he had done so he was ready to beg pardon for the offense.  But he was kind-hearted and forgiving, and ready to forget injuries done to him.