That the hand of God directed the footsteps of Pardee Butler to Kansas just at the time he went there, and to the place where he took a homestead and improved it, and lived on it with his family for a third of a century, no one who believes in an overruling providence can for a moment doubt.  At the risk of his life, and at the cost of great privation in his own person, and that of his wife and children, he unfurled the blood-stained banner of the cross, and never allowed it to trail beneath his feet through the long years of “border ruffianism,” and the dark days of detraction and misrepresentation.  He was the man for the hour; while on the one hand he was not forgetful of the obligations resting upon him to his family—­he laid the foundation for a happy home—­on the other hand, he was always ready, both in season and out of season, at home and abroad, to preach the unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ to a lost and dying world.  To him more than to any other human instrumentality is the brotherhood of Christ’s disciples indebted for the early introduction of Christianity in the now grand State of Kansas; and his name will be honorably and lovingly remembered by all the good and the true, who shall learn of his unselfish life and his untiring devotion to the cause of the Master.

In the summer of 1858, after he had been in the new Territory over three years, Bro.  Butler, in the Luminary, writes as follows:  “To teach, discipline, and perfect the churches we have already organized; to gather into churches the lost sheep of the house of Israel, scattered over this great wilderness of sin; to watch over 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.”  This brief quotation shows the broadness and completeness of the work, as contemplated by him, and which is now going forward to its accomplishment as never before; and to his almost alone labors at first the work in Kansas can be legitimately traced.

During this year a Territorial Board was formed, and Bro.  Butler was appointed as their evangelist; and a correspondence was had between him and the corresponding secretary of the General Missionary Society in reference to affording aid to the Kansas Board to help sustain him in his evangelical labors.  It was conducted in the most friendly manner and in a true Christian spirit, until the slavery question came to the front and prevented the accomplishment of what was hoped for on the one hand, and contemplated on the other.  The following extract from Bro.  Butler’s third letter will present the issue in the briefest manner possible: