His funeral took place the following day in the church at Pardee.  The services were conducted by Elders John Boggs, of Clyde, and J. B. McCleery, of Fort Leavenworth.  The house was full, notwithstanding it was a stormy day, raining continuously from morning until night.  Word had been sent to all the churches in this and adjacent counties, and hundreds who were preparing to attend the funeral were disappointed by the inclement weather.

CHAPTER XL.

PRO-SLAVERY HINDRANCES.

BY ELDER JOHN BOGGS.

Although our dear departed brother, Elder Pardee Butler, was never classed with the Garrisonian Abolitionists, he began his ministerial life when the demands of the South were being felt in all the North, both in church and State.  If slavery could not be advocated by the Northern conscience it must at least be ignored by all candidates for popular favor.  It had divided some of the most popular religious denominations; and was the most exciting subject of discussion known to the religious world at the middle of the present century.  Among the Disciples of Christ the slavery question was peculiarly perplexing, as there was a large per cent, of the membership who were actual slaveholders, and the leaders among us, although publicly committed against “slavery in the abstract,” were endeavoring to soften the hard features of slavery in the Southern States by arguing that the relation of master and slave was not sinful per se, as it was recognized and regulated both in the Jewish and Christian scriptures.

Bro.  Butler was ordained as a minister of the gospel of Christ, among the.  Disciples, at Sullivan, Ohio, some time in the year 1844, by A. B. Green and J. H. Jones, at that time two of the most efficient evangelists in Northern Ohio He had a good conscience, which passed judgment upon his actions in accordance with the great law of love inculcated by the Lord himself and his apostles, and he did not allow the application of any “hot iron” so as to sear it.  Although he did not come in direct antagonism with the pro-slavery power while he labored in the gospel ministry east of the Missouri River, yet it is evident that the slavery question was a most important factor in making up his decision to leave his field of labor in the Military Tract in Illinois, where he gave up present usefulness and ministerial blessedness for a prospective missionary field and a humble home for his family.  He had spent four years there in active ministerial labor; and in the second number of his “Personal Recollections” he calls them “the golden days of my life!”