From this deviation I will now return to the year 1858.  Father was so busy preaching in other places, that he only preached occasionally in Pardee.

He has sometimes been accused of preaching politics.  A good brother who formerly lived in Missouri, said, not long before father’s death:  “They used to tell me before I came to Kansas that Pardee Butler preached politics, and I said that if ever I heard him begin to preach politics, I was going to get right up in meeting, and ask him to show his Scripture for preaching politics.  Now I’ve been hearing him preach, off and on, for twenty years, and I’ve never got up in meeting yet, for I’ve never heard him preach any politics.”

The only sermon that I can remember as containing any allusion to politics, was one that he preached at Pardee that summer of 1858.  It was from the text, “Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith:  these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.”  After speaking in a general manner of Christian duties that are left undone by those who are precise about certain theological points, he spoke plainly of the injustice and unmercifulness of slavery, and besought Christians to be careful how they upheld it in any manner, lest they be condemned by the words of the text.

Another sermon that he preached at Pardee, August 1, 1858, was from I. Kings xviii. 21:  “If the Lord be God, follow him:  but if Baal, then follow him.”  After delineating very graphically the terrible drouth, and the long contest of Elijah with Ahab and Jezebel, he told of the final triumph of religion, and the merited defeat and punishment of wickedness.  He finished with an eloquent appeal from the text, “If the Lord be God, then serve him.”  At the close two boys confessed their Savior.  One of them was an orphan boy, then making his home at my father’s house, and since known as Judge J. J. Locker, of Atchison, who died last September.

But winter came, and the co-operation that had engaged father that summer felt that they had paid all they could raise.  It had not been enough to pay a hired man, and meet our frugal expenses.  Yet that was the first money he had made for three and a half years, except by his two trips to Illinois.  He had appealed to the General Missionary Society, and they had declined to support him, unless he would promise not to say a word about slavery.  But the people were calling to him from every direction to come and organize churches.  He decided to appeal personally to the churches in the older States.  From December, 1858, until May, 1859, he preached constantly in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio, collecting what money he could.  He reported $365 as the amount received, expenses $110, leaving a balance of $255.  He received enough more during the summer to make his salary #297.42.