staging and fifty miles rail-road, we arrived at Montgomery, Alabama, situate on the beautiful river which has given a name to the state, distant from Augusta about 320 miles.

Before leaving the brethren in Augusta, it was agreed by them, in conjunction with other brethren in South Carolina, that brother Barnes should itinerate the current year in the two states, spending half his time in Augusta. Our good brother Dr. Hook, in connexion with the few that have agreed to keep the commandments of the Master in that city, might be more useful were it not that he is so deeply, and perhaps necessarily involved in the business transactions of this life. The people of the South are so accustomed to be led by political and religi ous preachers, that none but preachers can save them from being the slaves of men for ever.

A. C.

News from the Churches.

Adams county, Illinois, October 19, 1838. Through the tender mercy of our heavenly Father I am still preserved, and again take my pen in hand to give you a detail of a very pleasing and heart-cheering meeting that was held on Bear creek, Adams county, commencing on the Friday before the first Lord's day in September last, and continued until the Tuesday evening following. There was assembled together a number of brethren and sisters from various parts of the country, who appeared really to enjoy a feast in a reciprocal exchange of views and feelings while thus communicating their thoughts one to another-while their prayers and songs resounded to the God of all grace for the rich blessings attendant on obedience to the gospel. There were ten who made the good confession, and were immersed into Christ for the remission of sins during the meeting; while the word of truth appeared to pierce the hearts of many who are to all appearance so infatuated with sectarian notions that they hesitate to confess their Lord and Saviour. There were also some two or three added to the number of the brethren by restoration, and one from the Baptist ranks. I have visited the brethren once since that time, and learned that three others had made the good confession. After laboring and toiling in this frontier country for nearly seven years, with but small success, my heart is at last made to rejoice at the present prospects in our country. May this wilderness indeed rejoice and blossom as the rose! The harvest is great, but the laborers are few. Will some of our dear brethren. who are laboring in word and teaching, favor us with as many visits as possible? Their services would be thankfully received, and I feel confident that the brethren would sustain them.

We had at the above named meeting, who labor in word, brethren David Hobbs, Henry Cyrus, Knox, E. Johnson, and G. R. Turner, the most of whom are young brethren; but I feel certain that they will all soon become able proclaimers of the gospel of our blessed Saviour. JOHN B. CURL Middleburg, Ohio, October 27, 1838

I have just returned from a co-operation meeting, at Kenton, Hardin county, at which brother William Dowling was appointed an Evangelist for the ensuing year. Seven were added to the congregation at Kenton. This congregation, though but very young, now numbers nearly 80 members, most of whom were added during the last year. On the 2d Lord's day in this month I held a meeting at Cherokee, I ogan county, at which 4 were added-two from the Baptists and two by immersion. There is a congregation near this place (Cherokee) formed last month, now numbering from 20 to 25, two-thirds of whom are from the United Baptists. Prospects are indeed good every where. If the brethren would avoid "foolish questions" and attend to the living oracles, truth must and will prevail. J. B. FERGUSON.

The Editor has just returned to his chair, from a tour of almost six months.— Many documents on file will receive attention as prompt as possible. The Baptist Banner has denied, it is said, the truth of our statements concerning Mr. Fisher. Will the Banner send us hose papers that speak of this matter, that we may examine on what authority he dares to deny a fact so palpable?

A. C.

ERRATA.-Page 118, 10th line from bottom, for "logical parable," read logical puzzle. Same page, line 6th from bottom, for abused" read absurd.

4

THE

MILLENNIAL HARBINGER,

NEW SERIES.

VOLUME III. NUMBER V.

BETHANY, VA. MAY, 1839.

INCIDENTS ON A TOUR TO THE SOUTH.

NO. V.

No sooner had we arrived at Montgomery, Alabama, than we were met by brother Butler, so well known to our brethren as the herald of reformation in this state. He was accompanied by brothers Kelley, of Haynville; Duckworth, of Dallas; and Lavander, of Illinois-men of high reputation among the brethren. Brother Davis, of Montgomery, also met us in the spirit of the gospel on our arrival in that city.

The Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist meeting-houses were shut against us, and the people cautioned against our heresy. Next morning, January 10th, we addressed a considerable collection of gentlemen in the court-house. We had concluded to make no farther effort to be heard in that city; but, on motion of Mr. J. E. Belser, Editor of the "Montgomery Advertiser," and Judge Martin, friends to free discussion and gentlemen of liberal minds, a second appointment was made. Through the activity. of these gentlemen, the citizens, gentlemen and ladies, turned out en masse on the same evening, until there was no room to contain them, in vindication of themselves from any concurrence with the rulers of the synagogues, who had presumptuously locked the doors of the people's houses against their proper owners. We were much importuned to tarry with them; but our appointments ahead constrained us reluctantly to leave on the next day. Accompanied with those brethren, and helped forward on our journey by them, we visited Hayneville, where we spoke twice; and Mount Willis, where we spoke once in the Baptist meeting-house, with the consent of brother Lee, the Elder of the church. At Bragg's Store, we also spoke on the Lord's day in the Baptist meeting-house, called New Bethel; 1;the same evening at Carlowsville, Lowndes county, in the house

usually occupied by the intelligent and liberal Elder Hartwell. of the Baptist church;-on the County Line, on the 14th, we also delivered a discourse in the Baptist meeting-house;-and again, on the same evening, at the house of brother Randal Duckworth, of the Baptist church. Next day we also addressed a congregation assembled in the Baptist meeting-house, near Portland, called Mount Pleasant; and again returned to enjoy the hospi talities of our good Baptist host, brother Duckworth.

In all these places we had as good a hearing as could have been expected under all the circumstances; and we scattered the seeds of reformation with as liberal a hand as possible for the time we occupied. Under the conduct of our indefatigable and truly magnanimous brother Butler, we passed a few days very comfortably in the state of Alabama, not only enjoying his hospitality and kind assistance on our journey, but also the hospitality of his fellow-citizens and brethren wherever we went; amongst whom we will long remember Francis Boykin, Esq., of Dallas, and brother Duckworth, of the same vicinity, and their intelligent and amiable consorts; who, though members of the Baptist church, not only extended to us their hospitalities, but furthered our course in our journeyings in the publication of the word of reformation through their state. We had the pleasure also of spending part of a night with Mr. Bissel and his amiable lady, after having been almost cast away and benighted in one of the darkest and most rainy nights we have met with, some of our company having been out till midnight, about five hours in travelling two or three miles. We had an appointment in Carlowsville, which we were hasting to fill, while we were overtaken in the pitchy darkness of a tempestuous night. By the aid of a flambeau, we, in the van of our company, reached the spot in time to speak an hour to an attentive audience. The rest of our company with brother Butler, not having yet arrived, messengers were despatched in quest of them. They had sat for some two or three hours in their carriage on the side of a hill, unable to escape from the difficulties around them. There they stood, in dubiis rebus, with "scotched" wheels, in a deep gloom, irradiated only by an occasional flash of lightning. In this imminent. slough of despondency they waited for some star of hope, till despair itself had seized the reins, and for some time held them fast against the efforts of four relief mules superadded to the original team, which rather held them from backsliding, than facilitated their onward march to the desired villa. They were finally rescued from the dangers of their unenviable position, and on the next day were ready for the next station.

We parted with our much esteemed and beloved brother Butler on the morning of the 16th January; and being conveyed to

Portland by brother Duckworth in one of the carriages which had transported us some 80 miles through the counties of Montgomery, Lowndes, and Dallas, we embarked on board the Tapaloosa, for Mobile, some 400 miles down that river, where we safe. ly arrived in about 40 hours. We continued in Mobile for three or four days, and sailed thence on board the Giraffe, a splendid and sea-worthy boat, by the way of the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ponchartrain, to New Orleans; at which place we arrived after a pleasant and safe voyage, on Tuesday morning, the 22d inst. During our stay in Mobile we spoke but twice-once in the court-house, and once in the Unitarian church. Young Mr. Boykin, son of brother Boykin, of Dallas, kindly undertook to obtain a meeting-house from some of the sects; but finding them more sectarian than he imagined, we were constrained to appear as aforesaid. We had, however, a very good hearing in that city, many more having assembled than could possibly be accommodated even with a place to stand.

The state of things in Alabama is not, indeed, very flattering to the Christian preacher. Fortune-making is the one thing needful. It is the mania of the whole South. A worldly spirit and the Holy Spirit are as antipodal as heaven and earth. "No man can serve God and Riches;" and therefore all those who are vainly striving to serve both are spoiling both, and serving neither. There is no cure for this disease but conversion to God. "To be carnally minded is death: to be spiritually minded is life and peace." A person with his soul fixed on cotton and Negroes, on lands and tenements, is as unfit for heaven as heaven is unfit for him-unfit for heaven as leviathan for the clouds, or an eagle for the depths of the sea. Cotton, land, and Negroes are not among the joys of heaven, nor the beatitudes of the happy.

The Baptists in Alabama have been somewhat leavened with the doctrine of reformation, principally through the great liberality of brother Butler, who has dispersed thousands of dollars worth of books and pamphlets among that community and their friends, superadded to his own labors, and those of brother Graham and others. Many of the preachers are, as we learned, a sort of days men, half-way reformers, formally opposing, but really teaching the doctrine on various grand subjects of Christianity. This is an uncandid and unchristian course, and the Lord will not thank them for such services. There is, on the whole, a manifest misgiving in the confidence of multitudes in the doctrines, usages, and customs of the Baptist, as in those of other communities. But the want of biblical knowledge is so general, that little can be expected, until the people learn to read the Bible.

They have no measure, rule or standard by which to ascertain what is truth. Many prove and approve what they now hear, by what they have heard. Like Mary Simple, they prove what mother said by what the preacher says; and then prove what the preacher says by what mother said. The notion that men are regenerated without the word, is the parent of all this apathy about the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ. I say, the notion that men are regenerated without the word; for this was the doctrine of the Baptists till very recently, and it still is the doctrine of many of them. The present heads of families were generally educated under the theory of waiting for God's time to come, and therefore they train up their children as themselves were trained without the knowledge of the Bible.

In some places we find an eager desire on the part of the Baptists to amalgamate the doctrine of the restoration with their Fullerism, Gillism, or Calvinism. It will not do. "No wise man putteth new wine into old leather bottles, nor a patch of new cloth upon an old garment." The new wine of the gospel will burst the old bottles of St. Austin, or St. Chrysostom. Let them keep their Baptist wine in Baptist bottles, if they wish to preserve their bottles. Those would-be reformers of the Baptists, who seek to stay among them and gradually imbue them with the doctrine of reformation, most generally become old pitchers, to be placed on their sideboards, or mantle ornaments, like Dr. Johnson of South Carolina. The Baptists keep them quiet by throwing them a bone to pick; meanwhile the sheep and lambs are saved from greener pastures, cooler shades, and more limpid

streams.

It will not do. We must come out from among them that will not obey God rather than man. The Lord's commandments are not kept in any sect built in whole or in part upon any human creed. The Baptist society, like all other societies, has some excellent spirits that would do honor to the Christian profession, if placed in circumstances favorable to the culture and development of the Christian graces. But one might as rationally look for tropical plants in Siberia, as expect a growth in grace and in the knowledge of God and Christ and eternal life, under a monthly sermon from the fourth part of a verse, in some figurative or symbolic passage, which only serves as an occasion for the preacher to tell his dreams; or to retail, under new labels, the obsolete and musty theology of days of darkness long since enrolled with years beyond the flood.

The whole economy of religious administrations in South Alabama is at fault. The house for meeting in, and the conduct of the meetings in those houses-the preaching, and the praying, and the singing, and all the rest greatly need reformation. This