Peter Cartwright (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1910 Excerpt: ... i CHAPTER III THE MILITANT PREACHER Probably Peter Cartwright is as widely known for the strength of his right arm as for any of the powers of his mind or spirit. Stories of his fistic encounters, often grossly exaggerated at the start and losing nothing in the handing down, have been heard by thousands who know little or nothing of the heroic devotion and the splendid achievements of his life. It is not fair to judge him by these garbled accounts, or even by isolated facts in the case. We must study such scenes in their historic setting of character and environment. We cannot deny that there was an element of muscular strenuosity in the ministry of this man. He was indeed, as Dr. John P. Newman said, "a Peter who had an arm of flesh as well as a word of power, and who, at times, believed in a dispensation of muscular Christianity as well as a dispensation of the Holy Ghost." There was in the times in which he lived, 44 in the spirit of that frontier land, in the very blood which throbbed in his heart, the making of a fighter. His father was a soldier of the Revolution and had bequeathed to his son an indomitable love of liberty and an instinctive hatred of tyranny. He had no tolerance for oppression in any form. His early life was spent amid the grim struggles of Indian warfare and the stern conflicts and swift judgments of men who were laying the foundations of law and order in places which had known the curse of anarchy and the flare of unbridled passion. His brief school days had been tense in the assertion of his rights against reckless bullies, and he had left school to face exposures and hardships which few men could have endured. His years were not passed in quiet ministry to established congregations in orderly communities, but he fought for the ri...