In his book, The Gun and the Gospel, Rev. Hugh D. Fisher paid tribute to
those Methodist clergymen who came before him to Kansas Territory:
The Methodist Episcopal Church, always a pioneer of
evangelism, was first to enter the door of occupancy of the sacred territory of
Kansas. Among the advance guards were such men as Abraham Still, W. H. Goode, J.
S. Griffing, L. B. Dennis and B. F. Bowman. The Kansas and Nebraska Conference
was organized in a tent in Lawrence, the historic city, by Bishop Osman C.
Baker, on Thursday, October 23, A.D., 1856, the session closing on Saturday, the
25th, showing a ministerial force of twenty members and two probationers…
These ministers and their wives were the advance guard of God’s chosen
servants, who endured hardships as good soldiers of the cross, as seeing Him who
is invisible and His victories. The history of the struggle of church building
and organizing would make a volume, and in all this work the preachers and their
families bore the heaviest part of the burden.
In April 1881, Rev. Fisher wrote his
friend and fellow
minister, James Griffing. The letter was written from his desk at the American
Bible Society in Salt Lake City, Utah. It reads:
April 20, 1881
Rev. J. S.
Griffing
Dear Sir &
Brother
I am
profoundly astonished in receiving Bishop Hurst’s article in the “Quarterly
Review,” page 310, where he asks, “Where would Kansas be today but for its
rescue from the grasp of the slaveholder by the Congregational sons of New
England?”
Ain’t that
news to you, put in the forceful form of an assertion, by way of a question?
I failed to
discover much Congregational leaves in that tub of meal. And few
Congregationalists in the rank and file of the men who snatched Kansas from the
grasp of the slaveocracy. How is it with the oldest Methodist Settler =
Yourself? I think the statement entirely unsupported.
With great
respect,
I am yours, --
H. D. Fisher
Rev.
Hugh D. Fisher
from Gun and the Gospel
