"Again, I cannot go with the tirade of persecution which some of the sects are getting up against the Catholics. Let us hold up truth, and scatter light to refute error. If we take the sword, we shall perish of the sword. God has shaken every other sect to its very centre, and the work has just commenced among them. God will, in due time, effect his own purposes. In Germany, and in this country, the work of dissent and reform has commenced. At Rome, their main temple begins to crumble, and soon a howling will be heard among the merchants of Babylon. Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord. Let Christians in every case be careful how they grasp the sword of vengeance.
"This whole State is missionary ground; and there is no part of the world where funds can be expended and labors put forth to greater advantages than among ourselves. As soon as the citadel is manned and ammunitioned, I say go forth to conquest, and the Great West is our next field. If I were in health, I would now sooner risk a support among the new settlers at the west, than among three-fourths of the old churches in this State. Let us all put shoulder to the wheel, and strengthen the things that remain which are ready to die; and extend our efforts to all the world as soon as possible."
Though half of him was paralyzed July 2d, these, and very many other paragraphs and sermons that might be quoted, indicate that the remaining half was adequate to all practical needs. December 8th, he started for Plainville, Onondaga County, N. Y., to visit the strong and prosperous congregation of Rev. E. J. Reynolds, to whom he preached twenty-two sermons. Mr. Badger, after complimentary remarks on the success of Mr. R., said, "Many churches suffer great loss by frequent changes in the ministry, and thereby keep themselves in a fluctuating state. When a minister is known, he has acquired an amount of influence which the church should regard as so much capital; this it may take another a long time to gain. A church should guard against the excitement which a change in the ministry always occasions, the consequences of which are frequently fatal."
From this place he started for New England; visited Boston and New Bedford, and by invitation of the committee of Franklin-street church, Fall River, Mass., he went to occupy the pulpit of that society. His first letters from this place describe, with comprehensive exactness, the condition of society, the advantages and improvements of the places he had visited in New England. He saw a new town as he saw a new man, comprehensively, and in one paragraph would group together the main features in its temporal prosperity and in its spiritual state. Turning his eye back upon the field he had left, he said:—
"In the State of New York I have labored in the ministry near thirty years. I have in that great and interesting field of labor sacrificed the best part of my frail life. I have there devoted my strength in youth and middle age, have there seen great displays of God's glory in the conversion of sinners and in the planting and growth of many of the tender branches of Zion. But I have failed in the work—failed amidst my labors, with the best of prospects before me, when it seemed that the infant churches most needed my counsel and assistance. But I can do no more for them; I cannot face the storms, endure the fatigues, and meet the opponents with that vigor and success I did a quarter of a century ago. No; let me retire in peace, with the consolation that I have fought a good fight, and that my labors have not been in vain in the establishment of Christianity in the State of New York. Young men who will come after us in the ministry, and enter into our labors, can never appreciate the toils and sufferings pioneers in this cause were obliged to endure, to raise and sustain the standard of Christian liberty in that State."
After the first six weeks of his stay in Fall River, not finding that strength and rally of bodily faculty he had hoped from the sea-breeze, he thought of going to Virginia, or to some more genial climate of the South. But he remained a while longer; and, realizing a moderate improvement, he continued his labors in that town, preaching three sermons every Sabbath, attending three social meetings through the week, visiting the sick, calling on his parishioners, reading and writing as much as the accustomed duties of clergymen require.
His first sermon, delivered January 4, 1846, was founded on 1st Cor. 2: 2: "For I determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ, and him crucified,"—a text which was the key-note of his whole theologic harmony. In the plot of this sermon there are three simple divisions: 1. Why did St. Paul bring his labors and efforts to bear on this one point? Why would he know nothing else? 2. What is it to know Jesus Christ and him crucified? 3. The danger of mixing other things with the Gospel, thereby dividing and polluting the minds of the hearers. The reasons assigned under the first division are: 1. Christ is the only hope of a lost world, the only medium by which we can approach God. 2. He wished that his hearers should be rightly taught, that their faith might stand in the power of God, not in the wisdom of men. "To know Jesus Christ," he said, "is to understand his history, to know his doctrine, to have him in our experience, to know the power of his resurrection, which is eternal life." It is, however, impossible to form any adequate idea of a sermon of his from a plot, as he was so richly extemporaneous, and never committed to paper anything more than the guiding points of his discourse; the minutiæ were wholly in his mind. If the several hundred plots of sermons found amongst his papers were presented to the world, it would soon appear that only those who have heard him in the days of his strength could form any just idea of the discourses he gave, for his spoken language was infinitely more eloquent and free than his written, and there was so much that made up the total interest in his manner, voice, and expression, that cannot, by any known skill, be transferred to paper. Like the speaking of Whitfield and Henry Clay, the occasion only was the true witness of his power. The written report, though it reads well, carries but little of the peculiar life-impress, the fine pathos, the delicate humor, the ready turn of thought, the quick imagination, and the falling tear of the listening auditor. It is only by hearing, we say, that Joseph Badger's pulpit abilities can be judged.
Casting his eye over New England society, he pleaded the necessity of broader sympathy and union, of greater confidence between ministers and people, and for a giving up of local prejudices between the east and the west, as the cause of Christ is a unit over all the world. He extols the spirit and labors of Benjamin Taylor in the Bethel cause, at Providence, R. I., which served to send over the wide seas the pure principles of unsectarian religion; the same praise was bestowed on the efforts of Moses How, of New Bedford, whose labors for years in the seaman's cause, have been catholic in nature and efficient in result. In glancing at the generally low state of religious interest, whose causes he thought lay deeper than the lack of human science, he said:—
"These times are doubtless suffered to come upon the earth, to sift the church, to purge it from its dross, to try and purify the people of God and to prepare them for a greater work and a holier state. Oh, merciful God! grant this may be the result of all the conflicts which now surround the dear people, who are pressed down, grieved, discouraged and tempted. Oh! let them once more arise in their strength, put on their beautiful garments, exert their influence and see thy glory as they have in years that are past.
"The anxiety I feel for the Christian cause at the present crisis exceeds anything I have felt in years past; and in my feeble state it presses heavily upon my spirit night and day. I know our doctrine, our order and our spirit are right; I know our cause is good, and many have sacrificed their precious lives and labored valiantly to sustain and establish it. It must come up again. It must and will yet live; it must be the general centre to which all sects must approach, when their revolutions and reforms bring them fully into the liberty of the Gospel of Christ. Oh, brethren, stand fast in the liberty of the Gospel, hold fast whereunto you have attained, endure to the end, and salvation is sure. I may not live to see better days upon the earth; but they will come. 'Why art thou cast down, Oh my soul! hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise him.' The storms will blow over, the darkness will pass away, and God's true people will come forth like gold seven times tried in the fire. Courage, courage, my brethren. Remember the fate of the fearful and unbelieving.