About that time he spoke to me, in substance, as follows: The one great anxiety of my life has been to preach. I had intended to go to Bethany, and devote my life entirely to preaching. My sore throat caused me to give that up, but going to Iowa improved my health, and I began to preach again. When I took my claim in Kansas it was with the intention of holding on to the land, while I preached in Illinois, until Kansas should be thickly enough settled to furnish me preaching here. But you know how necessity has driven me, and how preaching for a meager salary, and neglecting my farm, ran me in debt; and what a hard necessity has been laid on me to pay those debts, and to improve my farm, so that you and your mother and the boys can make a living from it. You have no idea what a sore and bitter trial it has been to me the last six or eight years to see the old churches going to pieces before my eyes, and so many opportunities for planting new churches being lost to us. There is only one thing more I must do, and then I am determined to give myself wholly to preaching. As for myself, I would live in a log house all my days before I would take from my preaching the time necessary to earn and build a better house. But Sybil has been a good and faithful wife, and has borne with commendable patience all the trials of the hard life through which I have led her; and it worries her to entertain so much company as we have in her log house. With the lumber and saleable stock I have on hand, I can build it without incurring any further debt. And then I will be ready to preach without being dependent on any man.
The house was built; but before it was finished a series of misfortunes befell him, that threw him in debt nearly as badly as before. From snake-bites, disease, and accidents, he lost four or five horses, and several head of cattle, and the cholera killed nearly a thousand dollars' worth of his hogs.
He went to work again, but somewhat discouraged, for he saw that his long-deferred hope of devoting his entire time to study and preaching, could never be realized. He was nearly sixty, and had broken his constitution by hard work, and could not much longer have endured the incessant riding and preaching of a traveling evangelist, even could he have been supported. The boys were then old enough to do much of the farm work, and from that time he preached more constantly, but spent more or less time at hard labor.
For several years he was employed, for a small salary, at monthly preaching, by churches at Big Springs, Valley Falls, Round Prairie, and other points.
In the fall of 1875 he concluded to visit once more the churches for which he had preached before coming to Kansas, and bid farewell to his old friends. He accordingly spent the following winter in a preaching tour throughout Iowa and Illinois.
The State Meeting at Emporia, in 1877, in his absence, elected him President of the Society. Unable to find a State evangelist who would undertake the difficult task of reviving the old churches that had perished—which he thought was the work most needed at that time—he took the field himself. At the State meeting held at Yates Center the next year, he made the following report: "Time spent, five months; sermons preached, one hundred and fifty; churches organized, two; compensation received, $186.36." He also revived many scattered churches and Sunday-schools, and obtained regular preaching for some of them. He was greatly worried over the churches of this part of the State. They had been much weakened, and some of them nearly broken up by the tide of emigration that set into the southern and western counties. Attempts at co-operative State and district work were impeded by conservative papers, which prejudiced the brethren against missionary societies, and hireling pastors. He spent much time, both with tongue and pen, in answering these sophistries, and teaching the churches their duties. Many of the churches were really too poor to support regular preaching, and many that were able, thought themselves unable to do so. Yet someone must care for them, or they would perish. He resolved for the rest of his life to preach, without remuneration, where such preaching was most needed. And so the last eight or nine years of his life were spent in preaching on Saturdays and Sundays for weak churches, and the remainder of the time in working and writing. If a church was building a meeting house, and felt unable to support a preacher while doing so, he preached for it until it was built. If a church had already built, and felt oppressed with debt, he preached for it until the debt was paid. If, from any cause, a church was weak or disorderly, he preached for it until it was again in good order. Then he said to the brethren: "I have helped you on your feet, now raise the money and hire some one else to preach for you, and let me go and help some other needy church."
Mr. Hastings and I were married in 1870, and had settled at Farmington. From that time Mr. Hastings had taken much of the care of the Farmington church. The church at Pardee had revived, and had been doing well under the care of Prof. N. Dunshee; and, later on, by the assistance of Prof. J. M. Reid, and of Mr. Hastings. But, about six years ago, being left without a leader, they begged father to take charge of them, although they were unable to offer him much remuneration. He told them that it would cost them nothing, so far as he was concerned; but that, if he took charge of them, they must promise to support the Sunday-school liberally, and to build a church. He, and his family, therefore, changed their membership from Farmington back to Pardee, where he was elected elder—for he believed that every pastor of a church should be one of its elders—and he preached for them five years. He not only gave largely of his means to build the church, but spent the whole summer in collecting the money, and overseeing the building of the house. He looked after the buying of the materials, and sent his teams to do much of the hauling, and never stopped until the building was furnished, the insurance paid, and his own hands had put the stoves in place.
About a year before his death, however, owing to disagreements about the manner of conducting the Sunday-school, father resigned his eldership, and preached at other points until his death.
But his work for others was not confined to preaching, or church work. He had never tried to make a large town of either Farmington or Pardee. He knew too well the perils of the city. When he helped to lay out Pardee he made it a part of the charter that if liquor should ever be sold on any lot of the town the deed to that lot should be forfeited. His idea was to have a small village, with a good church and school, as the center of a moral and intelligent farming community. He took great interest in schools, Sunday-schools, literary societies, and temperance work; in everything, in fact, which tended to the moral and intellectual improvement of the young, or to the well-being of society in general.
He spent much time in writing and lecturing on temperance, both before and after the passage of the Prohibitory Amendment. His articles in the papers denouncing the violation of the prohibitory law as rebellion against the Constitution, and all the sympathizers with the law-breakers, as rebels, stirred up such an excitement that when he went to Atchison he could scarcely walk the streets on account of the people, both friends and opponents, who stopped him on every turn, to talk of prohibition. The Germans all wanted to discuss the matter with him; but one of the leading Germans said to him one day, "You must not expect us old Germans, who have brought our habits from the old country, to change; but go ahead, Mr. Butler! Go ahead! The young men are with you."