While he was talking, his attention was called to Doctor Ingram. The doctor, grip in hand, was making rapid strides toward the railroad station. His moderator and some friends were accompanying him, trying to persuade him to remain. But he could endure it no longer.
The doctor’s retreat caused a great sensation, relished immensely by the Pedo-Baptists, but a bitter dose to the immersionists. There were yet four days of the program remaining. Newgent’s side demanded, as they were paying him for his work, that he remain and carry out his part of the program. This he did, but as the debate had only one end to it during those four days, it spoiled the excitement, though it served well the purpose of those who had employed him.
Among his later debates was one held in 1898 at Mechanicsville, Indiana. Dr. J. W. Haw, of the Christian Church, was his opponent on this occasion. Doctor Haw had been holding revival meetings in that part of Indiana, and being dogmatic in style and controversially inclined, was unsparing in his denunciations of other denominations. His aggressions and criticisms were disturbing the equilibrium of some of the brethren whose churches were being used as a target by this ecclesiastical Nimrod. They wrote to Newgent, then in Tennessee, urging him to champion their side against Doctor Haw in debate, offering him fifty dollars per day and expenses for his time. He consented on condition that the propositions were fair and that the reverend gentleman in question was a representative man in his church.
He was referred to a two-column article in a current number of the Christian Standard relating to Doctor Haw. The article was extravagant in the use of adjectives describing the doctor’s ability and achievements, stating that he was the leading debater in the Christian Church, having had more such battles than any other man in it at that time. This was quite satisfactory to Newgent, as at that period he did not care to waste any shot or shell on small game.
In this, as in all other such contests, Newgent abundantly sustained his position and satisfied the expectations of his supporters. His experience, self-control, complete mastery of the subjects in hand, humor, and physical endurance made him an antagonist that even the greatest debater in a debating church could illy cope with. The general verdict of even Doctor Haw’s own sympathizers was that it was decidedly a one-sided affair.
Chapter Twelve.
Perrysville and Centerpoint—Industry Rewarded from an Unsuspected Source—A “Slick” Wedding—Fruitful Labors at Centerpoint—A One-Sided Union Meeting—The Doctrine of the Resurrection Again Demonstrated.
A year on the Perrysville charge in the Upper Wabash Conference, followed by a year at Centerpoint, in his own conference, the Lower Wabash, covering 1874 to 1876, closed Rev. Mr. Newgent’s work in the pastorate for a season. It was from the latter charge that he received his appointment from the Home, Frontier, and Foreign Missionary Society as Superintendent of the Tennessee Mission Conference. From thenceforth he was destined to serve the Church in a larger capacity, though there is no work that he regards as more exalted or more vital to the progress of the kingdom than that of the pastor. And it is but just to say that there is no work in which he has been happier or more in his element. The pastor, he regards, as the pivotal man in the church militant, around whose personality must revolve all the machinery of its organized life. Hence, in whatever position he has been placed, he has ever been in fullest sympathy with the men on the firing line, and has sought in every way to encourage and magnify their work.