The children’s service produced the desired effect. At the appointed hour the house was filled to overflowing. There were three helpers, all ministers, present, who did their part according to Newgent’s directions. Songs were sung, prayers offered by the ministers as they were called upon, a brief talk by the leader, some simple propositions, and the meeting closed in less than a half-hour from the time it began. But that half-hour turned the tide in Centerpoint. The children became the vanguard in a religious movement that was to shake the town from center to circumference. Many of them went home weeping to speak of the longing of their tender hearts to fathers and mothers, who, in turn, were awakened to a consciousness of their own need.
At the evening service which followed, seventy-five persons came to the altar, most of whom professed conversion. The revival was no longer a problem. It spread throughout the town and community like fire in dry stubble. The church arose from the grave of lethargy and formalism, cast off her grave clothes—and the doctrine of the resurrection was again abundantly demonstrated.
Chapter Thirteen.
Becomes a Missionary Superintendent—Second Marriage—An Unexpected Welcome—Forms a Quaker Friendship—The Spirit Moves in a Quaker Meeting—A Quaker’s Prayer Answered—Builds a College—Shows What to do for a Dead Church—Another Tilt on the Doctrine of Baptism—Conversion of a Dunkard Preacher—Turns a Great Movement in the Right Direction.
In the fall of 1876, Rev. Mr. Newgent entered upon his duties as Superintendent of the Tennessee Mission Conference, under appointment of the Home, Frontier, and Foreign Missionary Association. In the meantime he had married Miss Annie Crowther, of Terre Haute, Indiana, who, under the divine blessing, abides as the companion of his joys and sorrows amid the lengthening shadows. She is a woman of rare and excellent qualities, which especially fitted her for her position as the wife of an active and ambitious minister. She is in fullest accord with her husband’s ambitions and tastes, and has contributed her part toward the success of his career. He freely accords to her this credit. With this queenly woman ordering its affairs, the Newgent home has ever been a haven of real rest, a retreat for God’s servants especially. It extends a welcome and hospitality—a true home spirit—that at once makes the wayworn pilgrim feel at ease in body and mind, and charms the hearts of the young as well.
At the time of their removal to Tennessee, the United Brethren Church was new in the South. Its attitude of open hostility to slavery largely shut it out of regions south of Mason and Dixon’s line. The Tennessee Conference then had less than four hundred members, with only six houses of worship. So a great field spread out before the new Superintendent, taking him back to conditions in many respects similar to those in which he began his ministerial labors. It was still a time of reconstruction in church affairs as well as in matters political. But his was a work of construction rather than of reconstruction.
Aside from the need of laborers and the vast opportunities afforded for building up the church in this section, one reason he had for accepting this appointment was the condition of his own and his wife’s health. Both were threatened with failing health, and a change of climate was advised, the high altitude of eastern Tennessee being recommended as especially adapted to their physical needs.