1. “regular Baptist Church”: an English-derived denomination, conservative and literalistic in interpretation of Scripture, practicing foot-washing and closed Communion; historically resistant to the dispute between “Particular” (hyper-Calvinistic predestinarian) and General (Arminian) Baptists.
2. “the Shaker Village”: the Shakers, or officially “The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing,” a (now nearly defunct) Quaker-derived community centered upon the special teachings of Anne Lee (formerly of Manchester, in England), practiced community of belongings and strict celibacy, which made them dependent for survival upon conversions and adoption of orphans and abandoned children. Acceptance of new members was ended in 1965. Their chief settlements were at New Lebanon, New York, and Hopkinsville, Kentucky. Their New Hampshire settlement was at Canterbury, the home of the last Shaker Eldress, Bertha Lindsay (1897-1990); see her obituary by Malise Ruthven in the LondonIndependent newspaper, 6 October 1999, p. 14.
3. “P.E.” =”Presiding Elder”, the ordained elder appointed to supervise a District and the pastoral charges (circuits, later stations and circuits) within it, and frequently authorized by the Annual Conference to employ “supply” preachers in cases of vacancy.
4. The Battle of New Orleans: the campaign lasted from December 23, 1814 until January 18, 1815, the main action occurring on January 8, with the decisive route of Pakenham’s British forces by the American troops commanded by the future President Jackson. The engagement took place after the “War of 1812” had in fact officially ended (Treaty of Ghent, 24 December, 1814), but before news of the peace could reach the opposing armies.
5. Cf Deut. 28.23: “And thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron.”
6. Day Star: cf. 2 Peter 1: 19: “… until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts” (also quoted in Charles Wesley’s hymn, “Christ, whose glory fills the skies,” st. 1); but it is not sure that this hymn was available to Ruter in contemporary American Methodist resources.
7. Exhort: an Exhorter was permitted to address a congregation on issues of Christian behavior, but not to expound a Scripture text. This stage of ministry was usually the prior stage before admission on trial as a Local Preacher, and then onwards, for those called and approved, into the traveling ministry, “the itinerant connexion.” Exhorters received their license annually from the Quarterly Meeting Conference of their circuit or station (see Note 48).
8. “Protestant Methodist” this is Ruter’s (possibly deliberate and mocking) misquotation of the name of the Methodist Protestant Church, which in 1830 broke away from the Methodist Episcopal Church to assert a more democratic form of church order, which dispensed with Bishops. The Methodist Protestant Church, with the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, united in 1939 to form The Methodist Church (in the United States).
9. Isaiah 53: 1: “Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?”
10. Long’s Meeting House: early frontier Methodism was slow to acquire or build preaching-houses, and many services took place in homes, as Ruter’s accounts show. For the example of Gasaway's Meeting House (MS p. 77), see the entry under “Gasaway” in the Index of Persons Mentioned by Name. When the first preaching-houses, or meeting-houses (in the United States, after Independence, no confusion would be caused by adopting this “Dissenting” term) were often built by Methodist members on their own land. The oldest surviving Methodist house of worship, the Robertson Meeting-House, now within the Rivervale Camp Ground, is a good example of this arrangement.
11. Cf Matthew 10: 30 (and Luke 12: 7): “But (even, Luke) the very hairs of your head are all numbered.”
12. Local Preachers were (and in British-derived Methodism still are) accredited preachers who are not itinerant, and serve in the areas where they live and work. In American Methodism, Local Preachers, without becoming itinerant, were often ordained Deacons and Elders, so that the churches could be provided with sacramental ministry. This differed from British Methodist practice, where (except among Primitive and United Methodists) Local Preachers were not ordained to sacramental ministry. In Ruter’s time, Local Preachers were licensed annually by the Quarterly Meeting Conference of their circuit or station (see Note 48).
13. “Frowning providence….smiling face”: from William Cowper’s hymn, “God moves in a mysterious way,” which at this stage of Ruter’s life was found in the Methodist Episcopal Church’s Methodist Pocket Hymn Book, revised and improved. Designed as a Constant Companion to the Pious of All Denominations (New York, John Wilson and Daniel Hitt for the Methodist Connexion in the United States, 1808), No. CXCIV (p.179-180); see st. 4, lines 3-4.
14. “this city” refers presumably to the place where Ruter was writing this memoir, perhaps in Patriot, where he died, or, less probably, in the area of Madison, outside of which he had, in 1853, secured a home for his family after being appointed to the Madison District in 1852, the last year to which he refers in the account as now preserved. However, the list of appointments which Ruter notes for the 1852 South-Eastern Indiana Annual Conference does not mention Stewart at all. It is not possible to establish when the addition including this phrase was inserted into the text.
15. “See how great a flame aspires”, the opening of a hymn by Charles Wesley; in A Selection of Hymns, from Various Authors, designed as a Supplement to the Methodist Pocket Hymn-Book, compiled under the direction of Bishop Asbury, and published by order of the General Conference, New York, John Wilson and Daniel Hitt for the Methodist Connexion in the United States, 1808, No. CCXX (p. 185).
16. Universalism: the doctrine that all human beings will in the end be saved, whatever their deeds or beliefs in this life, and there is no Hell. Early American Methodism accounted this view, together with that doctrine of predestination which denied human free will, as the chief theological obstacles to the preaching of the Gospel.
17. “Mr Ruter” (and other features) seem to be added in a later hand: signs of perfunctory editing?
18. Romans 1: 16: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek”
19. “And prove the doctrine orthodox By Apostolic blows and knocks” is from Butler’s Hudibras, Part I, canto I:
For his religion, it was fit To match his learning and his wit; ‘Twas Presbyterian true blue; For he was of that stubborn crew Of errant saints, whom all men grant To be the true Church Militant; Such as do build their faith upon The holy text of pike and gun; Decide all controversies by Infallible artillery; And prove their doctrine orthodox By Apostolic blows and knocks.
20. Revelation 3: 20: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.”
21. “near fifty members”: the Methodist Class had developed from a tightly-knit company of some dozen people into a larger group, consisting now of all the members of the local Society, or congregation.
22. “Lo, I am with you,” etc.: see Matthew 28: 20: “… and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.” “I will give you a mouth,” etc.; see Luke 21: 15: “For I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist. (Ruter slightly, and untypically, misquotes here).
23. For the account of Sisera, see Judges, chapters 4 and 5, and especially 5: 20: “They fought from heaven; the stars in their courses fought against Sisera.”
24. “all the hearts” may echo Proverbs 21: 1: “The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, as the rivers of water; he turneth it whithersoever he will. Every way of a man is right in his own eyes: but the Lord pondereth the hearts,” or Job 11: 9-10: “Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this? In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind.”
25. “Stop”: added by a later hand (apparently the same as in n.17), perhaps to mark the end of a passage selected for reading aloud at a lecture or during a sermon.
26. “what must we do”: from Acts 16:29- 30: “The he called for a light, and sprang in, and came trembling, and fell down before Paul and Silas, and brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” There may be a side glance at Luke 3: 10: “And the people asked him [John the Baptist], What shall we do then?”
27. Matthew 18:3: “And [Jesus} said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.”
28. I Cor. 2: 2: “For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.”
29. I Kings 18: 21: “And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word.”
30. “do the work of an evangelist”: II Timothy 4:5.
31. Isaiah 50: 10-11: “Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness, and hath no light? let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon his God. 11. Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that compass yourselves about with sparks: walk in the light of your fire, and in the sparks that ye have kindled. This shall ye have of mine hand; ye shall lie down in sorrow.”
32. “…the arm of the Lord,” etc.: an allusion to Isaiah 52: 10: “The Lord hath made bare his arm in the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.”
33. From Psalm 29: 8: “”The voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness; the Lord shaketh the wilderness of Kadesh.”
34. From Isaiah 33: 14: “The sinners in Zion are afraid; fearfulness hath surprised the hypocrites. Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?”
35. From John 1: 29: “The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.”
36. “Located”: released from the obligation to travel within the local Conference, from one appointment to another, or within a circuit, and having permission to choose one’s location of residence, and stay there.
37. At these points there are, very unusually, paragraph breaks in the MS.
38. On David and Jonathan, cf. I Samuel, 18.
39. For “son of consolation,” see Acts 4: 36-37 on Joses, surnamed Barnabas, “son of consolation” (in modern renderings, “of encouragement”).
40. Cf Deuteronomy 32: 2: “My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the shower upon the grass.”
41. I Peter 2:9: “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people: that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.”
42. Isaiah 3: 10-11:”Say ye to the righteous, that it shall be well with him: for they shall eat the fruit of their doings. Woe unto the wicked! It shall be ill with him: for the reward of his hands shall be given him.”
43. Cf Acts 4:31:”And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together: and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness.”
44. “The harvest is great, but the labourers are few;” cf Luke 10: 2: “The harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few.”
45. A “supernumerary,” strictly, an itinerant preacher attached to a circuit, but additional to the allocated staff; with limited duties, but not (in the American Connexion) classed as retired (see Note 46).
46. “Superannuated,” or retired (but not precluded from returning to the active work).
47. The General Conference, from 1792 onwards, was the supreme legislative body of the Methodist Episcopal Church (and remains such for the United Methodist Church.) It met, and meets, every four years. The supervision of current events and routine administration of discipline devolves upon the Annual Conferences.
48. Quarterly Meeting Conference: by 1852 (The Doctrines and Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Cincinnati, Swormstedt & Poe 1852, Part I, Ch. iii, Section 4, pp. 37-40) was composed of “all the travelling and local preachers, exhorters, stewards, and class-leaders of the circuit or station… the male superintendents of Sunday schools, being members of our Church, … wit the right to speak and vote on questions relating to Sunday schools…; and the Missionary Committee … during the action of the Conference on the subject of Missions… ” The Presiding Elder (of the District) or in his absence the Preacher in charge, presided. The business: “To hear complaints, and to receive and try appeals. To appoint a committee to make an estimate of the amount necessary to furnish fuel and table expenses for the family or families of the preacher or preachers of the circuit or station…; To take cognizance of all the local preachers in the circuit or station, and to inquire into the gifts, labours, and usefulness, of each preacher by name; to license proper persons to preach, and renew their license annually, when in the judgment of said Conference their gifts, grace, and usefulness, will warrant such renewal; to recommend to the Annual Conference suitable candidates in the local connexion for Deacons’ or Elders’ orders, and for admission on trial in the travelling connexion; and to try, suspend, expel, or acquit any local preacher in the circuit or station against whom charges may be brought….; To appoint Stewards, the preacher in charge having the right to nominate, … and to examine the characters of exhorters annually, and to recommend them, if approved, for renewal of license…. To appoint District Stewards … and a Parsonage Committee, if necessary. To appoint a Missionary Committee … To receive the annual reports of Trustees, … [to] have supervision of all the Sunday schools and Sunday School Societies…”
49. Cf “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not” (Genesis 28: 16), and “Lo! God is here! Let us adore, / And own how dreadful is this place! / Let all within us feel his power, / And silent bow before his face; / Who know his power, his grace who prove, / Serve him with awe, with reverence love” (John Wesley’s rendering of Joachim Neander’s hymn, “Gott ist gegenwartig”), No. 49 in A Selection of Hymns …, No. CLXXXII (p. 155).
50. ‘The Radical secession” is the movement, largely concerned with the democratization of church government and the limitation of the personal powers particularly of bishops, which culminated (in 1830) in the formation of the Methodist Protestant Church, as discussed in Note 8, above.
51. A paragraph break is indicated by a pen mark, as if to single out the following section either as a digression from the main narrative, or for use in a public reading. At the close of the description of John Strange’s funeral a later hand (not the one mentioned in the next note) has added in ink, in a space in the MS clearly indicating a pause in Ruter’s own text, a paragraph break sign with the instruction “Stop.”
52. At each of these points, Ruter’s rather labored references to himself in the third person are replaced, in pencil and by a later, firm and confident hand, with first –person equivalents, as if this section about John Strange was to be used, as Ruter (or another) had apparently already used it, for separate presentation.
53. 1 Thessalonians 4: 13-14: “But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.”
54. Here, where a hiatus of some eight letters’ length occurs in the original text, is inserted in ink, in Ruter’s hand, a paragraph closure sign and “Stop” (cf n. 51).
55. Inserted in ink by a later hand, not that of the pencilled adaptations as noted in n. 52.
56. “the door Village” is now “ Door Village,” in LaPorte County.
57. Luke 23: 43: “And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in Paradise.”
58. A large hatched symbol, indicated here by the asterisk, occurs here; a similar symbol begins the inserted p. 110 of the MS, the entirety of which is intended to be read at this point.
59. The correction of the missing letter is by a later hand.
60. “This brother”, etc. is added on a new line by a later hand, and there is a blank line between “Martin” and “Ruter,” presumably to form a sort of colophon.
61. “ Israel’s hosts:” cf Joshua 5: 14: “… as captain of the host of the Lord am I now come.” If the hymn had been available to Ruter in contemporary American Methodist hymnals, one would have suspected an allusion also to Charles Wesley’s hymn, “Captain of Israel’s host, and guide / Of all who seek the land above.”
62. “the great day of the feast” is from John 7: 37: “In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink.”
63. 1839 as the centenary year of Methodism, based on the formation of the United Societies, as described by John and Charles Wesley in “The Nature, Design, and General of the United Societies,” etc., as printed in editions of John Wesley’s Works (e. g. in Thomas Jackson’s edition [most influential reprint, London, Wesleyan Conference Office, 1872], Vol. VIII, pp. 269-273), in every edition of the Methodist Episcopal Discipline, and most recently, in slightly adapted form, in The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church 1996, section 62, pp. 69-63. See also Thomas Jackson, The Centenary of Wesleyan Methodism. A Brief Sketch of the Rise, Progress, and Present State of the Wesleyan-Methodist Societies throughout the World, London, John Mason 1839, where the Rules of the Society of the People called Methodists” occur on pp. 277-9.
64. 1 Thessalonians 5: 19: “Quench not the Spirit.”
65. “Morris” is added in a later hand.
66. “President of Indiana Asbury [now DePauw] University.”
67. “What hath God wrought:” from Numbers 23: 23.
68. cf Isaiah 60: 22: “A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation. I the Lord shall hasten it in his time.”
69. Cf Jeremiah 23: 29: “Is not my word like as a fire? saith the Lord: and like a hammer that breaketh the rock on pieces?”
70. The Ladies’ Repository , and Gatherings of the West, published in Cincinnati, had been established in 1840. Its editor mentioned here, Revd Leonidas Lent Hamline (later a Bishop) was instructed to make the new journal an instrument for educating women in womanly Christian virtues; Frederick Norwood wrote of the Repository that it was “by far the most sumptuous Methodist publication of its day,” and that, although it encouraged women to be more active in the church, “it certainly was no rallying point for women’s liberation.” (see his Story of American Methodism, Nashville, Abingdon Press 1974, pp. 214-5, 311-2.) On the eve of the American Civil War, its circulation was a respectable 33,400. To compete with other fashionable magazines, it was altered in the 1870’s to The National Repository, but this change did not prevent its final demise in 1880.
71. This is clearly Wesley Chapel, Madison, the society from which “ third Street” had broken away.
72. i.e., read here the ensuing two pages, 159-160, on the death of Bishop Roberts and Ruter’s commemorative sermon.
73. = “The Western Christian Advocate,” founded in 1834.
74. “The Book Room,” a term inherited from John Wesley, for the publishing arm of the Methodist movement, first in Britain, subsequently in America.
75. 1 Corinthians 13: 12 on the life of heaven after the resurrection: “but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
76. “Superintendant” (here apparently corrected from what was already the usual spelling, “Superintendent”) had been an established spelling among at least American Methodists since the 1784 publication of John Wesley’s The Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America. With other Occasional Services. See the partial reprint edited by James F. White, John Wesley’s Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America, with an introduction, Methodist Bicentennial Reprint (Quarterly Review Reprint Series), United Methodist Publishing House and General Board of Higher Education and Ministry, 1984, pp. 296-305.
77. The “Restrictive Rules” of the constitution of the Methodist Episcopal Church had been adopted in 1808 and amended in 1832: they protect the entrenched statements of doctrine, the ordering of Methodism under an itinerant general superintendency, and the right of clergy and members to due process, including appeal., the General Rules and the allocation of publishing proceeds.
78. Cf Genesis 32:10: “… now I am become two bands.”
79. The “loose leaves” are now inside the back cover of Book I, and (for the purposes of this edition) numbered 208-210. (There is a further loose scrap of paper, p. 211, which does not fit into the narrative). The text of pp. 208-210 leads on directly into the text of pp. 202-207 -- so directly that “Annual” begins at the foot of p. 210 and is completed at the top of p. 202!
81. Cf Acts 3: 19: “Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord.”
82. Cf. Matthew 10: 42: “And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward.” (The Mark 9: 41 version is: “For whosoever shall give you a cup of water to drink in my name, because ye belong to Christ, verily I say into you, he shall not lose his reward.”)
83. Cf. “Till the storm of life be past” in Charles Wesley’s “Jesu (in American versions, “Jesus”), lover of my soul” (st. 1, line 6). In the hymnal of Ruter’s youth (see Note 13), this had been No. XIX (p. 25-26). By the time Ruter wrote this account, the official hymnal was Hymns for the Use of the Methodist Episcopal Church (New York, Nelson & Phillips, and other impressions, c. 1849), No. 388 (varied paginations).
84, Cf Proverbs 31: 28: “Her children rise up, and call her blessed.”
85. On the new Conference boundaries, see The Doctrines and Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Cincinnati, Swormstedt & Poe, 1852, p.165: “the South-Eastern Indiana Conference shall include all of South-Eastern Indiana, bounded north by the national Road, east by Ohio, south by the Ohio River, and west by Indiana Conference; so much of the city of Indianapolis within the Donation, as lies south of Market-Street and east of Meridian-Street, and all the towns and societies on the line between Indiana and South-Eastern Indiana Conferences.”