The Camp-Meetings in Iowa and the Two Dakotas
By George I. Butler
As these meetings are rapidly approaching, and as I have written two articles already concerning them, it will not be necessary that I should write a long article. It has been a great disappointment to me that appointments have been made for Iowa and Minnesota so that it will hardly be possible for me to attend the latter. This is personally a matter of deep regret to me, as I had hoped to meet many old friends in that State where I had so often met with them in the past. But it is very difficult for a man to be in two different places at the same time. For many years, in fact as far back as camp-meetings have been appointed, Iowa always had her meeting in the first week in June, sometimes beginning in the very last days of May, and the Minnesota meeting has come a week or two later. As Iowa is my old home State, my friends urged me to come, and I agreed to do so. I must be at that meeting. I have heard nothing from the Minnesota Conference. So, much to my regret, I shall not be able to go to Minnesota. But I shall go to South Dakota, from which urgent invitations have been sent; then to North Dakota. Wisconsin has her meeting in August, so I shall not be able to attend. Doubtless other favored laborers will attend these meetings. I request all who attend the meetings where I shall be present to bring the good old large book of “Hymns and Tunes.” That collection is a great favorite with me. No other can supersede it in my affections. The music is a very important feature of our work. The good old Advent hymns have the right ring in them for my edification. And now, brethren and sisters, let us all come up to the great convocation. Let us get a little of the spirit of consecration seen in olden times. Think of all Israel coming up from ten to one hundred miles on foot, and returning the same way, and doing this three times a year. I have not forgotten the man in Kansas who came four hundred miles with a team in order to attend the camp-meeting, and he went away about the happiest of any man on the ground. And another couple, a man and his wife, with a lad beside them, tramped over the mountains of North Carolina on foot, a hundred miles each way, and were more than paid for it. Indeed, they seemed about the happiest people on the ground. The great trouble with our people oftentimes is their indifference to such occasions. Because they interfere with money making, their ease and physical comfort, they do not attend. This is a great, yea, in many cases a fatal, mistake, which some are making. Let us have this year an old-fashioned camp-meeting. I want to see all my old friends of the cause, and become acquainted with a host of others. Will the Lord Jesus “come up to the feast,” do you suppose? Will he not meet with us? He says, “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst.” He never tells us any falsehoods. “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” He ever lives to bless and help his people. He loves them “as the apple of his eye.” He longs to meet with us to bless, and to save us to all eternity. The only reason why many of us are lukewarm, indifferent, worldly, carnal minded, and hanging on the brink of ruin is that we do not feel the importance of making the proper use of the means of grace God offers us, the means of grace at our command. His power is already placed within our reach, only we will not reach out for it. Seek it as for hid treasures; hunger and thirst for it. The whole fault is our own. “Ye will not come to me, that ye might have life,” he tells us. We are right on the brink of the eternal world. O, how few realize it! But the very ones who specially need the camp-meetings, who are spiritually perishing for the blessings that camp-meetings will give them, are the ones who will most likely stay away. But I must not say more here. But come to the meetings, and you will be likely to hear much more. God lives and reigns. He is the same God that opened and congealed the Red Sea for his people to pass through dry shod; that piled up the waters of Jordan, backing them up miles away for his people to pass over. He longs to help us, and give us the victory. Come to the camp-meetings, and see if he will not mightily help us in this time of great spiritual dearth. Geo. I. Butler.