Methodist Church01

Waupaca County Post

December 20, 1888

Communicated

TO THE EDITOR OF THE POST –

We wish to give the condition of our Methodist church a little “airing” and can see no better way of so doing than by bringing it before the readers of the POST.

About eighteen years ago there was built in this village a neat little church, one that would do credit to a much larger place. Saints and sinners took part in building and attending it, but as the few Methodist Brethren were of the poorer class, nine-tenths of the where-with was furnished by the ungodly, some giving in money, labor, and material as high as two hundred dollars. All took pleasure in so doing, believing some great good might come from it. In due time it was well finished and dedicated as the Methodist church.

Bear in mind, we had sometime before built a fine Baptist church in the same manner, but the good people could not worship the same God in the same temple, and hence the wise reason for building No. 2.

Soon the Methodist conference sent a divine among us he claiming, of course, to have been sent from God, or somewhere, to labor among us and convert poor, wicked sinners and heathens to the cause of Christ. Just how well they have done their duty is apparent to every one, from the fact that nearly all members have either died or withdrawn from the church, (not enough left for a quorum) and the rest of us remain in sin; finally the good men stopped coming and we were left to our own destruction and the tender mercies of Rev. Clark, pastor of the U.E. church, and a fine man.

The doors of the little church were closed, the bell that rang out on the morning air, and called the saint and sinner from his Johnny-cake, bible, deer-trail, or whatever the case might be, to worship, was stilled, and we admit all were doomed to decay, when last week some parties came down from the north, tore out the seats, took the lamps and all movable goods and hauled them away to a place where men were GOOD AND NEEDED a church.

What a fine example in an enlightened country! What a wail would be sent up from England if in heathen Ethiopia one of their churches was torn down and carried to some distant country! Are we worse than heathen? Would it not have looked much better for the Methodist society to have tried to maintain a church here, sent a missionary among us occasionally, and tied to help us do better? How foolish to send great and good men to foreign countries as missionaries, when there is such a grand field of labor here! If we are heathen we are not cannibals!

It has been reported that we will not maintain a preacher; try us with a good one and see. In any other branch of business a laborer is paid in accordance to his worth, and we act on that principle.

Rev. Clark will stay with us and seems to be satisfied with his paltry salary and when this life is done and his Methodist friends are left on earth, tearing down churches, he will be singing praises in “that house not made with hands eternal in the Heavens.”