New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1869-10-06
4 GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVANT

49,
all to whom the spectacle of life devoted to
duty Is beautiful. DR.. Cartwright, who is now
eighty-ive years of age, has been for sixty
five of those years in the minstry-a fact In
this day of shifting aims and vacillatlng exer-
ton In itself sufficiently remarkable. The line
old man, after half q century of toilsome
travel, of self sacrifice, of genuine apostolic de-
votion, stood before his brethren to receive the
need of their admiration and gratitude. Such
a career, such a man, must have recalled to
those who listened to him the beginning Of the
Methodist Church, when its founder, with his
little band of devoted adherents, with his
saint-like minstrel brother by his side, went
out to no holiday task, and, weeping over the
lukewarm condition of the Church to which he
still adhered, sought among paupers and out
casts in the highways and byways of England
for the witnesses of faithful ministry. DIR.
Cartwright is q living representative OF the
genuine, primitive discipline of Wcs!ey-Of the
men who thought no journey too long, no dam
ger too imminent, no suffering too acute, If
only they might carry glad tidings to the sim
full and the degraded. He is one of the last as
he is one of the greatest of the travelling
preachers of the old school. He is one whom
John Wesley would have taken to bosom
which rarely glowed with emotional affection,
and who would have moved the ascetic nature
of that extraordinary man to words Of approval,
perhaps even of unaccustomed praise.
The speech in which DR.. Cartwright re-
sponded to the congratulations of his .brethren
was remarkable for a rare simplicity, an en-
gaging candor and o rude strength altogether
refreshing in these days of shallow pulpit rhe-
toric. There was, indeed, no absence of sec
tartan technicalties and of camp-meeting
phrases, for which the refined reader
might have no relish; for DR.. Cartwright adj
heres Gas he has right to do) to the dialect
of his youth, and may not have kept pace with
his associates in the march of refinement. But
nothing in the whole range of domestic poetry
could be more beautiful or touching than the
alusion of the octogenary to his aged wife.
He had not been speaking five minutes before
his thoughts went back to her. She had been
his worthy companion-one who had never
"hindered him from travelling and preaching,
"had never scolded him for leaving her desti-
"tute and lonesome, but had always urged
him to do what he thought to be his duty"
81 have" said he al expect, the oldest Metho-
dist preachers wife in the world" And then
not simply with pardonabe but just compla-
cencv the patriarch spoke of his fifty grand
children and of his twenty great grandchildren.
He had been not only preacher of the gospel
but the founder of a tribe.
Nor could anything be more entertaining
than the "reminiscences in which, upon this oc
casion, DR.. Cartwright INDUCED. All autobiog-
raphy is interesting, and the stupidest man
,rrita in aft A
bis life so stupidity as to fail utterly of readers.
But whether because it appeals to wants which
we always feel, to aspirations which we never
lose, there is in religious autobiography Pc
culiar charm. 1t may be, it often Is, rudely
written, but the most fastidious reader will
pardon this if the pages which record spirit
ual experience bear upon their face the stamp
of simple sincerity. We confess to have read
with pleasure, if not with profit, the narratives
of many preachers who could hardly spell cor
rectly, and who had but little fame outside
their own connections. As we have perused
the Journals of the early Quakers-a distinct
literature hardly known outside "the meet
"ingn-we have felt how priceless in such
writings is that ungrudging veracity, which con-
ceals nothing because it is small, and extenu-
of the world ridiculous. DR.. Cartwright rambled
through the story of his life with something
of the minute ness of De Foe-here stopping
for IN anecdote, there pausng to detail
some humorous circumstance, but always
giving evidence Of an earnest and
kindly nature. lie had suffered good deal
"in body and mind land circumstance" He
had been "caught five hundred miles from his
fathers house with but seventy-fiye cents in
"his pocket in q strange land, rs Methodist
travelling preacher, on horseback, and with
mot q garment but what was brought to the
"patchn He had been taken to task by an
older brother in the ministry I"for wearing
"suspenders," and was only cOnsoled when he
found that Bishop McIIenry wore "suspenders"
also. He had been made I'D. d." and "the
Every day lie got his certificate he was taken
all with a pain in his back" His father
wanted to make an educated man of him,
"but missed it tremendously" When he was
converted, his conversion was not Zone of
"your tip-tOp, fashionable -slippered, best
"bb-and tucker Onversions-itwasa backwOods
Conversion" so extraordinry in its physical
manifestations that the Doctor wanted to shave
his head and cover it with "a large blster"-
an anecdote which will remind the reader of
a somewhat similar passage in the early life of
George Fox. Mr.. Cartwright told the audience
that "he had preached as many sermons as
- any living man, "What we call sermons"
he added modestly; ut might take dozen of
" them to make good one, for what know,
"but they cost me physical labor rs well as
mental labor" Here then, we may say is
veritabe clerical phenomenon. For half n cen
tury, in all weathers, under the open sky, with
long intervals of lonely aud difficult travel.