The Vancouver independent. (Vancouver, W.T. [Wash.]) 1875-1910, 1881-06-30
The kentucky Mountain Moses.


A wonderful evangelist has been de-
veloped in the mountain regions OF
Southwestern Kentucky. Under his elo-
quence the stiff-necked moonshiner melts
into a saint and the mountain marauder
becomes as harmless as hermit. he
breaches without money and without
price. He trusts far ali he wants to the
Power that sent supplies to his proph-
cts by the mouths of the ravens. When
he is to preach at any place couriers fly
before him prociaiming the glad tidings,
and beacon fires light up the hill-tops at
night announcing his coming. Crowds
follow him from place to place as the
people beyond the Jordan followed the
herald of new dispepsation nineteen
hundred years ago, and the townsmen of
all the villages pour out by hundreds to
hear this evangelist. Farmers leave
their plows, merchants close their stores,
mechanics their shops, physicians desert
their patients, and lawyers their briefs,
while Courts and schools take a recess,
that all may attend these ministrations.
Such, at least, is the account we have
of the work and ways of the Rev. George
0. Barnes, through correspondent Of
the Louisville Courier ournal. Nor is
Mr.. Barnes man of the woods, inlet
tered and uneducated. The son of
Presbyterian minister, he received the
education which would qualify him for
the pulpit. He is son of Danville
College scientifically and of Princeton
theologically, versed in Greek, Hebrew
Sanscrit and other tongues. Duly or
dained as a Presbyterian minister, he
%rr on1 siy
in India. Broken in health, he returned
and took charge of Presbyterian church
at Stanford, where he preached model
Then he withdrew, because he had out
to bring upon him the censure of the
Presbytery. So they parted company,
he going out as he told his congregation,
without dollar in the world, but he
didn't suffer.
The next heard of him is in Chicago,
preaching with such acceptance that an
old Stanford friend built church there
at cost of $4,000, proposing to give it to
Barnes, with furnished residence, and
the congregation backed it up with the
offer of a salary of $4,000 year. Few
preachers without dollar in the world
WOulu nave ueCliueu luut oHci, put
Barnes did. He had been called, he
said, to go to the mountains and preach
to those who are too poor to pay for the
Gospel. He had had a new revelation,
so to speak, and saw the Bible and his
duty in true light.
This was about the beginning Of 1876.
Purchasing reed organ for his daugh-
ter, they set out for the mountains, she
doing the singing, he the preaching and
praying. Barnes joins in the singing,
too, but his voice, so vibratory and mu-
steal in speaking, does not add to the
harmony Of the music. But that does
not matter; and the people go to hear
him preach, which he does indoors in
winter, but out of doors in summer, to
crowds of sometimes as many as 1O,OOO
people.
And they are no thirty minute sermons
either, but plump two hours and a half
long. with half hour for singing. Nor
is it one sermon a week with him, but
fourteen, or at the rate of sixty a month.
But with all this use of his voice, and he
uses it in a way to wear it ont, it never
gets out of order. 1t is like his daugh-
ter's reed organ, which, with all its
journeys over the mountains, never gets
out of tune. God, he says, takes care OF
both voice and organ, and keeps up re-
pairs at no cost to preacher or singer.
Mr.. Barnes is described as 81 years Of
age, six feet two in height, slender and
well-proportioned, thin face, aquiline
nose and dark hazel eyes which light up
with astonishing brilliancy.- Cincinnati
Commercial.