A Yankee Saint by Robert Allerton Parker

Author:Robert Allerton Parker [Parker, Robert Allerton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, Wars & Conflicts (Other), United States, 20th Century, Civil War Period (1850-1877)
ISBN: 9781786258212
Google: XkSQCwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Published: 2016-01-27T02:59:47+00:00

Chapter II: RESURRECTION

“But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.”

—ROMANS 7:6.

1

DURING the autumn of 1834 Chauncey Dutton had carried the message of the New Haven Perfectionists to Chittenango, in central New York. In that little settlement Dutton preached Christ a whole Saviour, with faith the only condition of full salvation. After one meeting, a young man named Jonathan Burt followed Dutton to the home in which he was stopping. Burt engaged Dutton in argument; but the young evangelist from New Haven swept away all objections. Next day, Jonathan Burt had made a public confession of his everlasting salvation from sin. Dutton gave him a copy of The Perfectionist containing John Noyes’s theory of the Second Coming of Christ. As young Burt sat at his workbench a day or two later, eating his midday meal and musing upon this new revelation, he related that something like an electric current struck the top of his head and spread a tingling glow through every part of his body. “My mind was illuminated to understand the Bible as I had never understood it before. I wanted to share my all with God’s people.” From that day Jonathan Burt was a Perfectionist, subscribed to all of Noyes’s subsequent publications, and became a loyal disciple of the Putney prophet.

Eleven years later, in the autumn of 1845, at the suggestion of a fellow Perfectionist, an opportunity came to Jonathan Burt to go into partnership in the purchase of the so-called Indian sawmill on Oneida Creek. Although he had expended something like $1,800 for his property in Chittenango, Burt disposed of it for about $900 and bought a share of the Oneida sawmill and a forty-acre timber lot. By January, 1846, he had erected a house, and moved to this new wilderness. But felling trees and hauling logs to the mill put a heavy tax on Burt’s strength, and he broke down under this strain. During his illness a spring freshet carried away the dam. Everything seemed to go against poor Jonathan. He had not bettered his lot by this radical change; he was in debt; to buy out his partner would increase his burden to an amount he could not carry. Nor was his uncongenial partner able to buy him out. To make matters even more unendurable, his brother Horace was now discharged from the Worcester hospital for the insane. Horace proposed to sell his own property and to buy the partner’s share in the mill. He did so; but, since his madness promptly shortly returned, he proved an additional burden.

The Genoa Convention of Perfectionists (September 17, 18, 19, 1847) selected a committee of twelve to draw up plans for the formation of a “heavenly association” in central New York. Two possible sites were discussed. One was John B. Foot’s farm at Lairdsville, the other Jonathan Burt’s Indian sawmill. Noyes favored the latter location. However, Mrs.

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