This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
That brave Dutch boy who stuck his finger in the dike to keep the water back must have seemed like small potatoes to Peter Cartwright, the 19th century Methodist circuit rider. Cartwright was responsible for a spiritual dike that ran through four hundred miles of Illinois counties bordering the Upper Mississippi River. It was a leaky dike at best.
Peter Cartwright grew up in Kentucky, a "wild, wicked boy" who loved to dance and play cards. In 1801 he was converted at a great revival camp meeting, became a Methodist, and devoted his life to bringing lost sheep back into the fold and guarding those already there. At camp meetings along the frontier from Ohio to Indiana, and eventually into Illinois, Cartwright became famous for his ability to picture hell so vividly that sinners could "see the fiery billows roll and hear the ponderous iron doors creak open on their rusty hinges."
In 1824, Cartwright moved to Springfield where he was made District Superintendent of much of northern Illinois, including the Mississippi River Valley just opening to settlement. Circuit riders such as Cartwright were a necessity in this region too thinly settled to support congregational pastors. The circuit rider lived on horseback, visiting each settlement in turn, often weeks or months apart, renewing zeal and exhorting the wavering.
While the circuit rider was away, there were often leaks in the dike. Out there on the frontier, lying in wait for isolated Methodist families were flood waters of Mormons, Shakers, Calvinists, Deists, Universalists, Baptists, Reformers, New Lights, and Unitarians. Drinking, gambling, and even more unspeakable sins also pushed against the dike of faith.
For seventy-one years, until he was eighty-five, Cartwright rode the circuit. He had led some thousand camp meetings, preached 14,600 sermons, founded nearly a hundred Methodist churches, and had helped establish Illinois Wesleyan and MacMurray Colleges, and Garrett Biblical Institute.
All of this with a single purpose: to keep his fellow Methodists safe from the floods, to keep them high, and, of course, very dry.
Rock Island Lines with Roald Tweet is underwritten by Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.
