lement
essential to the highest productiveness, even of fertile soil, and the
vapors rising on the Gulf of Mexico have not a hillock three hundred
feet high to obstruct their flow up the Mississippi eastward and
northward, until they reach the State of Illinois. And the men that do
business in the cities of this prosperous State, or till its fertile and
alluvial soil, that was lifted up, not many geologic ages ago, from
beneath the bottom of the sea, are so rich they do not know how rich
they are. But it is a peril to be rich. Jesus, Paul and Solomon unite in
saying so, and it is especially a peril when wealth comes suddenly. When
a man starts poor, and has felt the sting of contempt because of his
poverty, and then finds himself rich and prosperous and flattered, and
tempted to indulge in every luxury, then this man is in great peril; and
there is no security against this danger like using the wealth that God
has given him for the glory of God and the good of men.

But there were brethren thirty years ago that needed no admonition as
touching the disposition they should make of their world goods. I could
give a goodly number of examples, but the reader will pardon me if,
because of the narrow limits of these "Recollections," I confine myself
to one.

Peter B. Garrett, of Camp Point, Adams county, had set himself, with
honest purpose, to bring his Kentucky brethren up to the level of the
demands of primitive and apostolic Christianity. Every man has his
hobby, and Bro. G. had his hobby. When the writer first visited Camp
Point, he was demanded of to know if it was not a fixed part of the
apostolic order that each disciple should, on the first day of the week,
lay by him in store, of money or goods, as the Lord had prospered him,
putting it into the Lord's treasury? I could not quite affirm this, but
Bro. G. stuck to his hobby.

Bro. Garrett knew the value of a full treasury, and was ready to do his
part towards settling a preacher in the church, and paying him. But he
could not bring his brethren up to the level of his own aspirations.

Bro. G. came from Kentucky a poor man, but he got hold of a considerable
body of good land, when it was cheap, and cultivated it skillfully. Then
the Quincy, Galesburg and Chicago Railroad was build in front of his
farm, and the town of Camp Point grew up adjoining his premises. He also
built a flouring mill, and this added to his gains; and thus he grew
rich and influential, but he