Z. S. Hastings

“ Now all this the Bible teaches, and so do all the churches. Now what church do I belong to? You tell. Will I be saved? You say. Why cannot we all, Christians, take the Bible at what it says, and what all churches approve and be one church? You answer. You know we need not worry about the God side. He will do all things right. It occurred to me that what I did to become a Christian was that which Christ referred to in his conversation with Nicodemus.
In a few months after my second birth, I commenced to preach the word of Gospel and chose for my first subject, "Promise to Abraham." ”

“ There is a great deal in the way a child is brought up. O, that the children of our beloved land be brought up in the way they should go! O, that it could be said of all parents that their children are brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord; that is could be said of all teachers of our great country as it was said of the great lexicographer, Noah Webster: "He taught thousands to read, but not one to sin." It is said boys, that the training of a child should begin a hundred years before it is born. ”

“ Pleasant Grove. Atchison.
There are many pleasant things connected with preaching and sometimes things are not so pleasant. Of course, the most pleasant of all to the true, conscientious preacher, is turning many from wrong to right, to salvation from sin and all its consequences. To know that you have preached righteousness and lived a life worthy of imitation, fills the cup of joy to overflowing.
While I have been teacher, farmer and preacher for years and years and at one time was elected to a State office, I never was a politician in the first sense of the word. ”

“ He had lost his faith by forgetting his first love. "He that loves not, obeys not. Not everyone that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of Heaven, but he that doeth the will of my father, which is in Heaven, Jesus."
Notwithstanding the many attractions of interest, love and friendship among my relatives, and friends of old Indiana I had not been there four weeks until my heart was fully set to return to Kansas. And why not? Had I not left there a dear wife and five little children? Count, boys, how old you were then. Clara and Edith also. Edith was less than a year old. ”

“ I have preached the funerals of many, Saints and sinners, people of various ages, nationalities and creeds. I have baptized believers ranging from nine to seventy-two years of age.
Although I have been preaching for over fifty years, my preaching has been usually on Sundays. I was a Sunday preacher. I never gave myself wholly to preaching for a livelihood. ”

“ I remember saying in order to growth there must be union, for separation is death. Even rocks grow, but, separated into stones, they ceased to grow. Good, old, devout, scholarly brother Humber was there, and kindly criticized my sermon by saying he did not believe that rocks grow. I have never preached that sermon since, but I still think rocks do grow.
From that time, 1867, I was a faithful Sunday preacher, more or less in Kansas until I was nearly sixty years old, when I became so infirm that I submitted to a place on the shelf, where I am still waiting for transportation to the skies. ”

“ I soon gained the same popularity as a teacher that I had in Indiana. I never sought schools. They always sought me. I attended the Baptist College in Trenton one year. It was a very pleasant and profitable year of my early life. It was before the war when the general talk was about slavery and a probable war.
One day I and a young friend, chum and class-mate, a son of a Baptist preacher, were studying our lessons under a large beech tree in the college campus. My mate said to me, "Hastings, aren't you an abolitionist?" I said, "Yes, I am." "I believe all men ought to be free." ”

“ When all hope of life was abandoned and it was thought best by friends to tell her the end was near, her husband gently reminded her of little Edith in heaven, and told her she would soon be with her. ”

“ Goffs too, was another place where I was the first to preach, beginning in the school house and ending in a new church building, where the disciples worship unto this day. The pleasant recollection of the names of Brockman, Springer and others will always be associated with my remembrances at Goffs. It is said that we never forget anything. I believe this only in part. I think the bad will be forgotten while the good will be remembered forever. ”

“ She was accepted of God, for before him a poor slave woman at her master's feet is as precious in his sight as the queen on her throne. God is no respecter of persons.
My first funeral was on the occasion of the death of a dear little child, only a few months old, the first born of young parents. But the sermon was easy, for has not the Saviour said, "Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."
My first wedding was when, after I had finished a term of school, one of my school boys, a young man, came to me and said he wanted me to marry him to one of my school girls, a young lady. ”

“ I never had better behavior or as little trouble with any other school as I had this term with these Irish Catholic children.
The Catholics, however, generally oppose the public reading of the Bible and prayer in the public schools. I kindly asked a good Catholic friend one day why they opposed the reading of the Bible. I said, "The Bible is a good book." "Just so," he replied, "too good a book for the common people to read." "Ah, I think not. God has nothing too good for his children," said I. The teacher, however, that reads and prays should be a good teacher. ”

“ When I think of the fellowship, the kindness, the friendship and the love of the disciples of Christ, I think and know that His Christianity is the best thing in the world, and the only thing, as an organization, that is absolutely necessary for a man to join. In an early period of the church in Atchison I frequently preached in a small upper room which would seat about 50 people. ”

“ At the end of the next two days we returned with him to our old home in old Clarksburg, (now Oden) Daviers County, Indiana, where, the next day, we buried brother by the side of our father, who had been buried nine years. This was the second death in father's family. Brother was a good man, a scholar, a soldier, and a teacher. He gave his life upon the altar of his country at the early age of thirty-six.
War is a great evil, dreadful, fearful, terrible. O, for the time when "nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more!" ”

“ I would like to see the man that I look so much alike, and even his wife and child could not tell the difference. Perhaps I could see myself then as others see me, which I, nor, any man has ever yet been able to do. ”

“ Even the good Lord has promised that he will remember our sins no more. So I think He will let us forget the bad forever.
So, too, Pleasant Grove, a country church just south of Effingham one of the best country churches I ever knew, is where I preached from the beginning, (I mean my beginning in Kansas) regularly for many years. It was in the spring of 1868 that two brothers, John and Jacob Graves, of Pleasant Grove came to Round Prairie where I was teaching and preaching to hear me, and invited me to Pleasant Grove. I never found a better preacher's home then the home of Jacob Graves. ”

“ Old things had passed away. Yet I went back to my old place of teaching, Tophet. With preaching added to teaching, there again I taught the urchins and preached to the sinners. And at this writing 1911, there is a new name, a new people (a converted people) , a house of God and many worshippers of the Most High God. Surely the world doth grow better.
At the Owl Prairie where I hoed corn when I was a little boy and fished in the canal, I was called to take charge of a protracted meeting, and at this meeting I had my first baptism. ”

“ How wonderful is life. How little we know. How much of the little we seem to forget. Yet someone says we never forget anything. I expect to know more, and know it better, in the life to come. This brother John was a grand old man, but he has been sleeping in the grave ever since Nov. 3, 1891. His good wife also sleeps. But they left one daughter and three sons, who are, at this writing, noble citizens in Daviers County, Indiana.
I was chosen President of the County Teachers Association and elected as first assistant principal to teach in Washington, the county seat of Daviers County, Ind. ”

“ Father was a quiet, peaceable, Christian man, with a good many of the
Quaker ways about him.
The spirit-rappings, which originated with the Fox family of N.Y. eight or ten years before, were still exciting the people in southern Indiana. It so happened that a Mr. Wilson, a learned justice of the peace, lived in Tophet, at the time I taught school there, and was a medium. I boarded and lodged at his house a part of the time. Let me state a few facts and these occurred in my experience while there. That rapping kept up, especially if you paid any attention to it, more or less, day and night. ”

“ I stood the test many times in Indiana, Missouri and Kansas, to secure a teacher's certificate, but never failed to get the first grade. Of course, I, in the meantime, spent about three more years at school. My popularity as a successful teacher came at once, even at the first term, so much so that they sent for me to come and teach for them in a place called Tophet. Boys, if you do not know what that means look it up in the dictionary. The place was so bad, that teachers for several years had not been able to teach to the end of the term. The bad boys and girls would run the teacher off. ”

“ Speaking of Netawaka, reminds me of being called there in later life to marry a young Methodist gentleman to a young Mormon lady. And this reminds me that I have married people of nearly all creeds, colors and nationalities. So of funerals. The Mormon preacher was at the Netawaka wedding, but I did not know it until the wedding was over. To this day I do not know why I was called to this wedding. I was never treated more kindly and hospitably at any other wedding. And here let me say that the money I have received for weddings and funerals, I think is more than I ever received for preaching. ”

“ A man that steals, should steal no more.
In due time, (1830) father and mother with their two little boys, Thomas and Henry arrived in Lawrence County, Indiana, and settled in the rich valley of the east fork of the White river. Father's oldest brother, Arthur D. Hastings, Sen., had preceded father a few years to the new state, and was ready to greet and assist his brother to make a new home. Uncle Arthur was one of God's noblemen, an honest, leading citizen, and devout Christian. He lived on the place he first settled about sixty years, and died there in 1886 at the advanced age of 85 years. ”

“ In all the work of the Bible Schools of this country I have always felt, during these four decades, that it was an honor t try to stand as a second to Issac Maris is a friend. In all my life's labor as a Sunday School worker I have associated with no one so long and pleasantly as a coworker as Isaac Maris. ”

“ Few, if any disciples in the movement for unity, had ever preached in Effingham. I had been called several times to the town to preach funerals, but that was all. So I commenced preaching in the Mr. E. Church South on Sundays and having preached a few times, I requested that at our next meeting all disciples or Christians, (I use these names as synonyms) who were not members of any congregation, to remain after the sermon. ”

“ She died as she had lived—a Christian. The funeral services were held at the Potter church, conducted by Rev. Hilton of Atchison. The floral tribute was beautiful. A large number of people were present, but owing to the distance a great many were unable to attend. Those from Effingham were Hiss Speer, Emma Ellis, Ollie Wilson, Mabel Weaver, Nellie Grable, Mrs. J. W. Wilson, Mollie Campbell, J. W. Campbell and Ertel Weaver.
Evangelist Frank Richard wrote of her: "The memory of such a life is as the lingering twilight after the golden sun has set. It is the precious memory of a life service. ”

“ At present the church owes nothing and is having preaching all the time by Frank Richard, an able and conscientious minister of the Gospel. The church, by removals, decrease almost as fast as it increases. The membership at this writing is about 150.
Muscotah is a thriving little city just west of Effingham. There are but few disciples there except those in the churches of the town. I have preached there a few times. Once the funeral of a little girl, name Clara Hastings, but she was no kin to us. At other times the funerals of a very aged man and wife named Mooney. ”

“ The poor creatures would stand there until the rapidly rising waters would crowd them off the knoll, and then they swam until exhausted and overcome by the great distance, and turbulent waters when they would go down to rise no more. ”

“ I preached in Wolf River in Brown County for two years. Every preacher likes to have wherever he preaches a place, or home, he can call his headquarters. Well, at Wolf River Daniel Miller's home was my home. ”

“ My oldest brother Joshua Thomas Hastings was a home guard soldier and a teacher in Bolivar, Missouri, when the battle of Springfield was fought and General Lyon was killed. After the battle the Home Guards and Union men in general in that part of the state, had (using a war word) to skedaddle for their lives. My brother tried to make his escape to Kansas but three times was arrested by confederate scouts. ”