METHODIST REVIEW.

NOVEMBER, 1899.

ART. I.-ALPHA J. KYNETT, D.D., LL.D.

NOTHING helps life like life. History is the most inspiring of studies because it is the science of men, rather than of things. And the history of the world is, after all, nothing more than the biography of its greatest souls. They are the fountain force in the movement of the world-story. One does not need to go all lengths with Carlyle, in his hero worship, to believe that while great men are not the whole of life they are a prime condition of the world's noblest life. The hope of the world is in its rare souls. Into their hearts God pours the Spirit of his power, and upon their heads he lays the hands of his consecration. Whatever materialism may teach as to the influences of secondary causes upon human society, God's philosophy of history is one that emphasizes the human element and recognizes the significance of great men. This is preeminently true in the realm of religion. More than in art, letters, philosophy, politics, science, or invention is the individual man potent in the spiritual and ethical sphere. We are always in need of the prophetic voice, the genius for religion, the witnesses to the unseen. The world's greatest heroes are the heroes of faith. It has been said that "an institution is the lengthened shadow of a man." It has been ordered in the good providence of God that the great religious leaders of the world have also been masters of constructive statesmanship. The vision of God has often been united with supreme power to lead and organize men.

These general truths were exemplified in the life and career of Dr. A. J. Kynett, the subject of this sketch. It was his 56-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. XV.

rare good fortune to link his name so indissolubly with the history of the Church of his choice that its story for a generation cannot be told without the constant mention of his name, and to incarnate his powerful personality in an institution which is perhaps the most potent propaganda of our century in the field of home missions. We are still too close in time to this great life to measure it with entire accuracy; the warmth of personal contact which still abides may disturb the cooler exercise of the judgment; yet the bulk of actual achievement is enough to support the verdict won by the impact of his personality, that his was a colossal character, standing level with the greatest in the history of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

Alpha Jefferson Kynett was born in Adams County, Pa., August 12, 1829. His father, John Kynett, or Kinet, was also a Pennsylvanian, and most probably of German descent. It should be remarked that the Pennsylvania German population which moved westward in the State were very generally assimilated to the social type about them, and did not acquire that close-fibered mental and moral immobility so characteristic of that interesting people. John Kynett seems to have possessed an aggressive temperament and willingness to change not common in that stock, as he successively removed to Ohio in 1832, living there in three different places, and thence to Indiana in 1838, where he unsuccessfully tried in two different places to make a permanent home for his family; and finally, in 1842, he found a resting place for his little colony of married and unmarried children in Des Moines County, Ia. Alpha was the youngest of eight children, and these frequent removals in the formative period between his third and thirteenth years were an early introduction into the itineracy and the hardships of frontier life. His earliest memories were of log cabins, the sound of the ax clearing the primeval forests, and hard labor on the farm and in the cooper shop.

Right generation is the best prelude to regeneration. He was well born. Both father and mother were devout Christian people, having both joined the Methodist Episcopal Church before their marriage. "They were especially careful

to give their children an early religious education, and even at the earliest period of my recollection I was taught to say my prayers morning and evening. Mother often talked to me about heaven and the happiness which God's people enjoyed there." Such is an early entry in the Journal which Dr. Kynett kept for about fifty years, a human document of surpassing interest and value. His maternal grandfather, Henry Peterson, Sr., had been a soldier in the War for Independence, and was for the last fifteen years of his life a Methodist preacher, traveling chiefly in the Virginia Conference. With this goodly inheritance of ancestral influences it was little wonder that, with his own gifts, he became the great preacher and the fervent patriot.

When about twelve years of age, during a powerful revival of religion, through the importunities of his mother he was induced to join the class; but he afterward felt that his impressions of duty had been too slight to effect any radical change either in heart or life. Some five years later, however, under the ministry of the Rev. Michael See, he discovered himself as a child of God. It is highly characteristic that this result was reached not only through spiritual conviction, but by a cool, logical, and intellectual process. He touched the point of peace, as often happens in the case of men of strong will, only by a resolute and desperate resolve to go forward in the path of known duty. It must not be supposed, however, that the religious experience of Dr. Kynett was wholly or mostly a piece of rational analysis. He possessed too powerful an emotional nature for that. He had his moments on the mount, the fine raptures won by inward struggle and full surrender; and the pages of his Journal are full of ejaculated prayers and aspirations after holiness. He read widely and thoughtfully on the theme of evangelical perfection, and, in the nervous and expressive speech of the early Methodists, was constantly "groaning after it." From the time of his conversion until his translation there was never any note of uncertainty in his Christian profession, but the "glad confident morning" of spiritual and moral certainty.

In early childhood he had been impressed with the thought of the ministry as a possible calling. His conversion deepened

the childish impression. With the same mental deliberation as in the case of his conversion he examined the evidences of his call and wisely committed himself to the guidance of divine Providence. He was licensed to exhort in the year 1850, and to preach in 1851.

Dr. Kynett was almost wholly a self-educated man. His early schooling had taught him to read, write, and cipher a little. With the call to preach came the feeling of need of preparation. He procured text-books and began a laborious course of self-culture. He was especially diligent as a student of English syntax, and acquired a strong and accurate literary style. Employed as a teacher in the schools of his county, he kept a little ways in advance of his classes and taught them his freshly acquired information. Probably no harm was done to the scholars by this process, and there could have been no better training for his inquisitive mind. It is significant that he also studied bookkeeping, an accomplishment which had its place in the equipment of him whom Bishop Ames afterward called "the greatest business man in the Methodist ministry." He also became an omnivorous reader, and seems with Bacon to have "taken all knowledge for his province," for his Journal records the names of books in theology, science, metaphysics, history, law, and general literature. The Journal itself is an interesting testimony to the reality and thoroughness of this self-discipline. The handwriting, always as legible as print, is at first somewhat clumsy and schoolboyish, but becomes in the later volumes refined and easy in its lines. The literary style, always strong and forcible, is rather crude and awkward at first, but becomes at last the natural and fluent expression of the mind of an educated man. Hand and speech give progressive testimony to a mental training which in his case had no dead line, but was still advancing the last year of his life.

Having previously been employed by the presiding elder as a supply on the Dubuque Circuit, he was admitted on trial in the Iowa Conference in 1851, and was appointed by Bishop Waugh to Catfish Station, near Dubuque. His early ministry was of the most primitive type, and is full of the primitive experiences and romance of the itinerancy-a life spent largely in

the saddle, threading blind roads and swimming swollen rivers. This ruder life was of short duration. He at once stepped to the front rank in his Conference, and filled its most important charges, being successively stationed at Davenport, Dubuque, Iowa City, and Lyons. At Davenport he began his work as a church builder, starting the first of that long list of eleven thousand temples which are directly or indirectly indebted to him for their existence. In 1860 he was appointed presiding elder of the Davenport District, at the unusually early age of thirty-one. Probably no years of his laborious life were so full of labors as those spent in this exacting office. The War of the Rebellion was in progress. Dr. Kynett espoused the cause of the Union with all the fervor of his heart and all the strength of his will. He was incessant in speeches, sermons, and writings on the issues of the day. He was appointed on the staff of Governor Kirkwood, and aided in recruiting and equipping several regiments. Of one of these it had been fully intended to make him colonel, but he was very cunningly tricked out of the appointment. Doubtless he would have made a great soldier, but God had something better for him and for the world. He was a leader in the beneficent work of the Sanitary Commission, organizing auxiliaries everywhere over his State, and frequently going to the front in its service. During this period he formed and to a considerable extent matured those opinions as to the relations of a free Church to a free government which found final expression in his book on the Religion of the Republic.

In 1864 he was honored by his Conference with an election to the General Conference, an honor repeated every four years until the time of his death. In this body he introduced the resolution looking toward the organization of the Church Extension Society. He also drew up its constitution and conducted the measure through the Conference to its final adoption. Dr. S. Y. Monroe was elected Corresponding Secretary of the new society. The idea of a society to assist in the erection of churches had been germinating for several years in Dr. Kynett's mind. While pastor at Dubuque in 1856 at his instance a meeting of the principal laymen was held at which among other things a committee was appointed to prepare a