Excerpt from Historical Sketches of Iowa Baptists: Compiled and Edited Under the Authority of the Iowa Baptist State Convection by Rev. S. H. Mitchell, Historian of the Convention With an Introduction by D. P. Smith, D. D

Second. The reader must be reminded how ruefully condensed, much of such a history must be in order to at all touch pomts in them selves all worthy Of a larger place. In 1876, in one of the oldest Associ ations a committee was appointed to prepare a Centennial History of the Association. The chairman of that committee was a very intelligent minister and a scholar, not now in the flesh. After carefully looking Over the ground for a year, and taking in something of its dimensions he did not attempt to write a history but made a report in which he said: A history of the Association that would be at all satisfactory, must necessarily embrace an extent Of matter which would make a volume. For example. Theassociation, organized in 1839, has been perpetuated, through a series of changes, to the year 1877 (the date of the report). The law of its preservation is deserving of attention as well as the body of the principles involved in its organization. The names of seventye five churches appear on the record, having been in existence for longer or shorter periods. Their localities and the causes which effected their extinction, and other matter connected with their existence ought to be noticed. On these same records We find the names of 153 ministers of the gospel. Historical sketches of many of these men would be essential to the history of the Association. Other faithful laborers in the vine yard, both brothers and sisters, would need mention. The labors of these ministers and others furnish an exhibition of zeal, self-denial, and devo tedness and a constancy of faith and noble endurance for Christ's sake, which ought to have special mention in detail. The territorv at the time these elder brethren begun their work was largely in possession of various Indian tribes, and consequently uncultivated, and, though a beautiful country, was still a wilderness. Then it ought to be shown In the history that the distinguishing characteristic of the Association in point of doctrine is, as Dr. Mosheim defines it with regard to that long succession of ancient Baptists, ho lay concealed in almost all the coun tries of Europe, before the rise of Calvin and Luther and who held that the invisible church is inaccessible to the wicked and unrighteous, and is exempt from all those institutions which human prudence suggests to oppose the progress of iniquity, or to correct and to reform transgres sors. It will be seen by the above that an adequate history of a single association would require a volume of little less dimensions than that which has been practicable to us in sketching the whole state. After the printing of the first few forms the assiduous application of the con densing process was ever present as an imperative necessity.

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