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Rev. John Boyle

First Presbyterian missionary in the Triângulo Mineiro and Goiás John Boyle was born on March 1, 1845, in Spencer County, in the north of Kentucky. He was the son of William Boyle and Esther Glass Boyle. He studied at the Center Kentucky and worked as a teacher, then joined the Theological Seminary Union (1870) in Richmond, Virginia. It was ordered by the Transylvania Presbytery, in his home state, on June 6, 1872. He and his wife Agnes Woodson Morton Boyle, a native of Farmville (Virginia), left New York on March 23, 1873, and

arrived in Recife on April 15, exactly three months after the arrival of Rev. John Rockwell Smith. They were sent to Brazil by the Missions Committee of Nashville, the Presbyterian of the South (CPSU), who had appointed them as missionaries in 1871. Due to difficulties, they moved in April 1875 to Campinas, where Boyle assisted Rev. Edward Lane in evangelistic and educational work. He headed the girls' college attached to the International College. It was inscribed by the old Presbytery of São Paulo, affiliated to the CPSU, in 1877, the last year of that council's existence.  

 

At the beginning of 1879, Boyle settled in Mogi-Mirim, from where he evangelized the region bordering Minas Gerais. In that city was a believer called Jacob Filipe Wingerther, who was a dedicated colporteur and evangelist of the Mission of Nashville. On August 22 of the same year, accompanied by Wingerther, Boyle first time in Cape Verde, Minas Gerais, preaching to about 60 people in the room of Freemasonry, at the invitation of the farmer Antonio de Padua Dias, who had been reading the Bible some time ago. The local church would be organized by Rev. Miguel Torres, on the site of Padua Days, May 22, 1881. Another city Boyle visited was Cajuru, where the only person to welcome him was the local Masonic chief, Miguel Rizzo, who came to convert with his family. His son of the same name was the illustrious pastor of the United Church of São Paulo and the

"Prince of the Presbyterian pulpit". In his missionary work, Wingerther had long trips to the Minas Gerais Triangle, bringing Boyle information about the evangelistic opportunities in that vast region.  In 1881 and 1882, Boyle made his first reconnaissance trips in Central Brazil,  arriving in Uberaba.

 

The following year, Wingerther went to Paracatu and again brought an enthusiastic report on the receptivity of the people. By mid-1884, the two workers visited, among other places, Araguari, Bagagem, Paracatu, Santa Luzia de Goiás, and Formosa. Among Araguari's first converts were Querubino dos Santos and couple Tertuliano and Maria Otília Goulart, parents of the future Rev. Jorge Thompson Goulart. The Tertullian and Cherubine cousins ​​had been influenced by the reading of the Bible and an exemplary of the Evangelical Press, by which they learned that an American missionary, John Boyle, offered to explain the gospel to anyone who sought it. They wrote for Boyle in Mogi-Mirim. This was the Baggage from which the letter had been sent, but the young men had transferred residence to Araguari. In Baggage, Boyle found a blacksmith who had converted by reading the Bible and was ready to profess the faith, though had never heard of evangelical churches.

 

Following to Araguari, he found the two young men, receiving them by profession of faith, along with several relatives, on Sunday day July 13, 1884. These were the first Presbyterian believers of the entire Triangle Miner. The return trip from Luziânia to Mogi-Mirim lasted four weeks and two days of the incessant cavalcade.  In 1885, Boyle went to the United States on vacation (residing in Danville, Kentucky)  and was granted permission to move to the interior of Brazil. He returned the following year, bringing with him a new missionary, Rev. George Wood Thompson. From August to October of the same year (1886), the two ministers visited the places where Boyle had preached in 1884 and concluded that Baggage, a city of gold miners, in which Tertullian and Cherubin were residing again, it must be the new base of operations. On 14 December April 1887, Boyle participated in the creation of the Presbytery of Campinas and West of Minas, the successor of the old Presbytery of São Paulo, extinct ten years earlier. In July, the family Boyle and Rev. Thompson moved to Bagagem, now called Estrela do Sul (due to the famous diamond with that name found there), in the north of the Triângulo Mineiro.  The change was a true epic, narrated in detail in an account sent to The Missionary newspaper. As a result, the Mission of the Interior of the Brazil.

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The following year (1888), Boyle returned to visit the field of Goiás, making a trip of more than 1500 km. Crossing the rivers Paranaíba and San Marcos, preached in Catalão, Caldas

Novas, Morrinhos, Santa Luzia, Formosa, Jaraguá, Entre Rios, and Curralinhos, arriving at the old capital of the province, Goiás Velho. In a letter sent to the mission journal, he expressed the desire to evangelize the Tocantins Valley and reach the Amazon. In the same year, he participated in the creation of the Presbyterian Synod, was elected vice-moderator, and became part of the new Presbytery of Mines. In January 1889, Boyle launched the appreciated newspaper The Evangelist, later revived in Araguari by his disciple Querubino dos Santos and Descalvado by Rev. Alva Hardie. In his "Letters to the Bishop" of Goiás, "published in that period after 1891, responded to the accusations contained in the antiprotestant pamphlet "The Neophyte", published in Recife in 1879.  While Boyle was traveling in Goias, Thompson, and Hugh C. Tucker, the Secretary of Society

From Paracatu to the São Francisco River, descended the coast and arrived in Pernambuco. Thompson returned to the Minas Gerais Triangle when he that yellow fever had hit some colleagues in Campinas. He went to help them, it was over. contracting the disease and dying.

 

At the end of 1889, he arrived in Brazil to replace Rev. Frank A. Cowan, and the following year he and Boyle made the circuit of Goiás again.  In 1891, Mrs. Boyle went to the United States with three children who needed to study, leaving Boyle and the Cowan couple in Baggage. On September 1 of that year, Boyle preached at the ordination ceremony of the graduates João Vieira Bizarro, Herculano Ernesto de Gouvêa, and Bento Ferraz, in Mogi-Mirim, in the company of Revs. Edward Lane and Miguel Torres. Among others, Boyle referred to Christian life and studies to the youth ministry, Delfino dos Anjos Teixeira and Álvaro E. Gonçalves dos Reis, and received the latter by profession of faith in 1882, in Mogi-Mirim.

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Boyle wasted no time. On one of his trips, he went through about 40 cities and towns and just did not preach in two of them due to lack of place. Until 1890, when the Catholic Church left of being the official religion, the evangelical manifestations in the open air were forbidden. On your evangelistic trips, Boyle distributed Bibles and New Testaments, one of which was late it was left in the hands of Mr. Davi de Melo. Already disappointed with the dissolute life of the one priest of the region, David read the Bible on Sundays with a Protestant neighbor.  Eventually, he, his wife Maria Isabel, and the three daughters were received by profession of faith

Rev. Charles R. Morton. Sometime later, his brother Manoel de Melo and his wife, newlyweds, also professed their faith with Rev. Morton. They were the parents of Maria de Melo Chaves, author of the book Bandeirantes da Fé. Over time, all the others brothers Melo were converted.

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In mid-1892, with the end of the Evangelical Press , Boyle was invited to transfer to São Paulo and restart the publication of this pioneering periodical. However, chose to continue to evangelize in the interior, his true vocation ("my heart is in the wilderness, and in the wilderness shall I be "). He and Rev. Samuel Gammon went to Rio de Janeiro to receive Dr. Matthew Hale Houston (1841-1905), secretary of the Nashville from 1883 to 1893. Boyle also awaited the arrival of his wife Agnes, who after all did not come. They went to Lavras to study the possibility of changing the College For the city of Minas Gerais. At the beginning of September, the three workers participated in the meeting of the Presbytery of Mines in Cape Verde, where Boyle had first preached thirteen years earlier.  Back in Baggage, the last leg of Boyle's voyage was a ride of twenty-four hours, arriving home on September 10. Friends noticed that their health was altered. His activity was feverish: in the newspaper, at the farm, and at the Colegio Progresso Brazilian, he had founded.

 

The preparation of articles for publication in a book and a fire on his property required effort from him and his friends until the evening, they took him to bed. In his last days, he was afflicted with dyspnea and edema. Pray for them and work, and sang hymns, sometimes in Portuguese ("In the Sunday Jesus rested, " Evangelical Hymn No. 69), sometimes in English (" The Lord, how many, many are my enemies. He suddenly passed away in October 4, 1892, victim of a heart attack, only 47 years old. Your The tomb of simple appearance has the words of Revelation 14:13: "Blessed are the dead who die from the Lord. " In that same distressing year for Brazilian presbyterianism, the Revs had already passed away. Edward Lane and Miguel Gonçalves Torres. By the middle of the following year, Revs. Álvaro Reis and Caetano Nogueira Júnior formally organized the four churches founded by Boyle in Central Brazil: Luggage, Paracatu, Santa Luzia de Goiás, and Araguari. Today they can still be seen in Estrela do Sul, next to the river that cuts the small town, the ruins of the old house where the family lived Boyle.

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In addition to publishing The Evangelist , in which he revealed his flair as a polemicist, Boyle left sermons in The Evangelical Pulpit and wrote the pamphlet India and Christianity . also made an important contribution to evangelical hymnology. Produced the hymnal Gospel Hymns and Sacred Songs, with 604 hymns and several doxologies, which cost him thirteen years of selfless endeavors. Thirty-seven of the hymns are his own, among which are "Homeland my, for you I sigh, " By faith we see beyond "and" Tribute, you redeemed. " The hymnal was published in 1888 by the Laemmert Typography, in Rio de Janeiro. It was proposed to be followed by the same collection with songs but died before performing this attempt.  

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Nineteen of his productions figured in the early editions of Psalms and Hymns. The Hinário Presbyterian New Song has two of his hymns, "My soul is stained" (no. 72) and "On the cloud, shining" (no. 295). D. Agnes died on March 23, 1902, in Fredericksburg, Va., Where he was director of a school and shelter for missionary orphans. His five children were Gaston, Margaret Esther, Mary Venable, Woodson Morton, and Lewis Holladay. Gaston Boyle, born in Mogi-Mirim on October 31, 1882, was also a missionary in Brazil, arriving in Campinas in 1908 to relearn the language. He married in 1909 with Sarah Warfield Smith, daughter of pioneer John Rockwell Smith. He initially worked in Bragança (1909-1918), from where it penetrated deep through the mountainous region of Cambui. As his father fought many polemics with the priests through newspapers and pamphlets. Then, worked for several years in the difficult field of Itu, a Jesuit fortress, in which many points of preaching. Gaston returned to the homeland of his parents in 1933, many years later, on April 9, 1965.

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His eldest son, John Boyle (the same name as his grandfather), later came to serve the Mission Leste (1938-1974). He arrived as a lay worker, initially residing in Lavras. Got married in 1942 to the missionary May Shepard Schlich, studied at the Seminary of Campinas, and was ordered in 1950. The couple worked in Paraguaçu Paulista, Formiga, Bambuí, Sete Lagoas, and Ponta Porã. When they retired, they went to live in Ubatuba, on the coast of São Paulo.

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His brother Lewis Venable Boyle, born in Itu on December 31, 1923, was pastor of various churches in the United States.

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Bibliography:

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• Lessa, Annaes , 113, 300, 338, 419-22, 641.

• Ferreira, History of IPB , I: 158, 167, 192, 247, 248-54, 280, 285, 322s, 329, 334, 367s,

376-78, 488, 502-508; II: 132, 315, 367.

• Book of Acts of the Church of Cape Verde (1881-1904), Presbyterian Archive.

• Necrology of the Rev. John Boyle, The Evangelist (05-10-1892).

• A General Catalog of Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, 1807-1924 .

• James Porter Smith. An Open Door in Brazil: being a brief survey of the mission work

carried on in Brazil since 1869 by the Presbyterian Church in the United States.

Richmond: Presbyterian Committee of Publication, 1925.

• Chaves, Bandeirantes da Fé , 22-28.

• Bear, Mission to Brazil , 15, 17-22, 138, 154-58.

• Braga, Evangelical Sacred Music , 326.

• McIntire, Portrait , 7/35, 70-76.

• Ministerial Directory, PCUS (1861-1967) , 59.

• "Personalia", Ultimatum (August 1976), 7.

• Ribeiro, IPB: From Autonomy to Schism , 74-118.

• Hahn, Protestant Cult in Brazil , 254s, 265-268.

• Waldete Tilmann Ribeiro da Silva and Jonas Alves da Silva, Presbyterian Church of

Araguari: A Trajectory of One Hundred Years (1893-1993). Araguari, 1993.

• Wilson Castro Ferreira. Small History of the West Brazil Mission. Sponsorship:

CEIBEL, 1996.

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