History of the M.E. Church, Vol. IV - Media Sabda Org

George I. Seney, Esq.
HISTORY OF THE
METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH
Volume IV
By Abel Stevens
PREFACE
My Dear Sir: In committing to the press this concluding volume of the "History of the Methodist
Episcopal Church," I would gratefully acknowledge my obligations to you. If I have succeeded, to
any satisfactory degree, in my task, it has been largely owing to the reliefs which your kind attentions
have afforded me from cares and anxieties, that would have seriously interfered with it. Your
honored father appears briefly in my narrative; the first collegiately educated native preacher of his
Church, except Fisk, and a man of most sterling talents and character, the friend and co-laborer of
Bangs, Emory, Soule, Ostrander, Rice, and the other strong men of the second generation of
American Methodist preachers, he will be one of the most interesting subjects of the later history of
his denomination. The Church is happy to recognize in you the worthy son of so worthy a father. It
finds, in this its third generation, the descendants of its early and heroic itinerants not only thronging
its ministry, but founding, on enduring financial basis, its educational and other great institutions.
In my former work (the "History of the Religious Movement of the Eighteenth Century, called
Methodism," etc.) I brought the narrative down to 1839, the Centenary of British Methodism, and
designed to conclude the present work at the same period. There was no important reason, however,
for the latter purpose, as American Methodism has its own distinct centenary. But it would be as
inexpedient to extend the record to the latter date as to limit it to the former; our recent controversies
cannot yet be satisfactorily narrated; the chief-actors in some of them are still living, the families of
many of the actors in the earlier ones still survive. There is also a hopeful tendency of reunion among
our denominational parties which should not be disturbed by a return, however guarded, to their old
disputes. Not till years hence can the historian safely review these unfortunate events.
I have had a twofold design in this narrative first, to show the real development of Methodism on
this continent, Its interior life, and its genetic conditions; for in these we must find the best reasons
of its history for all time. Secondly, to keep within such chronological limits as should not require
an inconvenient number of volumes, and yet should allow of a substantially complete history of the
Church, of its inception, its organization, its chief personal agents, its theological and disciplinary
systems, and finally those adjuncts of its practical system -- Publishing, Educational, Sunday-School,
and Missionary institutions which have, for the present at least, rounded, if not perfected its scheme.
These, brought out in a closely consecutive record of events and character, have seemed to me the
genuine constituents of such a history as the denomination now needs. I do not presume to think that
I have adequately prepared for it such a history; but I have done what I could toward it. The period
at which I close admits, with peculiar convenience, of this comprehensive plan. All these adjuncts
of our practical system had appeared before that date; and without violence to the canons of
historical writing, I have been able to trace these institutions down to our own time, estimating their
original significance by their prospective results. The period also fittingly closes with the