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

intensely bright by the grateful joy which overspread it. Many souls were converted at that single
meeting, which was the more glorious because it was only one of a glorious series, only the
beginning of a widely-extended, long-continued revival of religion, reaching to Baltimore city and
county, to Frederick County, to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, to Pennsylvania, and to Virginia, and
lasting till 1808." [2]
In 1806 young Griffith was received into the Baltimore Conference, and sent to the Wyoming
country, where we have already witnessed his itinerant hardships. In his numerous subsequent
appointments he has been an able contributor to the outspread of the Church in Pennsylvania,
Maryland, and Virginia, a leader in the Baltimore Conference, and a venerated counselor in the
General Conference. He is small in stature, like Paul of unpretentious personal presence, of simple
manners, of few words, but strikingly pertinent in debate, profound and statesmanlike in counsel,
and in familiar conversation remarkably entertaining, anecdotal, and humorous. He survives,
burdened with the infirmities of age, but cheered by the retrospect of the success of his cause, and
the prospect of reunion with the good and great men with whom he has labored and suffered for it.
A young man, by the name of John Early, was admitted to the Virginia Conference in 1807. His
family belonged to the most influential class of society in Bedford County, Va., where he was born
in 1786, became a Methodist in 1804, and was licensed to preach two years later, in his twenty-first
year. He had begun his public labors among Mr. Jefferson's slaves at Poplar Forest, in Bedford
County, and, notwithstanding his adherence to the policy of the Church, South, respecting the slavery
controversy, he has been noted, from the beginning, for his interest in the religious welfare of the
colored race. His strong characteristics quickly marked him as a superior man. Possessing an iron
constitution, a practical but ardent mind, a notably resolute will, and habits rigorously systematic and
laborious, he became a favorite coadjutor, a confidential counselor of Asbury, McKendree, Bruce,
Jesse Lee, and their associate leaders of the denomination. He was a renowned, if not indeed, a
dreaded, disciplinarian. His preaching was simple, direct, and powerful, and few, if any, of his early
fellow-itinerants gathered more recruits into the Church in Virginia. In 1811 he received about five
hundred probationers on his circuit, Grenville, Va. When only about twenty-seven years old, Asbury,
against his remonstrance, made him presiding elder on the Mehenen Distinct, Va., an office in which
his extraordinary business talents, as well as his energetic preaching, had full scope, and were
crowned with memorable success. He held many camp-meetings, at one of which, in Prince Edward
County, more than eight hundred souls were converted in a single week. Every interest of the Church
received his devoted and persistent attention. He was a chief founder of Randolph Macon College,
Va., and has continued to be its rector down to our day. In the General Conference of 1832 he
received a large vote for the episcopate, and would probably have been elected had it not been for
his connection with slavery.
Possessing surpassing capacity for business, he was often called upon for important services by
both Church and State. Bangs nominated him for the Cincinnati Book Agency, and others for that
of New York in 1836. His fellow-citizens repeatedly nominated him for Congress; but he declined
the honor as a detraction from his ministerial office. The general government offered him the
governorship of Illinois when it was a territory. President Adams solicited him to accept the same
office in the territory of Arkansas, and President Tyler that of Comptroller of the Treasury; but his
answer was that "he could not come down" to such positions. He took an active part in the measures