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

eached the furthest end of the piazza on another side of the house, when, turning to me, he
expressed himself in a few brief words, to the effect that he felt himself to have been for a long time
in a backslidden state, and that he must forthwith acknowledge the grace of God in his children or
perish. His words were few, but they were enough, and strong enough. I sank to my knees and burst
into tears at the utterance of them, while for a moment he stood trembling by me, and then bade me
get the books. The Bible was put on the table; the family came together. He read the hundred and
third psalm, and then he kneeled down and prayed as if he felt indeed that life or death, heaven or
hell, depended on the issue. That was the hour of grace and mercy, grace restored to my father as in
times of my infancy, and mercy to me in breaking the snare of the fowler that my soul might escape."
His law books were laid aside for the Bible. We have already seen William Gassaway summoning
him out to accompany him around a circuit. He went to Camden to meet Gassaway for the purpose,
and diffidently took refuge in an inn, at the door of which the venerable Rembert, who was passing,
met him, and exhorted him to go with Gassaway. He found Kennedy with the latter, and
accompanied them to the church. Kennedy preached, and afterward beckoned him to the pulpit,
where Gassaway, who sat in the desk, cried out to him, "Exhort!" he did so, and thus began his
distinguished ministerial career.
He continued to go round the circuit, laboring energetically, and at a camp-meeting at Rembert's
met Asbury, and was licensed to preach, though he was not yet through his probation in the Church.
His interview there with the bishop was a characteristic scene. His father had long been alienated
from Asbury (formerly his honored guest) by the Hammett schism. "I was introduced," he writes,
"to Bishop Asbury immediately on his first coming to the camp-meeting, as I happened to be in the
preachers' tent at the time of his arrival. I approached him timidly, you may be sure, and with a
feeling of profound veneration; but 'Ah,' said he, 'this is the baby; come and let me hug you;' meaning
that I was the baby when he was last at my father's house. On my father's entering the tent, he rose
hastily from his seat and met him with his arms extended, and they embraced each other with mutual
emotion. It had been some seventeen years since they had seen each other, and yet the bishop asked
after Sally and Gabriel as if it had been but a few months, and repeated gleefully, 'I have got the
baby.' It was evident that no common friendship had subsisted between them; and how much happier
had those years of estrangement been to my honored father if they had been passed in the fellowship
which he had been seduced to leave. I hate schism; I abhor it as the very track and trail of him who
'as a roaring lion walketh about seeking whom he may devour.'"
In the last month of 1808 young Capers was received by the Conference, and appointed to the
Wateree Circuit, on which he had to fill twenty-four appointments every four weeks. He had
formidable labors and trials, and was well initiated. In 1809 he traveled Pee-Dee Circuit, where he
was especially devoted to the religious welfare of the colored people. He found many of them
eminently pious, and some as eminently useful. One of his churches, at Fayetteville, had been
founded by a faithful Negro, whose name has thereby become historic in the annals of the
Conference. "The most remarkable man," he says, "in Fayetteville when I went there, and who died
during my stay, was a Negro by the name of Henry Evans, who was confessedly the father of the
Methodist Church, white and black, in Fayetteville, and the best preacher of his time in that quarter,
and who was so remarkable as to have become the greatest curiosity of the town, insomuch that
distinguished visitors hardly felt that they might pass a Sunday in Fayetteville without hearing him