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

sulky, and then take him out and carry him into a church or private dwelling, and he would sit and
preach. At Fayetteville I carried him into the church, and he preached from Zech. ix, 12, 'the
stronghold.' After the sermon he ordained three persons. He had one blister on him, and I carried him
to our host, who put on three more. He traveled in great misery. At Wilmington I carried him into
church, and he preached in the morning, and then met the society; and, that not being enough for a
sick old infirm bishop, he would preach again in the evening. After this he was in such misery that
a poultice was applied to mitigate his pain. The next day we rode twenty-four miles. The bishop's
feet were so swollen he could not wear a shoe. Almost any other man would have been in bed; but
he loved his work better than his life. His record on that day is, 'I have a fever and swelled feet.' The
next day, 'I suffer violent pain in my right foot, and yet he says, 'I have filled all my appointments,
and answered the letters received.' Who else would have thus persevered amid pain and anguish,
dying by inches, to accomplish so much work?" His unparalleled career was drawing toward its
close; but we shall follow him yet through many journeys in the North, the East, the West, though
with but indistinct glimpses.
These were years of rife religious excitement through most of the South. The camp-meeting, of
the West, was generally introduced, and from Bassett's Wood, in Delaware, to Rembert's, in South
Carolina, and far beyond, in Georgia, these great occasions were of almost continual occurrence,
attended sometimes, says Asbury, by ten thousand people, and three hundred traveling and local
preachers. A thousand conversions in a week are sometimes recorded of a single meeting. A
pervasive influence went forth from them through the circuits and districts, and Methodism spread
into almost every city, town, and settlement of the South. The annual Conferences were often held
at or near the camps, and the arrival of Asbury, sometimes with McKendree or Whatcoat, always
with an able "traveling companion," and usually with a retinue of other preachers gathered on his
route, became a sort of spiritual ovation, a triumph march of the great leader, which put in motion
the Methodist host all along his progress. The great man had become now wonder to the nation, a
hoary captain, with such a prestige as no other clergyman of the western hemisphere could claim.
He had led his people to victory in all the land. His whole American life had been heroic, and now,
tottering with years, he was as invincible in the field as ever. There was no faltering in his course.
His character and example were a marvelous power. The people felt that a cause thus providentially
conducted could not fail, but would probably take the whole country. The itinerant especially could
not but grow strong in the presence of such a man. His continual passages among them inspirited
them to emulate his wondrous energy. They almost universally took a chivalric character, a military
"esprit de corp," which kept them compactly united, exultant in labor, and defiant of persecution and
peril. It may be doubted whether the Christian world ever saw a more laborious, more powerful,
more heroic, or more, successful band of evangelists than the Methodist itinerants who were now
traversing the South from Chesapeake Bay to the Mexican Gulf. We are not therefore surprised that
their communicants numbered, at the close of these years, more than ninety thousand; that they had
gained rapidly, not only through the rural districts, but in all the cities, nearly trebling their numbers
in Baltimore, nearly doubling them in Washington, more than doubling them in Richmond and
Charleston, and gathering all they yet had in Savannah. Baltimore Conference now enrolled 33,289,
Virginia 23,756, South Carolina 32,969.
The obituary roll of the South for this period includes many names which, though obscured by
time, should not be allowed to die. Among them is that of Benjamin Jones, who, in 1804, fell dead