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

I should have to preach, but determined not to do so if I could avoid it, and yet save my soul. I was
willing to be a local preacher, but not an itinerant. I drew the inference from his letter that a wife
would be a sure barrier to the traveling ministry, so I determined to marry as soon as I could, and did
take a wife three months after I was twenty-one years old. His letter so vexed me that I would not
read it a second time for a long while, and yet I thought so much of it that I kept it for fifty years, but
it is now mislaid. Nathan and myself have ever lived in sweet fellowship. Independent in our own
opinions, we often differed, but never quarreled. He afforded me many profitable reflections by
judicious criticisms when I was young in the ministry." Heman Bangs joined the Conference in 1815,
and became one of its strongest men. Tall, robust, of powerful voice, and more powerful brain, an
incessant preacher, and able disciplinarian, assiduously devoted not only to the perfunctory labors
of the ministry, but to all the philanthropic undertakings of the Church; a man of fervent zeal, of
great practical sense, of good humor, and no little adroitness, he has been one of the most successful
Methodist preachers of the last half century.
Nathan Bangs occupied important posts during these years: Albany Circuit, New York city, and
Rhinebeck and New York Districts. His pen was busy in publications in defense of Methodism, and,
with Emory, he was now beginning the literature of American Methodism. He was greatly useful in
New York city from 1810 to 1812. Methodism had one circuit in the city, with but little more than
two thousand members, when he began there. A profound religious interest prevailed during both
years of his appointment. More than two hundred and fifty members were added to the Church by
the close of the first, and nearly one hundred and fifty more by the close of the second. On the
Rhinebeck District he had almost continual revivals. His quarterly meetings were especially
effective, assembling great hosts of Methodists and their neighbors from all the country around, and
sending out quickening influences over the circuits. He began that liberal provision of Churches and
parsonages which has dotted the whole region of the old Rhinebeck District with Methodist edifices;
a chapel and a preacher's house in almost every village. He reformed the finances of the circuits,
insisting on a better support of the ministry. By the end of his four years on the district its nine
appointments had increased to thirteen, its nineteen preachers to twenty-five, and it had gained nearly
a thousand members. Besides this numerical success, nearly all its economical interests had
improved chapels and parsonages were springing up all over its territory. Methodism had, in fine,
secured in this extensive region not only a lodgment, but a strength which no subsequent adversities
have been able to shake. The district has since received the title of "the garden of Methodism." "In
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all that region of country," writes one of his preachers, "no one stood higher in public esteem.
Quarterly meetings were great occasions, calling out vast multitudes, many of them from a distance
of thirty or forty miles. No church edifice would begin to accommodate the crowds of people, and
in the summer season an orchard or grove frequently served as our temple of worship, and mighty
displays of awakening and saving power were often witnessed under the fervid and heart-searching
preaching of our presiding elder."
He led many a useful laborer into the ministry during his presiding eldership in these years, some
of whom were to take historical rank in the Church, though at a date too late for present notice. It
was toward the close of this period that he called out Robert Seney, his lifelong, and perhaps his
dearest friend, one of the first three graduates of college in the ministry, a man who sacrificed the
profession of the law and high social rank for the heroism of the itinerancy, which he maintained for
more than thirty years; "an excellent general scholar," writes Bangs, "a well-read theologian," a