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

1814 Michael Coate, of New Jersey, whom we have met often, not only in the middle states, but in
New England and Canada, a man of great meekness and usefulness, and a powerful preacher; tried
"by inexpressible conflicts" in his last sickness, but, hearing the Scriptures read, "the power of God
filled the place, and his soul was abundantly comforted," so that he departed in peace. William S.
Fisher, of New Jersey, who died "crying out, Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly." To his friends he
said, "All is peace within; I am going after Brother Coate." His last words in his last agony were
"This once help, Lord." In 1815 John Van Schoick, of New Jersey, who died in great triumph,
exclaiming, "Keep up prayer;" "come, Lord, roll on the victory; roll on the victory, holy Lord! O
hasten the moment, my Lord!" and then adding, "I am going," fell asleep. Stephen Richmond, of
New York, who departed, saying, "My work is done." In 1818 Joseph Totten, of Long Island, N.Y.,
a good and useful man, who was found dying and speechless on the ground in a garden. Daniel
Moore, of Delaware, who left, as his dying testimony, the assurance that he "was going home to
God." Thomas Thorp, of New Jersey, converted, as we have seen, under Marvin Richardson's first
sermon on his first circuit, where young Thorp was a schoolmaster at the time. He traveled in New
England, and in the Genesee Conference, and died "in peace and triumph." In 1819 Stephen Jacob,
who "labored far beyond his strength, fell a martyr to his work," and departed in "holy triumph,"
saying, "heaven heaves in view."
Some twenty-five times did Asbury pass over the middle and northern states in the present period,
penetrating once into Canada; but his notes of his routes have their usual brevity and vagueness, and
admit of no satisfactory use. In his early tours he was sometimes accompanied by Whatcoat, who,
however, was fast sinking under chronic maladies, and was "unable to ride"' much of the time "at
a greater speed than a walk." In some of his later passages McKendree was with him, keeping good
pace, and delighting him by his devout converse and eloquent preaching, for to no man, except
Henry Willis, was Asbury more attached. At a session of the New York Conference, in this period,
he says of McKendree, preaching, "It appeared to me as if a ray of divine glory rested upon him."
Asbury, though quite broken with years and disease, still kept his rate of five or six thousand miles
a year, writing often in his journal, "faint, sick, and lame." As early as 1807 he says, "We have
traveled one hundred miles up the Mohawk; my feet are much swelled; I am on crutches; but I have
been supported among strangers." He reaches the westmost fields of the interior preachers, the
Pennsylvania valleys, and New York lakes, and organizes them into the independent Genesee
Conference. He preaches there often to more than a thousand settlers, gathered in and about barns.
"The swamps, sloughs, ruts, and stumps made it awful moving," he writes. He exulted, however, in
the triumphs of the gospel and the prospects of the Church in these regions, and, as he rode away
southward, wrote, "What hath God wrought in America! In thirty-six years we find 144,590
Methodists; our traveling preachers 536; the rest, local, about 1,400. "Not unto us, not unto us. O
Lord, take thou the glory!" "My body is very feeble," he writes later, "but my soul enjoys perfect love
and perfect peace." He was now, as he says, "a bishop who can neither stand to preach, nor kneel to
pray;" "sick, lame, blistered," but still driving forward.
It was in 1811 that he crossed the St. Lawrence to encourage the itinerant pioneers of Canada. "
Surely," he wrote, "this is a land that God the Lord hath blessed," he greeted there some of the
remnants of the, first New York Methodist families, the Dulmadges, Hecks, and Emburys, spent two
weeks traveling and preaching, "everywhere treated as the angel of the Churches," says Boehm, his
companion, but "suffering like a martyr" from inflammatory rheumatism.