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

own souls, because ye were dear unto us," etc. A remarkable impression was produced by these
services. "There were," says Asbury, "many exhortations and much prayer. From this day forth the
work of God will prosper in Lynn and its neighborhood." Old Methodists in the vicinity long recalled
that interesting day. It is said that the multitudes bowed under the force of the word like the forest
before the tempest. Scores were awakened; many fell to the earth overpowered by their emotions,
and the preachers were summoned late at night from their sleep to console and counsel those who,
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with broken and contrite hearts, continued to call upon God at their homes. On Monday "the labors
of Conference and public religious exercises were continued," writes the bishop; "on Tuesday
evening Conference rose in great peace. On Wednesday I gave them a sermon, and immediately set
out for Waltham, twenty miles; wind, heat, dust." He passed on rapidly to New Rochelle, where he
"lodged under the hospitable roof of the Widow Sherwood," one of his most favorite homes. He had
traveled two hundred and thirty miles in six days. "I am still," he writes, "bent on great designs for
God, for Christ, for souls." Pursuing, with unslacking energies, these "great designs," he again passes
from our view, on his route westward as far as Tennessee, and southward as far as Georgia.
But in May of 1806 he is proclaiming the word again in New Haven. With daily preaching he
reaches Boston, and rejoices to see its second Methodist church (on Bromfield Street) nearly built,
"sixty-four by eighty-four feet;" "the upper window frames put in." By the fifth of June he is at a
camp-meeting at Buxton, Me. "At two o'clock we came on the ground," he writes; "there were
twenty preachers, traveling and local. Saturday, 6, I preached, and on Sunday also. Some judged
there were about five thousand people on the ground. There were displays of divine power, and some
conversions. Our journey into Maine has been through dust and heat, in toil of body, and in
extraordinary temptation of soul; but I felt that our way was of God." On Wednesday, 11, he arrived
at Canaan, N. H., where the New England Conference commenced its session the next day. About
forty-four members were present, besides probationers and visitors. The Conference comprised more
than half a hundred preachers, and presented an aspect not only of numerical, but of no little moral
and intellectual strength. It included several men of force and talent, among whom were Hedding,
Soule, Pickering, Ostrander, Brodhead, Jayne, Webb, Sabin and Ruter. Asbury says: "We went
through our business with haste and peace, sitting seven hours a day." Their financial accounts, at
all these early sessions, show that most of them received but a small proportion of their meager
"allowance." The "deficiencies" were reported, and they were fearful. A small dividend from the
Book Concern, and a smaller one from the "Chartered Fund," gave them slight relief. Year after year
"a donation" from the Baltimore Conference, usually its entire dividend from the Book Concern, is
recorded as sent on in the hands of Asbury. That generous Conference had given the first itinerants
to the East, had continued to reinforce them from its best men, and now shared with them, from year
to year, its scanty financial resources.
"On Sunday, 15, I ordained," says Asbury, "eleven elders in the woods. At three o'clock I preached
in the meeting-house; it was a season of power." The next day he was on his route westward. He was
at Burlington, Vt., on Saturday, after a ride, during the day, of forty miles. "I am resolved," he there
wrote, "to be in every part of the work while I live, to preside. I feel as if I was fully taught the
necessity of being made perfect through sufferings and labors. I pass over in silence cases of pain
and grief of body and mind. On the Sabbath I preached in an upper room at Fuller's, to about four
hundred people. My subject was Luke iv, 18, 19, and God bore witness to his own word. Why did
I not visit this country sooner? Ah, what is the toil of beating over rocks, hills, mountains, and