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

seventeen preachers upon trial. There is a small increase here, and there are fair prospects for the
future. I am kept in peace."
The day following the adjournment he departed westward. On Saturday, 24th, he reached
Danville, Vt., and, though quite exhausted with fatigue and feebleness, preached on the morrow in
the court-house. He had to sit during the discourse. "From New York to Danville," he writes, "we
compute our ride to have been seven hundred miles." On Tuesday he again preached, but at the
village chapel this time. Two of his itinerant brethren were with him. Being too feeble to go into the
pulpit, he took his position in a pew near it, and thence addressed the assembly from Heb. iii, 12-14.
His congregations were large, and the court, which was in session, invited him to preach before
it; but "I had no strength and no time for this," he remarks. He was on his route the same day. On
Friday, 30th, he was on the shore of Lake Champlain. "I preached," he writes, "at Fuller's, from Titus
iii, 8. Here I ordained Joseph Sampson, a native of Canada, and sent him a missionary to his
countrymen." He adds, prophetically, "The day of small things will be great; but the time is not yet
come; rather, it is still afar off. Patience, my soul!" He passed into New York, and thence westward
and southward.
Again we find him (May 18, 1810) entering the East by way of Vermont, and on the 20th
preaching in Pittsfield, Mass., where the New York Conference assembled the next day, for much
of its territory was still within the New England states. "Bishop McKendree," he writes, "spoke in
the afternoon; his subject was well chosen and well improved. There was also a prayer meeting, and
in the Congregational house George Pickering preached. We sat in Conference until Saturday.
Among the ordinations was that of Stephen Samford, recommended from Nova Scotia for elder's
orders. We have stationed eighty-four preachers, sent two missionaries, one to Michigan, and one
to Detroit. There was a considerable deficiency in our funds, which left the unmarried preachers a
very small pittance." From Pittsfield he passed to Winchester, N. H., where the New England
Conference was held in "the Presbyterian Church," the preachers meanwhile holding a camp-meeting
within three miles. "There was," he says, "a work of God manifestly, and opposition rose powerfully.
We regretted we could not stay two days more." He hastened to Boston, thence to Newport, and back
through Rhode Island and Connecticut to New York, "sounding the alarm" all the way.
Such are glimpses of his visits to New England, down to the end of the first decade of the century,
a monotonous record, but with a monotony of incredible labors. His whole life was a monotony of
wonders. His records of his subsequent tours in the East are hardly more than allusions, except in
one instance. He sees the possibility of a great future, but grieves over the encroachments of pews,
steeples, musical instruments. In his last visit he can hardly attend the Conference. Pickering presides
for him. He is old and worn out, and in a few months must die.
Lee once more passed over the scene. After An absence of eight years in the South he was anxious
to revisit his early eastern battlefields, and see how the contest still went on. His passage was a
humble but exultant religious ovation. Many changes had occurred. Since his departure. Methodism
had enlarged its tents and strengthened its stakes on all hands, and most of its preachers had
commenced their travels in this interval. He proposed now to greet his old friends, and take his final
leave of them till they should meet again in the "building of God, the house not made with hands,