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

sorrow, such as veterans led while following to the grave an old companion in arms, was evinced
by his words and countenance. They had suffered together, and had long fought in the same ranks.
The one had gained his crown, the other was soon to receive his."
In less than six months Lee also had fallen. About the middle of August he went to a
camp-meeting near Hillsborough, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. After preaching he was seized
with fever; and carried to Hillsborough. All remedies failed. He suffered at first from depression; but
"for several days preceding his death he was filled with holy joy. Frequently he cried out, 'Glory,
glory, glory! Halleluiah, hallelujah! Jesus reigns!' At another time he spoke with great distinctness
and deliberation for nearly twenty minutes, giving directions about his affairs, and sending the
assurance he was 'dying in the Lord' to comfort his distant family. Nor did he forget his
fellow-laborers. 'Give my respects to Bishop McKendree,' he said, 'and tell him I die in love with all
the preachers; that I do love him, and that he lives in my heart.' Having finished his work, he said
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but little more; but fell asleep on the evening of the 12th of September; 1816." He was borne to
Baltimore, and interred in its "old Methodist burial ground."
He was fifty-eight years old. A man of vigorous, though unpolished mind, of rare popular
eloquence, and tireless energy, an itinerant evangelist, from the British provinces to Florida, for
thirty-five years, a presiding elder for many years, a chief counselor of the Church in its Annual and
General Conferences, chaplain to Congress, founder of Methodism in New England, and first
historian of the Church, he lacked only the episcopal office to give him rank with Asbury and Coke.
Asbury early chose him for that position. Some two or three times it seemed likely that he would be
elected to it, but his manly independence and firmness of opinion, in times of party strife, were made
the occasions of his defeat. His staunch advocacy of an elective presiding eldership, and his
opposition to the ordination of local preachers as elders, (questions of prolonged and spirited
controversy,) cost him the suffrages of men who should have been superior to such party
considerations, at least in the presence of such a man. But his historic position needed no such
addition. No official distinction could enhance its dignity. In public services he may fairly be ranked
next to Asbury, and as founder and apostle of eastern Methodism he is above any other official rank.
In this respect his historic honor is quite unique for though individual men have, in several other
sections of the continent, initiated the denomination, no other founder has, so completely as he,
introduced, conducted, and concluded his work, and from no other one man's similar work has
proceeded equal advantages to American Methodism.
Thus fell, in arms, but victorious, toward the conclusion of our period, one after another of the
most conspicuous heroes of this grand Methodistic battlefield of the new world; the last two, and
perhaps the two most important in the American history of the denomination, (in the very year that
completed its first half century,) and all of them giving, by both their great deeds and sublime deaths,
a sort of epic grandeur and completeness to the history of the Church down to this epoch. In no place
can the historian more appropriately drop the curtain of this singular religious drama. And he should
have the good sense not to mar it with elaborate reflections, for it needs none. Its every page has been
suggestive of lessons, and it requires no epilogue. It demonstrates one obvious and sublime fact: that
Christianity, thrown back upon its primordial truths and forces, cannot fail, in its very simplicity,
humility, charity, and power, to attain the mastery of the human soul, to win the supremacy of the
moral world. This lowly Methodistic story is but the reproduction, in substance, of the apostolic