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

as a sail in a leaking canoe, and passing down the Missisque made his way to Montreal, whence he
pursued his proposed voyage; but it was on this deserted circuit that Providence now raised up the
youthful evangelist, Elijah Hedding, who took Dow's place, and was destined to bear the standard
of the truth onward over the continent, and to be a burning and a shining light in the nation. Full of
zeal and the energy of youth, he went round the circuit like a "flame of fire;" great numbers were
converted, and more than a hundred and sixty were added to the classes. Vergennes Circuit was
traveled this year by two indomitable men, Joseph Mitchell and Joseph Sawyer; it was a scene of
great labors and equal trials, but they bore courageously the brunt of the battle. A reformation spread
over the circuit, and about seventy were gathered into the classes. While Hedding, Mitchell, and
Sawyer were thus spreading the cause west of the Green Mountains, Joseph Crawford and Elijah
Chichester were extending it still more successfully east of them on the Vershire Circuit, where more
than a hundred were added to the Church, besides hundreds who were converted, but entered other
communions. Whitingham Circuit, which had been detached and extended from the northern part
of Pittsfield Circuit at the beginning of the year, had prospered greatly under the labors of the good
Peter Vannest; it made its first return of members, amounting to nearly one hundred. Only four years
had passed since Nicholas Snethen traveled, the first itinerant, on the first circuit in Vermont; there
were now nearly eleven hundred Methodists in the state. They had much more than trebled, nearly
quadrupled, in two years.
There was at the end of the present ecclesiastical year the following number of Methodists in each
New England state: Connecticut, 1,571; Rhode Island, 227; Massachusetts, 1,577; Maine, 1,197;
New Hampshire, 171; Vermont, 1,096; total, 5,839.
We have reached the date of a new century, of the organization of the New England Conference
by its separation from that of New York, and of the retirement of Lee, the chief hero of this part of
our narrative, from the eastern field. We have seen him, solitary and friendless, begin his mission
in New England by proclaiming "Ye must be born again," on the highway of Norwalk, June 17,
1789; eleven years have passed, years of vast labors, sore trials, of poverty and perplexity, yet of
triumph. A host of great evangelists have entered the field: Roberts, Smith, Bloodgood, Mills, Hunt,
Taylor, Mudge, Pickering, Ostrander, Mitchell, McCoombs, Brodhead, Merritt, Sabin, Bostwick,
Beauchamp, Coate, Soule, Hedding, Kibby, Webb, and many others who were "mighty through
God." They have confounded opposition, have preached the word "in demonstration of the Spirit and
of power," from Fairfield in Connecticut to the furthest eastern settlement of Maine, and from
Provincetown in Massachusetts to St. Alban's in Vermont. They have laid securely the foundations
of Methodism in the New England states, and at the close of eleven years we behold it spread into
bands, comprising nearly 50 preachers and more than 5,800 members, an average of about 120 to
each preacher, and these members and preachers distributed over four districts and thirty-one
circuits.
Availing myself of the minute documentary materials of the New England Church, I have
endeavored to use, as fully as possible, her historic traditions of the last century, for these early facts
are the best illustrations of the genius of Methodism. Their record is not disproportionate to her
subsequent and important relations to the rest of the denomination, and most of her biographic
characters, hitherto sketched, became actors in its general history; but hereafter we shall necessarily
have to pass more rapidly over her local annals.