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

performed incredible labors and travels in Kentucky and Ohio, till 1818, when his broken health
required him to be placed on the supernumerary list, but with scarcely less devotion to his ministerial
work. The Minutes say of him that in 1819 his health had so failed that he was wholly unable to
perform the work of an effective traveling preacher, and he was placed on the superannuated list.
This relation he sustained till he was removed from labor and suffering to his reward in heaven. "For
many years it had been his custom to have an appointment to preach every Sabbath, unless a
quarterly, or some other special meeting interfered, and at such meetings he helped us much in the
Lord. Perhaps there never was a superannuated minister who labored so much, or was more useful.
He had three appointments out at the time of his death." [13]
He was a giant amid those great revivals which prevailed in the West about the beginning of this
century. One of his contemporaries says, that "in the greatest excitement the clear and penetrating
voice of Lakin might be heard amid the din and roar of the Lord's battle, directing the wounded to
the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world. Day and night he was upon the watchtower,
and in the class and praying circles his place was never empty, leading the blind by the right way,
carrying the lambs in his bosom, urging on the laggard professor, and warning the sinner in tones of
thunder to flee the wrath to come. While he was in the relation of a worn-out preacher he never had
a dumb Sabbath, always having his appointments ahead, except when quarterly or camp-meetings
would intervene. He was always on hand at time, and would preach and labor with all his remaining
strength. Great success attended his efforts, and he was universally accepted and beloved as a
minister of Jesus. 'Father Lakin' did not suffer his calm, benignant features, in his last days, to be
wrinkled with a sour godliness. There was no whining about everything going wrong in the Church
and among the preachers. He had a contempt for croakers, and would look up and thank God for a
good conservative progress in all the departments of Methodism. Quiet and peaceful and glorious,
as when the descending sun throws his last rays on a receding world, tinging the trees and mountains
with his mellow light, did this venerable servant of the cross pass down to the grave. He preached
his last sermon in McKendree Chapel, Brown County, Ohio, on the 28th day of January, 1848. [14]
In about a week afterward, visiting a Christian family, he sank down to the floor, and quietly expired
in the eighty-second year of his age, and the fifty-fourth of his ministry. He was of ordinary height,
but of "spare habit," excessively given to fasting or abstinence, of singularly tender conscience; but,
"though sedate, there was a spice of quiet humor in his conversation." He was diligent in his
self-culture, notwithstanding his local inconveniences for study, reading much, making abstracts of
his books and outlines of sermons, and writing some of them entirely. "His appearance, in advanced
life, was that of a cheerful, placid old man, and such indeed he was." [15]
In 1798 Bird and Poythress lead, as presiding elders, the Holston corps, though there is yet but
one district; and we meet again the tireless Valentine Cook at the head of the solitary district which
comprises the more western field, with its six long circuits and seven itinerants.
Before the close of the century Cook was broken down in health. He married, and settled in
Kentucky, where he took charge of the Bethel Seminary, in Jessamine County, the first Methodist
school of the West. He subsequently conducted a similar institution at Harrodsburgh, and, finally,
located in Logan County, where he lived on a small farm, about three miles from Russellville. He
devoted himself to education, and was esteemed one of the best instructors in the West. Not a few
eminent professional men were trained by him. Meanwhile he preached powerfully, not merely in