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

at Cabbin Creek, Ky., twenty thousand were present; thousands fell as slain in battle, and the
religious interest of the whole state seemed to be quickened by its results. Astonishing effects
attended another on Desher's Creek, near Cumberland River; "the people fell under the power of the
word like corn before a storm of wind." A young man of shattered mind and body, who for a long
time had wasted to a shadow by religious melancholy and despair, was present; amid the falling hosts
he also sunk down to the ground, but rose renewed in spirit and health, and being educated, and a
man of ardent and poetic nature, became one of the most effective itinerants among the Holston
heights and the settlements of Kentucky and Tennessee. The name of Grenade is still remembered
among the elder Methodist families of the West. His revival hymns were once familiar through most
of their circuits.
McKendree, as he passed over his vast district, promoted these meetings, and it was not long
before the Methodist itinerants were thus making their word resound in all parts of the state. New
societies were abundantly organized, and the Church assumed unprecedented vigor. At the close of
his second year on the district seven new circuits had been formed, and the one district was divided
into three. The mere handful of members, scattered here and there in the settlements, now numbered
at least eight thousand, having increased more than five thousand in the last two years. The little
Conference of twelve members had more than doubled its numbers. No small part of the impetus
which had been given to the Western work was through the preaching and superior wisdom of
McKendree as the presiding elder. [8]
One of the most interesting characters in Methodist biography was recorded in the appointments
of 1802, Jacob Young, a man of such evangelical simplicity and purity, such good sense in counsel,
and perspicuity and pertinence in speech, so entertaining in conversation and of such cordiality of
manners, and saintliness of character, that the most obstinate opposers and most fastidious critics
were won by him, notwithstanding the faithfulness of his admonitions, and some obvious defects
made the more obnoxious to criticism by the peculiar recitative tone of his preaching. He survived
far into our day, not only revered by, but endeared to all who knew him, by the peculiar charm of his
character, as well as by his long and faithful public services. His simple narrative of his early travels
and labors is one of the most entertaining records in the literature of the Church; and no book gives
us more striking and characteristic, though transient, glimpses of early Western and early Methodist
[9]
life. He was born on the western frontier of Pennsylvania, in Allegheny County, in 1776. His
childhood was beset with Indian perils, and he grew up remarkable for activity and courage. His
mind seemed to take, at a very early age, a spontaneous bias toward a religious life. In his fifteenth
year he removed, with his family, into Kentucky, and settled on its frontier in Henry County. When
he was about twenty-one years of age the Methodist itinerants reached his neighborhood, and his
sensitive soul was soon wrestling with the problems of life, death, and eternity. He "wept bitterly"
under the preaching of young Hunt, one of the earliest martyrs to the Western itinerancy, and a
pioneer in Ohio as well as Kentucky. The youthful backwoodsmen fell under his word to the floor.
"My tears flowed," he says, "my knees became feeble, I trembled like Belshazzar, the great deep of
my heart was broken up." "Toward midnight God in mercy lifted up the light of his countenance
upon me, and I was translated from the power of darkness into the kingdom of God's dear Son, and
rejoiced with joy unspeakable and full of glory." He began family prayer in his father's cabin, and
it was not long before his "father, mother, and almost the whole family embraced religion, and were