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

Indian trails. At the Cumberland he sold his horse, bought a canoe, and, putting his saddle-bags and
a few other effects upon it, paddled down the river into the Ohio, and thence, six or eight hundred
miles, down the Mississippi to his destination, where he immediately began his labors, eighteen
years before the Mississippi Territory became a state of the Union.
Four times he went through the wilderness, six hundred miles, among "Indian nations and guides,"
to the Cumberland, for the purpose of obtaining additional laborers from the Western Conference.
In 1803 he presented himself before that body a broken-down hero, and, though needing recruits
themselves, they spared him Moses Floyd, for the solitary veteran had gathered more than fourscore
(87) members at Natchez, and the whole country was ready for the gospel. By the next Conference
there were more than a hundred Methodists reported from it, and Hezekiah Harriman and Abraham
Amos were sent to aid the two evangelists; but the apostle of the little band was about to fall at his
post; he had over-worked. Harriman made his way thither through "thirteen days and twelve nights'
toil in the wilderness," and soon witnessed a "revival" and formed the Washington Circuit; but he
wrote back that Gibson was sinking; "his legs were swelled up to his knees," he had "violent cough,"
and had not been able to preach for months. "Tell my dear brethren, the young preachers," adds
Harriman, "not to be afraid of this place, for God is here, and souls have been converted this winter
in public and private, and others are inquiring the way to heaven. Here are also a great many souls
that must die like heathens, except they are visited by faithful ministers of the gospel. My hope
revives that God will pour his Spirit on us more abundantly, and that our brethren will come and help
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us." Twenty days later Harriman wrote, "Brother Gibson has gone to his long home." He preached
his last sermon on New Year's Day, 1804, "and it was profitable to many souls." After having
suffered for three years with consumption, he "was seized with fever and vomited blood." He died
in Claiborne County, on the 5th of April, 1804. He had "continued to labor in the vineyard of the
Lord as long as he was able to preach or pray," and declared to his fellow-laborer that "he was not
afraid to meet death," and "wished for the hour." His brethren, in the Old Minutes, 1805,
commemorate him with admiration, and say, "When Elijah was taken away there was an Elisha: we
have two valuable men that will supply his place; but still Gibson opened the way; like a Brainerd
he labored and fainted not, nor dared to leave his station till death gave him an honorable discharge.
Tobias Gibson did for many years preach, profess, possess, and practice Christian perfection; and
those who were acquainted with him must be impressed with his depth of piety; infidelity itself
would stagger before such a holy, loving, and devoted man of God." The pioneer martyr of the
Southwest had done a great work, and his sublime example will never be forgotten by the Church.
In the autumn of the year of his death Learner Blackman, one of the noblest itinerants of the West,
went to take his place, and a succession of evangelists followed till Methodism spread out over all
the country.
Of Learner Blackman we have had a transient glimpse, in New Jersey, his native state, where John
Collins, his brother-in-law, and afterward his co-laborer in the West, was guiding him in his early
religious life. He now, and for some years, becomes almost ubiquitous in Western Methodism, south
of the Ohio. He was born about the year 1781; the exact date is unknown. His early education was
religious, but he owed his conversion to John Collins, in about his sixteenth or seventeenth year. In
1800, when not nineteen years old, he joined the Philadelphia Conference, traveled two years in
Delaware, and, in 1802, threw himself among the pioneers of the Western Conference. After
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itinerating, with much success, three years in Kentucky, he was sent in 1804 to take the place of