A Short History Of The Methodists... - Media Sabda Org

was so much crying, that it was some time before we could hear all they had to say. But in the end
they all seemed to ask pardon; each one freely forgave the other, and promised to be as though the
dispute had never been. I am well convinced I never saw the like before. Wednesday, 13th, I
preached at the new meeting house from 2 Corinthians xiii. 11. At the conclusion of this sermon I
told them I was going to leave, when all began to weep, and I too sat down and wept for several
minutes.
He left the Salisbury Circuit on April 14th for the Conference that was to be held at Green Hill's.
Here he met Doctor Coke, who was then on his first trip to America. At this conference Coke was
very harsh in his comments on slavery. Mr. Lee took issue with him and undertook to correct some
of his mistaken notions on that subject, which did not fit very well with the ideas common then in
the South. There was quite a little tilt next day with the Doctor when Mr. Lee's character was under
review, but they soon came to a better understanding and parted as brethren should.
After the Conference just mentioned Mr. Lee went on to the Conference in Virginia and was there
appointed to a work near Baltimore, in Maryland. He turned his face to the North and did not return
to Virginia and the Carolinas for quite a while. His work this year was attended with great success.
But it could hardly be otherwise, for he preached almost every day and often on the streets of the
towns he visited, held love feasts, prayed and exhorted in the homes he visited, and was hardly
satisfied unless he had a revival going on.
During the next year, 1788, in company with his brother John (who was twelve years younger,
a preacher at eighteen, and a young man of great promise), he visited the Philadelphia Conference,
then (September 24) in session. They heard the famous Doctor Rush, at that time one of the leading
physicians in America, deliver before the Conference a lecture on the use and effects of spirituous
liquors. He said that they "were of no use, except in a few instances," and urged the preachers to use
their influence in trying to put a stop to the use as well as abuse of distilled spirits. Doctor Rush, so
far as the writer knows, was one of the first influential men in America to raise his voice against the
liquor traffic.
Mr. Lee was sent this year to Flanders Circuit, in upper Jersey, and his brother John went with
him as his helper. Jesse was very fond of this young brother, and looked upon him as one of the
promising preachers of the time. He says: "He was tall and handsome; and if he had lived -- he died
at 31 -- he would have made one of the great preachers of the day."
We now come to the beginning of Mr. Lee's work in New England, but have no disposition to
burden the reader with a long account of it. To relate a few of the incidents and recount some of the
many difficulties and hardships he had to contend with will be all that will enter into this narrative.
For the methods to be used and the doctrine to be preached to them by Jesse Lee, we doubt if there
could be found anywhere a more unfriendly and uncongenial people than in New England at this
time. But it is a mistake to think that the people of that section of our country knew little or nothing
about the Methodists. Mr. Whitefield, who was accounted a Methodist, had visited and preached
through that country as early as 1740; he made a number of visits and finally died and was buried
at Newburyport in 1770. He preached the same doctrine (Calvinism) taught by almost all the