A History Of The Rise Of Methodism In America - Media Sabda Org

letter was written in a very wrong spirit. If you cannot take advice from others, surely you might take
it from your affectionate brother,
"J. Wesley."
It seems he was not fully cured; for Mr. Asbury heard him preach in Baltimore the same year, and
says, "J. K. Preached a good and profitable sermon; but long and loud enough." In 1777, his name
appears for the last time in the Minutes, when he stands for North Carolina. He located and lived
near Raleigh, in this state, where he died, not long afterwards.
Mr. Richard Webster, in 1775, was stationed in Chester Circuit, Pa. After this, it appears, that as
he had a family that required him at home, he located. Messrs. Ruff and Webster were the first
preachers on Chester Circuit, after it was formed, and noticed in the Minutes in 1774.
--
We insert the following anecdote, which we received from an old Methodist of excellent memory:
Near old Chester lived Mr. James Barton, who had been raised a churchman, and was awakened
to a sense of inward religion without human means. Observing that ministers and members in his
church were dead and careless, and finding some living testimonies among the Friends, he was led
to join them; and adhered to them for twenty years, and became a public speaker in their meetings.
About the time that Messrs. Ruff and Webster were preaching on Chester Circuit, he dreamed that
he saw two men moving through his region, using iron flails, with which they subdued the hills and
the mountains, and nothing could resist their operation. Friend Barton had read the promise, that God
would, "Make a new, sharp threshing instrument, that should thresh the mountains small, and make
the hills as chaff;" and when he heard these two primitive Methodist preachers speaking in the power
and demonstration of the Holy Ghost, he concluded his dream was fulfilled: that Messrs. Ruff and
Webster were the two men -- their energetic manner of preaching Christ, the flail that subdued the
hills and mountains of sin and enmity in sinners -- reducing them to obedience to Christ. Friend
Barton united with the Methodists, and bore his testimony that God was with them. [9]
After Mr. Webster located, he did not relax his efforts to do good in his own neighborhood, for
nearly fifty years. In the latter end of his life, there was a neat church built under his direction, in the
forest called "Calvary." In 1824, Mr. Garrettson, who had known him for fifty years, visited him, a
little before his death. He says, he "Found him, like a ripe shock of corn, waiting to be taken to the
garner of rest. I had sweet fellowship with him. I bless God for the opportunity of conversing with
him." He was gathered home in May, 1824, at the advanced age of eighty-five years.
He left a large number of children and grandchildren, living in the same region. The Rev. John
Davis, of the Baltimore Conference, married a relation of his. Mr. Webster married a daughter of Mr.
George Smith, one of the first Methodists of Chester county, near to the Grove Meeting. Some of
his relations by name, live about Downingtown, in Chester county, Pa. A goodly number of his
descendants still cleave to the Methodists.