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

six years he had made no public effort. Although I have no reliable data upon which to base a
contrary opinion, I am nevertheless inclined to believe that he had, and perhaps more than once,
made efforts in public, but, being discouraged, had ceased to do so for some time. Alas! how many
ministers of the present day become weary of appointments, and abandon them because but five or
six are in regular attendance! These documents, however, conclusively establish the fact, that no
serious or systematic effort was made by him prior to November, 1766."
The following account of the Palatines in Ireland is taken from Mr. Wesley's Journal of these
Palatines: --
"Fifty families formed a colony at Balligarane, twenty at Court Mattress, twenty at Killiheen,
twenty at Pallas, and there was another colony at New Market, on the Shannon. Each family had a
few acres of ground, on which a little house was erected. And such was their diligence, says Mr.
Wesley, that they turned all their land into a garden -- in industry and frugality they were patterns
to all around them. They retained the temper and manners of their fatherland, being a serious,
thinking people, having but little resemblance to the people among whom they lived in either
appearance or disposition, But, as they had long been without a minister by whom they could profit,
they were much given to cursing, swearing, and drunkenness, until the Methodist preachers came
among them about the year 1750, when the reformation became so general that there were no such
towns to be found in the kingdom; no cursing, swearing, Sabbath breaking, no ale house or
drunkenness in any of them; they were both reproof and example to their neighbors. Many of them
united with the Methodists, and such as did not, imitated them, by forming themselves into classes,
and professed to walk in the light of God's countenance. When Mr. Wesley first met them in society,
he was repeatedly stopped short. The words of this plain, honest people, he remarks, came with such
weight and power as to produce a pause, and raise a general cry among the hearers: the words of a
child nine years old astonished all that heard them."
Here lived, and here died, in a good old age, Philip Geier, who was a patriarch to these German
societies. Here was Philip Embury; here was the Heck family, the Deans, with many others. Here
was the material that formed the nucleus of Methodism in New York.
Notwithstanding the diligence and frugality of this people, such was the heartlessness of their
landlords that many of them could not procure the coarsest food to eat, nor the meanest raiment to
wear -- hence they had to seek bread in other places, scattered up and down the kingdom, but the
greater part came to America.