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

soul becomes an inhabitant of the spirit land, in their bedchambers, the moral tendency would not
be good? The effect, we might suppose, would be to keep death in view, and inspire desires for a
preparation. The pulpit makes its urgent appeals to death to induce the living to prepare. The coffin
would appeal to the beholder; and there might be fewer persons lying down on their beds before they
bowed in prayer to him who has the "issues of death." We heard the Rev. Caleb Morris relate that
the Rev. Lorenzo Dow was preaching in a certain town, when a gentleman slipped five dollars into
his hand, which he endeavored to return, as his sentiment was, that "impostors were fond of money."
Failing to find the man who gave it to him, he went out early next morning and found two young
ladies sewing by candlelight, he stepped in and bargained with them to make anything that he might
order to be made out of muslin. He laid out half of the five dollars in muslin, and taking it to the
young ladies, requested them to make their shrouds out of it. They made an effort to annul the
contract, but he told them it was a covenant to which God and angels were witnesses; and throwing
down the balance of the five dollars as pay, made his exit. To them it was solemn work to cut and
sew muslin into grave clothes for themselves; they could not but be serious while accomplishing this
job -- and it resulted in their conversion to God; and, when Mr. Dow returned to their town, they
gladly entertained him as a messenger of the Lord Jesus Christ.
18 It appears that heaven's frown rested upon him: he lost all his property and ended his days in the
almshouse of the county. His wife lived and died a good Methodist; and his son, who for many years
kept an excellent hotel in Wilmington, Delaware, was as kind to Methodist preachers as his father
was hostile to them.
19 The following is a specimen of His grace's [Laud's] piety. Archbishop Leighton's father wrote
against the hierarchy, and was tried for it in the star-chamber court. He was condemned, of course,
and sentenced to the pillory at Westminster, to be publicly whipped, to have both ears cut off, his
nose slit on each side, branded on the face with a red-hot iron, pay a fine of ten thousand pounds, and
pass the remainder of his life in the Fleet prison. When this "wholesome" sentence was pronounced,
Laud, that true successor of the apostles, pulled off his hat, and thanked God for it. -- See Neale's
History of the Puritans.
20 At a later period, when the Methodists were holding meetings in Cambridge, a certain Mr. Bryon
brought up a cannon and fired it off, in order to break up the meeting.
21 The lot on which the Asbury Church, in Duck Creek Cross Roads, now Smyrna, stood, was from
Allen McLane. He and his wife were Methodists, and his children, including the Hon. Louis
McLane, who was a member of General Jackson's Cabinet, and subsequently Minister to the Court
of St. James, and father of the Hon. Robert McLane, Minister to Mexico, were baptized by Bishop
Asbury. Allen McLane moved from Duck Creek to Wilmington. Where he died: he and his wife,
with some others of the family, are buried in the rear of the Asbury Church, in Wilmington. As
bishop Asbury was the occasional pastor of this family, the Hon. Louis McLane used to consider
himself a Methodist, being a believer of the doctrines taught by them, and having been baptized into
their community. It is not to be understood, however, that his name was written on a Methodist class
paper, or that he ever met in class. He has been dead several years; and, we presume, was interred
on his fine estate, on Bohemia river, Cecil county, Md.