History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

attended the ministry of both, conversions were numerous, and societies organized as centers of
religious influence for large neighborhoods. The name America appears for the first time in Wesley's
minutes for 1770; Pilmoor, Boardman, Williams, and King are mentioned as missionaries. The next
year the numbers in society are given at 316. The preachers appealed for other recruits. At the
Conference of 1771, Wesley asked, "Who are willing to go over and help them?" Five responded and
two were appointed, the home needs forbidding permission to a larger number. The young men
appointed were Francis Asbury and Richard Wright. The two names stand in broad contrast in the
light of their future careers. Both were Wesley's selection out of the five offering. No unfavorable
comment is on record of Wright's appointment, and he ran but a short career both in America and
in England. He may be dismissed before entering upon a consideration of the other selection, fraught
with such momentous results in the history of American Methodism,— its colossal figure from 1771
to 1816. Wright had traveled but one year when he came to America with Asbury, and but little is
known of him. Bangs and Lee note his coming, and then he passes into oblivion. Stevens says that
he accompanied Asbury in his travels, spending most of his time in Maryland and Virginia. In the
spring of 1772 he was in New York, and in 1773 he was stationed in Norfolk, Va. In 1774 he
returned to England, and after three years' service he dropped out of the records altogether.
Francis Asbury. His name justly fills a sentence with a period. He was born in England, four miles
from Birmingham, in Staffordshire, on the 20th or 21st of August, 1745. After the death of an infant
sister, he was the only child of his parents. He was early sent to school, but he did not make much
progress, owing to his dread of the master. At thirteen he was removed from school and apprenticed
to the trade of button-making, which relation he continued six years and a half. His master was a
pious man and helped his apprentice in many ways. He could read the Bible at seven years of age
and had a thirst for knowledge. He heard of the Methodists at Handsworth, and his mother, on his
inquiry, gave him a good account of them. He attended their meetings, and was delighted with the
singing, the extempore praying and preaching. Praying in his father's barn, he received the witness
of pardoned sin. Henceforth he began to hold meetings on his own account. He soon became a local
preacher, and exercised his gifts to the conversion of souls. He was about twenty-one when he
became an itinerant, taking the place as a supply of an absent traveling preacher. He early exhibited
the characteristics of his life. Stevens sketches him with the hand of a master: "He was studious,
somewhat introspective, with a thoughtfulness which was tinged at times with melancholy. His was
one of those minds which can find rest only in labor; designed for great work, and therefore endowed
with a restless instinct for it. He was an incessant preacher, of singular practical directness; was ever
in motion, on foot or on horseback, over his long circuits; a rigorous disciplinarian, disposed to do
everything by method; a man of few words, and those always to the point; of quick and marvelous
insight into character; of a sobriety, not to say severity, of temperament, which might have been
repulsive had it not been softened by a profound religious humility, for his soul, ever aspiring to the
highest virtue, was ever complaining within itself over its shortcomings. His mind had eminently a
military cast. He never lost his self-possession, and could therefore seldom be surprised. He seemed
not to know fear, and never yielded to discouragement in a course sanctioned by his faith or
conscience. He could plan sagaciously, seldom pausing to consider theories of wisdom or policy, but
as seldom failing in practical prudence. The rigor which his disciplinary predilections imposed upon
others was so exemplified by himself that his associates and subordinates, instead of revolting from
it, accepted it as a challenge of heroic emulation. Discerning men could not come into his presence
without perceiving that his soul was essentially heroic, and that nothing committed to his agency