History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

traveling, assessed and paid at Conference. "What preachers have died this year?" It was a new
question. The answer is, "William Wright, Henry Metcalf." That is all. Lee commends it. For many
of them it was all that lay between them and oblivion. It was ever afterward asked, but the answer
rarely extended to over a dozen lines even for the best and most useful of them. "What preachers
desist from traveling?" This form answered for all who dropped out for any cause. Wesley's
suggestions as to European preachers were adopted rigidly. Fast days were made more binding, "By
writing it upon every class paper. To be the first Friday after every quarterly meeting." Many
Methodists, following Asbury, fasted every Friday. The last question, "When and where shall our
next Conferences be held?" The answer shows the entering wedge to a division of the work into
Conferences. "The first at Green Hill (North Carolina) Friday, 29th, and Saturday, 30th, of April; the
second in Virginia, at Conference chapel, May 8; the third in Maryland, Baltimore, the 15th of June."
Time is allowed for Asbury to travel from one to the other, and for such of the preachers as could
and would get to Baltimore — the Conference in fact and law. The first two were not convened, and
the last was anticipated by the Christmas Conference at the close of 1784.
Lee adds a note to the end of his observations on the Conference of May 28, 1784, to the effect
that the minutes, heretofore kept only in manuscript, were from this date printed every year. As
already found, the whole from 1773 to 1795 were printed and bound into a volume by order of the
bishops, by John Dickins, the book agent of the Concern, now removed from Philadelphia to New
York. This volume is very scarce. In 1813 a new volume was issued, covering the minutes from 1773
to 1813, as mentioned elsewhere, by Daniel Hitt and Thomas Ware, who succeeded Dickins, and
several changes of importance were quietly made by order of the bishops in the text, and not a few
typographical and other errors crept into the new edition. The preface to this volume thus
summarizes the work: "In the year 1773 the first Methodist Conference in America was held in
Philadelphia, and consisted of ten traveling preachers, at which time there were only 1160 members
in society. In the space of forty years you see the astonishing increase, amounting to 678 traveling
preachers, besides those in the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, with several thousand local
preachers of sufficient worth to grace any pulpit, and members amounting to upward of 214,000, .
. . likewise you will find that, in the space of forty years, there have been about 1800 preachers
admitted into the traveling connection, and about 110 died in the glorious work . . . To view between
six and seven hundred faithful ministers of the Lord Jesus Christ, spread from the northern
extremities of the province of Maine to St. Mary's and the Altamalia River in the southern
extremities of Georgia; and from the seaboard in the Atlantic States to Erie, Detroit, Michigan,
Wabash, and Missouri in the west; and southwestward to the Mississippi, Natchez, upper and lower
Louisiana to New Orleans and the Tombecktee settlements, — what may we not expect and look for
from the hands of a gracious God, in answer to prayer, and the rewards of the faithful and diligent
laborers?" Note must be taken of the farther fact elicited from these statements, that of 1800
preachers who entered the work in these years between 1773 and 1813, over 1000 retired after an
average of service less than ten years by reason of the hardships and the celibacy it enforced, or an
average of twenty-five a year. That the depleted ranks should be annually filled by young recruits in
more than like numbers is in evidence of the impelling zeal and Holy Spirit call of a heart-religion
as genuine as in apostolic days. Thomas Ware was admitted at this Conference of May, 1784. Of
Asbury he writes: "Among these pioneers Asbury by common consent stood first and chief. There
was something in his person, his eye, his mien, and the music of his voice, which interested all who
saw and heard him. He possessed much natural wit, and was capable of the severest satire; but grace