History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

and good sense so far predominated that he never descended to anything beneath the dignity of a man
and a Christian minister. In prayer he excelled." Garrettson says of this gift, "He prayed the best, and
he prayed the most, of any man I ever knew."
Before entering upon a new epoch in Methodist history, following Stevens, who gleaned from
Lednum and others, let us embalm other names of heroes in this strife in the closing years of this
decade of conferential Methodism. The westward progress is marked by the itinerant toils of
Jeremiah Lambert at the head waters of the Holston River, already adverted to, followed by Henry
Willis. Redstone circuit was ultramontane. Braddock had opened a road beyond the Pennsylvania
Alleghenies, and emigration followed it. John Cooper and Samuel Breeze labored out there, and
Asbury scaled the Alleghenies for the first time to reach them. Poythress, Haw, Roberts, and others
took part in the ground-breaking. Many Methodists had gone west of the mountains of Pennsylvania,
Maryland, and Virginia after the war closed. John Jones built a cabin on Redstone Creek, and Robert
Wooster was the first local preacher he heard. Uniontown in Pennsylvania became a center, and
Asbury held a Conference there in 1788. Among the mountaineer local preachers were William
Shaw, Thomas Larkin, and John J. Jacobs. They were known as "the three bishops." Let their names
at least go down to posterity. Simon Cochrane and Michael Cryder are two more, the former pushing
on to the wilds of Ohio and Kentucky, and gave sixty-four years to the ministry, while the latter
labored on the Juniata River as early as 1775. Robert Pennington of Delaware was among the first
of the emigrants to this section, and he built a log chapel among the mountains, known by his name.
Most of the regulars were locals at first, and too much honor cannot be accorded the humble but
zealous men who blazed the path of Methodism in all the frontiers. Isaac Smith is a name fragrant
in the south. He was a Revolutionary private and officer, and took part in a number of the battles,
and after the peace became a soldier of Christ, in 1783. He was the father of the South Carolina
Conference, and did yeoman service until 1834, when he died of a cancer, "full of faith and the
comfort of the Holy Ghost." Stevens gives him three pages, and crowns them with the sentence, "He
was the St. John of the early Methodist apostolate." Wilson Lee, another of the western pioneers,
seemed never satisfied unless he had the hardest field he could find. Not only in the West, but in
New England, his path was luminous as a revival preacher. In 1804 he was returned as
superannuated, and died in Anne Arundel County, Md., of a hemorrhage, while praying with a sick
person. John Smith, a native of Maryland, already named, was of feeble constitution, but survived
to 1812, when he died triumphantly. William Jessup was from Delaware. Asbury says, "Few such
holy and steady men have been found among us." He died in 1795, and was buried at Martin
Boehm's chapel in Pennsylvania, after a happy death. Not a few of these worthies have no earthly
record at all. As local preachers their names do not appear in the printed Minutes, and many of these
have no other perpetuation.
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