History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

and good man, and a bead-roll of others equally worthy, made up the primitive corps. Hezekiah
Calvin Wooster was a shining light, and of him it is mentioned that Asbury, when he saw him, was
"filled with admiration," and at his ordination used the words "From the ends of the earth we call
upon thee, O Lord our God, to pour upon this thy servant the Holy Ghost, for the office and work
of a deacon in the Church of God," substituting these for the prescribed formula, so it is seen that
the stickler for forms, as a Bishop he felt bound by nothing but his own will and whim. Robert
Yellalee and John Broadhead, as well as Timothy Merrett, must be embalmed with this host.
William Beauchamp, says Stevens, "was a man of genuine greatness, one of nature's noblemen
and God's elect," born in Delaware in 1772. He was well educated, and after teaching school for
some time entered the itinerancy in 1793. In 1815 he took the editorial charge of the Western
Christian Monitor, published at Chillicothe, Ohio, and the only periodical at that time in the Church.
He was called the Demosthenes of the West, and exhibited the ability of a rare genius with much
versatility. He was a delegate to the General Conference of 1824, and was among the competitors
of Joshua Soule for the bishopric, failing of election by but two votes. It was an indispensable
qualification for the honors of that day that a man should have traveled with saddle-pockets all his
career. It operated against Beauchamp, who had spent much of his time in other positions, or he
would have been elected. He died in October of the same year in the fifty-third year of his age.
Daniel Webb in New England Methodism is well and deservedly known. Epaphras Kibby is also a
monumental name. Joshua Soule was born in Maine in 1781, was converted and entered the ranks
in 1798, being about seventeen years of age. Though uneducated, such were his native abilities and
industrious habits of study that he made himself famous both as a preacher and as a great church
leader in after life. He was the editor of the Methodist Magazine after the resumption of publication
in 1818, and the thought and style of his contributions attracted attention as well as his Book Agency.
While stationed in Baltimore in 1824 he was elected Bishop, as will be seen later. He was then
forty-three years of age, and in the twenty-sixth of his ministry. He occupied the bishopric for
forty-three years, and died at Nashville, Tenn., March 6, 1867, in full assurance of faith. He was tall
and erect and of dignified bearing, voice strong and commanding, and a pulpit figure of imposing
solemnity, but in other relations he impressed many as pompous and repulsive. He was a born leader
and an autocrat by nature. During the General Conference of 1844 he joined his fortunes with the
Southern side, and was esteemed in the North afterwards as a specimen of that class known as a
"Northern man with Southern principles," just as Bond, as an example, was a Southern man with
Northern principles. Soule, however, was consistent with his own principles in adhering to the South,
and became the exponent of its ideas as to the constitutional powers of a Bishop. Elijah Hedding was
born in New York in 1780, and afterward rose to eminence in the Episcopacy of the Church. Thomas
Branch is worthy to be named with the martyrs of Methodism. An able preacher, he went into the
wilderness of southern New York, and after many hardships fell into a consumption. It was with
difficulty he found a home with a poor family, where he died after great suffering, but losing no
opportunity to preach and exhort upon his dying bed. His body was conveyed to the grave on a sled
drawn by oxen, after the corpse was refused admittance to a log meetinghouse, so that the services
were performed out of doors, and he was laid to rest in a clearing of the forest, his grave being
marked with a decent stone.
Western Methodism had its long line of heroes the country was new and the hardships
unendurable except to men called of the Holy Ghost to preach and who counted not their lives dear