VOLUME 3 — BOOK V — CHAPTER XVI
METHODISM IN THE NORTH, CONTINUED: CANADA, 1796—1804

Canada Methodism pertains to New York Conference — Prosperity — Michael Coate — Joseph Jewell — Joseph Sawyer — William Anson — Other Laborers — The Layman Warner — Samuel Draper — Seth Crowell — Great Success — Nathan Bangs — His great Services — His Canadian Life — Sawyer presses him into the Itinerancy — A significant Dream — Looses his Horse — Its Consequences — Fallacy of "Impressions" — Frontier Life — Providential Escape — Calvin Wooster — Bangs' "Double Voice" — Asbury — Sawyer begins Methodism in Montreal — Peter Vannest's Hardships — Thomas Madden — Other Itinerants — Statistical Results — Death of Barbara Heck — The Heck and Embury Families: Note

Canadian Methodism still appertained to the New York Conference. It was considered, in fact, but an extension of that great interior field which we have just been surveying. Preachers of the interior, Draper, Jewell, and others, were laborers beyond the line. William Case, one of the first two presiding elders of the Genesee Conference, became a representative man of the Provincial Church, and for some time the Upper Province was an important portion of the territory of that Conference.

We have traced its progress down to the close of 1796, and witnessed the labors and sufferings of Losee, Dunham, Coleman, Woolsey, Keeler, and Coate. In 1797 the Minutes record no additional laborers, nor indeed anything respecting its appointments. The historians of the Church assure us that great revivals prevailed among the settlements, chiefly through the instrumentality of Wooster, whose mighty ministry seemed to inflame its whole people. [1]

In 1798 the itinerant band consisted of Dunham, Coate, Coleman, and Michael Coate. The latter was the brother of Samuel Coate, but a very different character. An early Quaker training had given him prudence and stability; "He possessed," say his brethren in their Conference obituary, [2] "a strong mind and sound judgment; was much devoted to God, serious, weighty, and solemn in all his carriage." He began his ministry in 1795, and continued it with blameless fidelity till his death in 1814. He occupied prominent appointments in Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and was often presiding elder of extensive districts. "He was a man of great talents," said one of the best judges, "a solid, amiable, fine-looking man." [3]

In 1799 the Minutes still show three circuits, but eight hundred and sixty-six members. Michael Coate returns to the States; but Joseph Jewell enters the province, and takes charge of it as presiding elder. He was a good man, says one of our Canadian authorities, [4] cheerful, fond of singing, and had the finest voice, it was said, that had ever been heard in the province. He went to Canada from Maryland, and braved its wintry storms for four years. By the next Conference nearly a thousand members (936) are enrolled in the province. Samuel Coate and Coleman retire from the field, the latter after six years toil in it; but be goes to encounter similar labors in Vermont. Dunham also disappears from the appointments, but settles, as we have seen, in the country, to become a useful local preacher. Four new laborers appear now on the roll: Joseph Sawyer, William Anson, James Herron, and Daniel Pickett. Sawyer began to travel, in the New York Conference, in 1797; he afterward itinerated in Massachusetts and Vermont, and, for a number of most useful years, devoted himself to this frontier work. He had led Washburn and Laban Clark into the Church, and was to find in the wilderness of Upper Canada Nathan Bangs, and send him forth on his long and memorable career of hardly rivaled services to American Methodism. Thirteen years he was a member of the Conference, four of them as a circuit preacher, four as presiding elder, in Canada, the other five in the United States. He was a holy man, full of energy, of a vigorous mind, and great success. When he married he was compelled to locate, and settled in Matilda, on the St. Lawrence, where he continued to preach with great acceptance. Late in life he returned to the United States, and died at Mamaroneck, near New York city, endeared to all who knew him by the purity of his life, and the religious geniality of his temper.

William Anson we have already met, planting Methodism on Grand isle, Lake Champlain. He remained a member of the Conference till his death at Malta, N. Y., in 1848. Though a preacher for nearly half a century, a founder of the Church in Canada and Vermont, a circuit evangelist and presiding elder in some of the hardest fields of early Methodism, scarcely any information of his services has been recorded, and we are entirely ignorant of his parentage, early life, conversion, and even the place and date of his birth. [5] His brief obituary in the Minutes says "he never flinched from duty," was a "pioneer of the gospel in many places," of "sterling integrity and respectable talents." We know still less of Pickett and Herron, the two young recruits who came with him to the province. The Grand River Circuit was now added to the appointments, and traveled by Pickett; it took in the Ottawa country, where, it is said, the young itinerant, for many years, was affectionately remembered.

In the next year Sawyer procured the erection of the first Methodist church in the Niagara country, where the faithful layman, Christian Warner, had long represented Methodism, and entertained its preachers. The building was located near St. David's, in Warner's neighborhood; it bore his worthy name, and was the third built in the province. There were now (1801) 1,159 Methodists in the country, and five circuits, supplied by ten preachers. Samuel Draper had come from the interior of New York, a man of excessive humor, but "in many places quite successful." "Hundreds," add the Minutes, "will have cause to rejoice that they ever heard his voice." [6] He died in America, N.Y., 1824, in the forty-sixth year of his, age and twenty-third of his ministry. Seth Crowell had come from New England; he was now about twenty years old, but of heroic character. Bangs says: "He was a young preacher of great zeal, and of the most indefatigable industry; and going into that country he soon caught the divine fire which had been enkindled by the instrumentality of Wooster, Coate, and Dunham. It had, indeed, extended into the lower province, on the Ottawa River, an English settlement about fifty miles west of Montreal." He possessed superior talents, "and," say his brethren, "was often heard to speak in demonstration of the Spirit and with power, and was instrumental in the conversion of many souls."

He subsequently labored, with extraordinary success, in New England and New York. Bangs, who was now a spectator of the labors of these brave men, says that this year "a glorious revival in Upper Canada extended up the shore of Lake Ontario, even to the head of the lake, and to Niagara, and thence to Long Point, on the northwestern shore of Lake Erie, including four large four-weeks' circuits. The district was under the charge of Joseph Jewell, who traveled extensively through the newly-settled country, preaching in log-houses, in barns, and sometimes in groves, and everywhere beholding the displays of the power and grace of God in the awakening and conversion of sinners, as well as the sanctification of believers. A great work of God was carried on this year, under the preaching of Joseph Sawyer, whose faithful labors on the Niagara Circuit will be long and gratefully remembered by the people in that country; and it was during this revival that the present writer, after four or five years of hard struggling under a consciousness of his sinfulness, was brought into the fold of Christ. And here he wishes to record his gratitude to God for his distinguished grace in snatching such a brand from the fire, and to his people for their kindness, and more especially to that servant of God, Joseph Sawyer, under whose pastoral oversight he was brought into the Church. Nor should the labors and privations, the prayers and sufferings in the cause of Christ, of that faithful servant of God, James Coleman, be forgotten. He preceded Sawyer in the Niagara Circuit, and was beloved by the people of God for his fidelity in the work of the ministry, and for his deep devotion to their spiritual interests, evinced by his rightful attention to the arduous duties of his circuit. He had many seals to his ministry, and the writer of this remembers with gratitude the many prayers which James Coleman offered up to God in his behalf while a youthful stranger in that land, and while seeking, with his eyes but half opened, to find the way of peace. The work also prevailed on the Bay of Quinte and Oswegatchie Circuits, under the labors of Sylvanus Keeler, Seth Crowell, and others. Like the new settlements in the Western country, Upper Canada was at that time but sparsely populated, so that in riding from one appointment to another the preachers sometimes had to pass through wildernesses from ten to sixty miles, and not infrequently had either to encamp in the woods or sleep in Indian huts. And sometimes, in visiting the newly settled places, they have carried provender for their horses over night, when they would tie them to a tree to prevent their straying in the woods, while the preachers themselves had to preach, eat, and lodge in the same room, the curling smoke ascending through an opening in the roof of the log-house, which had not yet the convenience of even a chimney. For the self-denying labors and sacrifices of these early Methodist preachers, thousands of immortal beings in Canada will doubtless praise God in that day 'when he shall come to make up his jewels.' " [8] As a consequence of this revival the returns of 1802 show more than fifteen hundred members, a gain of nearly three hundred and fifty in one year.

The important name of Nathan Bangs is now recorded on the roll of appointments. I have elsewhere given the details of his most interesting life, [9] and have shown that he was not only a public but a representative man in the Methodist Episcopal Church for more than half a century; that during nearly sixty years he appeared almost constantly in its pulpits; that he was the founder of its periodical literature, and of its "Conference course" of ministerial study, and one of the founders of its present system of educational institutions; the first missionary secretary appointed by is General Conference, the first clerical editor of its General Conference newspaper press, the first editor of its Quarterly Review, and, for many years, the chief editor of its monthly Magazine and its book publications; that he may be pronounced the principal founder of the American literature of Methodism, a literature now remarkable for its extent, and of no inconsiderable intrinsic value that besides his innumerable miscellaneous writings for its periodicals, he wrote more volumes in defense or illustration of his denomination than any other man, and became its recognized historian; that he was one of the founders of its Missionary Society, wrote the Constitution and first Circular Appeal of that great cause, and through sixteen yeas, prior to the organization of its secretaryship as a salaried function, he labored indefatigably and gratuitously for the society as its vice-president, secretary, or treasurer, and during more than twenty years wrote all its annual reports; that after his appointment as its resident secretary he devoted to it his entire energies, conducting its correspondence, seeking missionaries for it, planning its mission fields, pleading for it in the Churches, and representing it in the Conferences; and that he was, withal, a man of profound piety, of universal charity, and much and admirable individuality. Few men, if any, have longer or more successfully labored to promote those great interests of the denomination which have given it consolidation and permanence. If greater men have, especially in his latter years of comparative retirement, more actively represented it, no one, in our day, has embodied in himself more of its history, no one has linked so much of its past with its present, and hereafter his name must recur often in our pages.

Born in Connecticut in 1778, he had emigrated in his thirteenth year, with his family, to Stamford, N. Y., and had wandered thence, in his twenty-first year, as a school teacher and surveyor, to the Niagara region of Upper Canada. He found a friend in Christian Warner, near St. Davids, and was brought under Methodist influence. He had despised and ridiculed the new Church, in former times; but, for years, he had been struggling with a restless conscience. James Coleman's ardent exhortations had deeply affected him. Joseph Sawyer met him at Warner's, where he heard the itinerant preacher. "He unfolded," says Bangs, "all the enigmas of my heart more fully than I could myself. I was powerfully affected, and wept much." He was soon after converted. "I resolved," he adds, "to devote myself to God, come what might." He began to open his school with prayer. The good innovation raised a storm of persecution against him, and he was driven away. This trial was a great blessing; it committed him publicly to religion, and opened the way for his entrance upon the career of his life as a preacher of the gospel. "I had," he continues, "taken a stand from which I could not well recede. I felt much inward peace, and the Holy Scriptures were indescribably precious to me." He conformed himself to the severest customs of the Methodists. He had prided himself on his fine personal appearance, and had dressed in the full fashion of the times, with ruffled shirt, and long hair in a cue. He now ordered his laundress to take off his ruffles; his long hair shared the same fate, not, however, without the remonstrances of his pious sister, who deemed this rigor unnecessary, and admired his young but manly form with a sister's pride. He was received into the society of the Methodists. He had considered them unworthy of his regard, he now considered himself unworthy of theirs, and took his place among them with deep humility. "Soon after this," he continues, "I boarded with Christian Warner, my class-leader, a man of sweet spirit, and for whom I shall ever entertain an ardent affection. He was a pattern of religion, always consistent in his conduct, and acted the part of a parent toward me. Such was my diffidence that I gave up my judgment almost entirely to others whom I esteemed on account of their experience and piety. I found Christian Warner worthy of my utmost confidence, and he became my counselor and guide in this critical period of my Christian life."

Warner led him into the knowledge of "the deep things of God," especially the Wesleyan doctrine of sanctification, which became a favorite and lifelong theme in his ministrations and conversations.

Sawyer returned again and again to the settlement, and always with the urgent exhortation that he should go forth and preach. He made several trials in neighboring hamlets, sometimes with success, sometimes with failure. In the month of August, 1801, about one year after he had joined the Church, and three months after he had been licensed as an exhorter, he received license to preach, and immediately departed for a circuit. Having earned some money as a surveyor, in addition to his salary as teacher, he was able to purchase an outfit of clothing, and a horse and its furniture, not forgetting the indispensable saddlebags of the itinerant. "I sold," he says, "my surveyor's instruments to a friend whom I had taught the art, mounted my horse, and rode forth to 'sound the alarm' in the wilderness, taking no further thought 'what I should eat, or drink, or wherewithal I should be clothed.' " He had now learned to trust the divine guidance unfalteringly, for God "had found him in a desert land, and in the waste, howling wilderness; he had led him about, had instructed him, had kept him as the apple of his eye."

He thus began his itinerancy, "under the presiding elder," Joseph Sawyer, and as colleague of Anson, on Niagara Circuit, which required six weeks' travel around it, with daily preaching. Before the end of the year he had so extended his circuit that a new one was formed of that part of it called Long Point, which juts into Lake Erie. This beginning of success lifted a weight from his diffident spirit. Before it occurred he had given way to despair, under a "temptation of the devil," as he believed. Seeing no immediate effect of his labors, he had begun to doubt his call to the ministry, and had resolved to return home and give up his "license." He had actually mounted his horse, and was retracing his course, when, arriving at the Grand River, he found that a "January thaw" had so broken up the ice as to render it impossible for him to cross, whether by a boat or on the ice itself: Thus providentially arrested, he returned despondent and confounded. A significant dream relieved him. He thought he was working with a pickax on the top of a basaltic rock. His muscular arm brought down stroke after stroke for hours; but the rock was hardly indented. He said to himself at last, "It is useless; I will pick no more." Suddenly a stranger of dignified mien stood by his side and spoke to him. "You will pick no more?" "No more." "Were you not set to this task?" "Yes." "And why abandon it?" "My work is vain; I make no impression on the rock." Solemnly the stranger replied, "What is that to you? Your duty is to pick, whether the rock yields or not. Your work is in your own hands; the result is not. Work on!" He resumed his task. The first blow was given with almost superhuman force, and the rock flew into a thousand pieces. He awoke, pursued his way back to Burford with fresh zeal and energy, and a great revival followed. From that day he never had even a "temptation" to give up his commission.

"In Oxford," he continues, "Major Ingersoll, to whom I was first introduced, was a Universalist, and he told me, on my first visit, that he was an unbeliever in the doctrine of depravity; that he never had himself a depraved heart. 'This assertion,' said I, 'is a sure sign that you never knew your heart.' On my second visit I found him sitting in his chair, with his head inclined on his hands. He looked up to me, and said, 'O what a depraved heart I have!' 'Ay!' said I; 'have you discovered that fact at last?' 'Yes, indeed,' he replied; 'what shall I do to be saved?' 'Surrender it up to God by faith in Christ, and he will give you a new heart, and renew a right spirit within you.' He did so, and found the promise verified. He, his wife, who was a very sensible and amiable woman, his two daughters, together with the husband of one of them, were soon converted and joined the Church, and the good work quickly spread through the neighborhood, sweeping all before it. In this way the revival prevailed in both of these places, so that large and flourishing societies were established, and no less than six preachers were raised up, one of whom, by the name of Reynolds, became a bishop in the Methodist Episcopal Church of Canada. Thus the rock was split. The reformation extended through many settlements, particularly Oxford, where large numbers were 'turned from darkness to light.' "

He made an excursion from his circuit to visit his old friends on the Bay of Quinte Circuit, but, when not far from Toronto, (Little York, as it was then called,) his horse died on the road. "Here, then," he says, "I was alone in a strange place, without money, without a horse, and, as far as I knew, without friends. I trusted in God alone, and he provided for me. In about half an hour, during which I hardly knew which way to turn, a gentleman came along and offered to lend me a horse on condition that I would defer my journey to the Bay of Quinte, and agree to remain in those parts preaching for some time. I thankfully accepted his offer, mounted the horse, and went on my way rejoicing up to Little York. The settlements in this part of the country were all new, the roads extremely bad, and the people generally poor and demoralized. Our occasional preachers were exposed to many privations, and often to much suffering from poor fare and violent opposition. Seth Crowell, a zealous and godly itinerant, had traveled along the lake shore before me, and had been instrumental in the awakening and conversion of many of the settlers, so that some small societies had been formed; but they were far apart, and I found them in a dwindled condition. On Yonge Street, which was a settlement extending westward from Little York in a direct line for about thirty miles, there were no societies, but all the field was new and uncultivated, with the exception of some Quaker neighborhoods."

He set out to travel among these settlements on a winter's day, with the determination to call at as many houses as possible on the way, and give a "word of exhortation" to each. At every door he said: "I have come to talk with you about religion, and to pray with you. If you are willing to receive me for this purpose I will stop; if not, I will go on." "Only one," he says, "repulsed me through the entire day; all others heard my exhortations, and permitted me to pray with them."

He learned at least one valuable lesson on this journey. He had given too much importance to "impressions." "At a certain time," says his friend and successor in Canada, Dr. Fitch Reed, "when the weather was very cold, and the newly-fallen snow quite deep, his mind became more than usually impressed with the value of souls, and his heart burned with desire to do all he could to save them. In the midst of his reflections he came opposite a dwelling that stood quite a distance from the road, in the field. Instantly he was impressed to go to the house and talk and pray with its family. He could see no path through the deep snow, and he felt reluctant to wade that distance, expose himself to the cold, and perhaps after all accomplish no good. He resolved not to go. No sooner had he passed the house than the impression became doubly strong, and he was constrained to turn back. He fastened his horse to the fence, waded through the snow to the house, and not a soul was there. From that time he resolved never to confide in mere impressions."

He delayed much on this route, preaching often, and with success. "There was quite an awakening among the people," he writes, "and many sought redemption in the blood of Christ, so that several societies were formed. But there was a marked line of distinction between the righteous and the wicked, there being but very few who were indifferent or outwardly moral to interpose between them. All showed openly what they were by their words and actions, and either accepted religion heartily or opposed it violently; the great majority, though most of them would come to hear me preach, were determined opposers." Such is the character of frontier communities. Moral restraints are feeble among them; conventional restraints are few; the freedom of their simple wilderness-life characterizes all their habits; they have their own code of decorum, and sometimes of law itself: They are frank, hospitable, but violent in prejudice and passion; fond of disputation, of excitement, and of hearty, if not reckless, amusements. The primitive Methodist preachers knew well how to accommodate themselves to the habits, as also to the fare of such a people, and hence their extraordinary success along the whole American frontier. Their familiar methods of worship in cabins and barns, or under trees, suited the rude settlers. Their meetings were without the stiff order and ceremonious formality of older communities. They were often scenes of free debate, of interpellations and interlocutions; a hearer at the door-post or the window responding to, or questioning, or defying the preacher, who "held forth" from a chair, a bench, or a barrel, at the other end of the building. This popular freedom was not without its advantages; it authorized equal freedom on the part of the preacher; it allowed great plainness of speech and directness of appeal. Bangs' memoranda before me afford not a few examples of this primitive life of the frontier-crowded congregations in log-huts or barns, some of the hearers seated, some standing, some filling the unglazed casements, some thronging the overhanging trees; startling interjections thrown into the sermon by eccentric listeners, violent polemics between the preacher and headstrong sectarists, the whole assembly sometimes involved in the earnest debate, some for, some against him, and ending in general confusion. A lively Methodist hymn was usually the best means of restoring order in such cases. Our itinerant was never confounded by these interruptions. He had a natural tact and a certain authoritative presence, an air of command, qualified by a concessive temper, which seldom failed to control the roughest spirits. He was often characteristic, if not directly personal, in his preaching, and sometimes had dangerous encounters.

"I had," he says, "an appointment to preach in a small cabin, the family of which was too poor to entertain me conveniently over night. I therefore intended to return, as had been my custom, about six miles, after the sermon, for lodgings. I was overtaken on my way to the place by a sleigh, with three men in it. I turned my horse out of the road and let them pass me; but they no sooner did so than they stopped and began vociferating blasphemies and blackguard language at me, and if I attempted to pass them, they would drive on, obstruct the way, and thus prevent my going forward. In this manner they continued to annoy me about half hour, keeping up an unceasing stream of Billingsgate [probably meaning vulgar language, etc. — DVM]. I made them no reply. They at length drove on, and left me to pursue my way in peace. In the evening, as I rose up to preach, these three men stood looking in at the door, and as I was standing at the door-post, they closed the entrance, and were close to my right hand. I requested them to take seats; two of them did so, but the other kept his place. I gave out for my text Dan. v, 27: 'Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.' In the introduction to the discourse I made some remarks about Belshazzar's impious feast. I enlarged on the prevalent drinking habits of the settlers, and observed that there were people who were not contented to drink in taverns and in their own houses, but carried bottles of rum in their pockets. The man who still stood at my right hand had a bottle in his pocket; he drew it forth, shook it in my face with an oath, exclaiming, 'You are driving that at me,' and kept up a continual threat. The owner of the house, who was a warm friend of mine, instantly arose, with two or three others, all trembling with indignation, and came toward the offender to seize him and thrust him away. Perceiving their design, I feared there would be bloodshed, and requested them to desist and take their seats, for I was not afraid of my opposer. They sat down, but t his only seemed to enrage the man still more. He kept on swearing, with his clenched fist directed at me; but I continued my discourse unmoved by his threats, until I finally called on the God of Daniel, who delivered him from the lions, to deliver me from this lion-like sinner, when suddenly he escaped out of the door and fled; his two companions followed him, and we ended the meeting in peace. My friends, fearing I might meet with some peril should I attempt to return that night, as it was supposed that these ruffians knew that I intended to do so, persuaded me to stay all night. It was well I did so, for these men lay in ambush for me, and seeing a traveler approach on horseback, one of them said, with an oath, 'There he is, let's have him,' and off they went pursuing him, blaspheming and cursing him as the Methodist preacher. They caught him, and were preparing to wreak their vengeance upon him, but soon discovered that they had committed an egregious and dangerous blunder. The assailed traveler, seeing his peril, turned upon them boldly, and, showing a hearty disposition to fight, notwithstanding the odds against him, and using a style of language surprisingly like their own, they became convinced that he could be no Methodist preacher, and took to their heels. Thus God saved me from these ravening wolves. I blessed his name, and learned to trust more than ever his protecting providence. No little good resulted from this incident. It raised me up many friends; opposers even became ashamed of the malicious rowdies, and were ready now to defend me. In the midst of all these strange scenes I enjoyed great peace with God, I had constant access to him in prayer, and went on my route rejoicing that I was counted worthy to suffer for his name's sake. I passed on from settlement to settlement, preaching and praying with the people. The Divine Spirit was poured out upon them, and many were converted. Some of the neighborhoods were extremely poor; in some the people had not yet a single stable for the accommodation of my horse. I carried with me oats for him, and, tying him to a tree, left him to eat at night, and ate and slept myself in the same room in which I preached. This I had to do frequently; but God was with me, blessing my own soul and the people."

Such are some of the "lights and shadows" of frontier life, and of the frontier itinerant ministry of Methodism at the beginning of our century. The inhabitants of this now rich and flourishing region, with a commodious Methodist chapel in almost every city, town, and village, can hardly deem them credible, for the frontier, the "far West," has since passed to the Mississippi River, and even beyond it.

He left the circuit in general prosperity. One year before it reported three hundred and twenty members; it now reported six hundred and twenty, and Long Point, the chief field of his labors, was recognized at the Conference of 1802 as a distinct circuit. About a hundred souls had been converted in Burford and Oxford through his instrumentality, and in our day his name is still a household word in the Methodist families of that region. Few who knew him remain; yet the descendants of his old hearers, living no longer in log-cabins, but in comfortable, if not opulent, homes, worshipping no longer under trees, or in barns, but in convenient temples, have learned from their pious and departed fathers to revere him as the pioneer champion of the cross among their early settlements.

At the New York Conference, in June, 1802, he was received on probation, though not present, and was appointed, with Sawyer and Vannest, to the Bay of Quinte Circuit. It was a vast field of labor. "Among others," he says, "Hezekiah Calvin Wooster had sounded the alarm through these forests, and many were the anecdotes that I heard of him among the people, who delighted to talk of him. He was indefatigable in his labors, 'full of faith and of the Holy Ghost,' and preached with the 'demonstration of the Spirit and of power.' He professed and enjoyed the blessing of sanctification, and was, therefore, a man of mighty faith and prayer. The people never tired. of telling of the power of his word, how that sinners could not stand before him, but would either rush out of the house or fall smitten to the floor. I never found so many persons, in proportion to their number, who professed and exemplified the 'perfect love' of God, as he had left on this circuit."

He was near perishing here by an attack of typhus fever, which prostrated him for seven weeks. The cough and expectoration of blood, which followed the fever, so affected his lungs, that his first attempts to ride were attended with acute pains; but he persisted, and horseback riding was probably itself the remedy that saved him at last. The feebleness of his voice, however, occasioned an unnatural effort to speak loud enough to be heard, and to this fact he ascribed "that double sort of voice" which continued through his long life. Many of his hearers have noticed it as a singularity, and perhaps condemned it as a faulty mannerism, little supposing that, like the scarred and mutilated confessors at the Council of Nice, he thus, in our happier times, and before our opulent Churches, "bore in his body the marks of the Lord Jesus," a memento of the heroic days of our ministry. This deep, tremulous undertone, though usually not agreeable, took at times a peculiar pathos. How much more affecting would it have been had his hearers, in his latter years, known that it was caused by his attempts to preach the everlasting gospel through the frontier wilderness when he was apparently a dying man.

He went to the next Conference, and was welcomed by Asbury, who "filled him with admiration." "I was impressed," he says, "with an awful solemnity, as the bishop's hands were laid on my head, and he lifted up his strong and sonorous voice, saying, 'From the ends of the earth we call upon thee, O Lord God, to pour upon this thy servant the Holy Ghost, for the office and work of a deacon in the Church of God.' These were the words he used instead of the prescribed form, and, as he uttered them, such a sense of the divine presence overwhelmed me that my knees trembled, and I feared that I should fall to the floor!" At the close of the session he mounted his horse and set off for the far west, a region still unpenetrated by the Methodist itinerants. Thither we shall hereafter follow him.

Meanwhile Joseph Sawyer extended his travels, in 1802, to Montreal, where he found a few Methodists from the states, and formed a society of seven members, the germ of the subsequent growth of the Church there. Other laborers had reached the provinces. Peter Vannest arrived in 1802, and left at the close of our present period, but during these two years did effective service, and had his full share of frontier sufferings. "He was obliged," says our Canadian authority, "to cross the Mississquoi River when winter came, but the horseboat was sunk, and he crossed in a canoe amid the drift ice. He was obliged to pursue his work, on the Lower Canada side of the river, on foot. He thus traveled a hundred miles, most of the way through the woods and deep snow, without a track, sometimes stepping into spring holes up to his knees in mud and water. Some of his appointments required him to travel on the Mississquoi Bay, covered with ice, and two or three inches of water on the top, wearing shoes, having no boots. When on the Bay of Quinte Circuit, one of the journeys was thirty-four miles through woods. He, and probably other preachers, used to carry oats in his saddle bags to feed his horse." [10] On the Oswegatchie Circuit some of the appointments had twenty miles of woods between them. He was noted for zeal in enforcing plainness of dress on the members. From Canada he went to labor in New Jersey.

Thomas Madden, though born in the state of New York, began his ministry of thirty-one years in 1802 in Canada, a youth of twenty-two years. He died there "in Christian triumph," say the Canadian Minutes," [11] in 1834. He was a diligent laborer, traveling a circuit of nearly three hundred and fifty miles, and preaching thirty sermons a month. He was one of the ablest ministers of the Canadian Church, says one of his successors; [12] precise, methodical, instructive, energetic, "admired for the promptitude and firmness of his proceedings." He sleeps, with the Hecks, and other memorable Methodists, in the old graveyard in front of Augusta. In 1804 an historic and worthy compeer of Bangs appeared in the province, Martin Ruter, a youth of nineteen year, destined to great eminence in the denomination, and to a missionary's grave in Texas. We shall hereafter have occasion to notice him more fully. He now took charge of the infant society in Montreal, where Merwin had labored the preceding year, and whence he had attempted to bear the standard into Quebec. Besides these evangelists, Samuel Howe, Reuben Harris, and Luther Bishop served more or less time in the hard field.

In 1803 we find appointments in Lower. Canada, besides Montreal; but they are obscurely placed, in the Minutes, among the circuits of a New England (Pittsfield) District. They are St. John's and Saville, with Elijah Chichester and Laban Clark as preachers, and Ottawa, under Daniel Pickett; Clark and Chichester were in the province but a year, and, like Ruter, belong more properly to our narrative elsewhere.

At the close of the period there were one district, seven circuits, ten preachers, and nearly eighteen hundred (1787) members in the provincial Church. It had secured a permanent lodgment in both Canadas, though it could yet claim but little more than a hundred communicants in the lower province. Since our last notice of it, (in 1796,) it had advanced from seven hundred and ninety-five to one thousand seven hundred and eighty-seven members, gaining nearly a thousand, while its ministry had more than doubled. The period closed with the death of Barbara Heck, whose humble name will become increasingly illustrious with the lapse of ages, as associated with the founding of American Methodism in both the United States and British North America. She survived her husband, Paul Heck, whose death has been noticed, about twelve years, and died at the residence of her son, Samuel Heck, in "front of Augusta," in 1804, aged seventy years. Her death was befitting her life. Her old German Bible, the guide of her youth in Ireland, her resource during the falling away of her people in New York, her inseparable companion in all her wanderings in the wildernesses of Northern New York and Canada, was her oracle and comfort to the last. She was found sitting in her chair dead, with the well-used and endeared volume open on her lap. And thus passed away this devoted and unpretentious woman, who so faithfully, yet unconsciously, laid the foundations of one of the grandest ecclesiastical structures of modern ages, and whose memory will last as "long as the sun and moon endure."

The few Methodists of Canada who in 1804 bore Barbara Heck to her grave in the old Blue Churchyard, Augusta, might well have exclaimed, "What hath God wrought!" The cause which she had been instrumental in founding had already spread out from New York city over the whole of the United States, and over much of both Canadas. It comprised seven Annual Conferences, four hundred traveling preachers, and more than one hundred and four thousand members. But if we estimate its results in our day, we shall see that it has pleased God to encircle the name of this lowly woman with a halo of surpassing honor, for American Methodism has far transcended all other divisions of the Methodistic movement, and may yet make her name an endeared household word throughout the world. [13]

—————————————————————————

ENDNOTES

1 Bangs and Playter.

2 Minutes, 1815.

3 Letter of Bishop Hedding to the author.

4 Playter, p. 59.

5 Memorials of Methodism in the Eastern States, ii, p. 193.

6 Minutes, 1825.

7 Minutes, 1827.

8 Life and Times of Bangs, p. 77. New York, 1863.

9 Ibid.

10 Playter, p. 70.

11 Canada Minutes, 1834. Bangs (Alphabetic List) is erroneous in both the dates of the beginning and end of his ministry.

12 Carroll's Past and Present, p. 83.

13 Women of Methodism," p. 108, (New York, 1866,) where will be found fuller particulars of Heck and her family. The Embury and Heck families, so singularly joined together in Methodist history, have blended in several neighborhoods, and the descendants of both families are now widely scattered in the Churches of Upper and Lower Canada. "Mrs. Hick, wife of the late Rev. John Hick, Wesleyan minister, Mrs. McKenzie, Mrs. John Torrance, and Mrs. Lunn, all grandchildren of Philip Embury, died happy in God. They have left numerous descendants in Montreal and through Canada, highly respected. Philip Embury's great-great-grandson, John Torrance, Jr., Esq., now fills the honorable and responsible position of treasurer and trustee steward of three of our large Wesleyan Churches in Montreal." (Christ. Ad., Jan. 11, 1866.) Paul and Barbara Heck had five children, namely, "Elizabeth, born in New York in 1766; John, born in the same place in 1767; Jacob, born there, 1769; Samuel, in Camden, N.Y., July 28, 1771; and Nancy, at the same place, 1772. They are all now dead. Elizabeth and Nancy died in Montreal, Samuel and Jacob in Augusta, and John, unmarried, in Georgia, U.S., as early as 1805. Jacob married a Miss Shorts, who, with himself, rests in the country graveyard of the Old Blue Church, Augusta, where rest also Paul and Barbara Heck. Samuel married a Miss Wright; both inferred there. But three of Jacob's children survive; six of Samuel's are still living. His son Samuel was a probationer in the Wesleyan ministry when he was called to his reward; his precious dust also lies in this graveyard. He was eminently pious, a clear-headed theologian, and a methodical preacher. The elder Samuel was an eminent local minister for more than forty years. The ten surviving grandchildren of Paul and Barbara Heck are pious, and many of their great-grandchildren also. For the reasons we have assigned, this graveyard will be dear to every heart with which Methodism and the cause of God are identical. Here are the remains of the once beautiful Catharine Sweitzer, married at the early age or sixteen to Philip Embury on the eve of his embarkation for America; also those of the much respected John Lawrence, who left Ireland in company with the Emburys, and who married Mrs. Embury." — Christian Guardian, Canada.

---

Text scanned and proofread by Rev. & Mrs. Duane V. Maxey
Holiness Data Ministry
P. O. Box 482
Coeur D' Alene, WA 99208

HTML conversion by Paul Leclerc and George Lyons
Copyright 2000 by the Wesley Center for Applied Theology
of Northwest Nazarene University,
Nampa, Idaho 83686.

Text may be freely used for personal or scholarly purposes, provided this notice is left intact.
This text may not be redistributed in any for-profit form or mirrored at any other website without the expressed, written consent of the Wesley Center.

If you have any questions regarding these files, please contact the Wesley Center for Applied Theology.