VOLUME 4 — BOOK V — CHAPTER XXII
REVIEW OF THE PERIOD 1796 — 1804

Numerical Gains — The Ministry — Locations — The Local Ministry — Joshua Marsden's Views of American Methodism — Itinerants who fell by the Yellow Fever — John Dickins' Character and Death — Deaths of Preachers — Geography of the Church — Its rapid Growth, especially in the West — Ratio of its Growth compared with that of the Nation — Conclusion

These eight years were the most prosperous in the history of the Church thus far, surpassing in numerical gains any equal period. They end with more than a hundred and fifteen thousand (115,411) members, and four hundred preachers. [1] The denomination had gained nearly fifty-nine thousand (58,747) communicants, and more than one hundred (107) preachers, more than doubling its membership, and increasing its preachers by more than one third, notwithstanding the great number of "locations," which, as has been repeatedly shown, were not real losses to the ministry, nor hardly to the itinerancy. It gained more members in these eight years than it reported at the end of the first twenty-four of its history. The Philadelphia Conference took the lead, numerically. It returned more than twenty-eight thousand seven hundred (28,712;) Baltimore ranked next, and Virginia third.

The gain of a hundred and seven preachers is no indication of the actual ministerial growth of the Church; a host of its most commanding men retired to the local ranks in these years, but still to labor indefatigably. There were no less than two hundred and seventy-eight candidates received into full membership by the Conferences. There were but twenty-four deaths, and six expulsions or withdrawals; but there were two hundred and four locations, besides many who were put back into the local ministry from a probationary relation to the Conferences. Able local preachers, many of them veterans from the itinerancy, were now scattered over the whole country, and were among the chief founders of the Church in new regions. They were much more numerous than the traveling ministry. No reports of them were yet made in the statistics of the Church; but Lee, who had traveled in all its bounds with Asbury, endeavored to ascertain their number in 1799. His estimate was doubtless much short of the truth, but it gives eight hundred and fifty. There were then but two hundred and sixty-nine traveling preachers. About sixty of these local evangelists were beyond the Alleghenies. Virginia and Maryland had much more than a third of the whole number, New England had twenty-five, and about a quarter of these were in the remote province of Maine.

Near the close of our present period a distinguished English Methodist preacher (Joshua Marsden) visited the United States, (1802,) and has recorded his impressions of American Methodism. He says: "Here I had an opportunity of contemplating the vast extent of the work of God in the western world. I was greatly surprised to meet in the preachers assembled at New York such examples of simplicity, labor, and self-denial. Some of them had come five or six hundred miles to attend the Conference. They had little appearance of clerical costume; many of them had not a single article of black cloth; their good bishops set them the example, neither of whom were dressed in black; but the want of this was abundantly compensated by a truly primitive zeal in the cause of their Divine Master. From these blessed worthies I learned that saving of souls is the true work of a missionary, and felt somewhat ashamed that I so little resembled men who appeared as much dead to the world as though they had been the inhabitants of another planet. The bishops, Asbury and Whatcoat, were plain, simple, venerable persons, both in dress and manners. Their costume was that of former times, the color drab, the waistcoat with large laps, and both coat and waistcoat without any collar; their plain stocks and low-crowned, broad-brimmed hats bespoke their deadness to the trifling ornaments of dress. In a word, their appearance was simplicity itself. They spoke but little, and appeared utterly averse to the frivolous compliments of the world. They were perfect antipodes to 'the thing that mounts the rostrum with a skip,' and had something truly apostolic in their general demeanor. I felt impressed with awe in their presence, and soon perceived that they had established themselves in the esteem and veneration of their brethren; not by the trappings of office, or the pomp and splendor of episcopal parade, but by their vast labors, self-denying simplicity, and disinterested love. These obtained for them the homage of the heart; they were the first in office, because they were first in zeal. Most of the preachers appeared to be young men, yet ministerial labor had impressed its withering seal upon their countenances. I cannot contemplate, without astonishment, the great work God has performed in the United States by means, humanly speaking, so utterly unlikely. Methodism has spread throughout the whole extent of this vast country. Along its mighty lakes and sylvan solitudes, where the population is but thinly scattered, circuits have been formed, chapels built, and the remote settlements, out of the reach of regular pastoral help, have greatly benefited by the visits and labors of the preachers. It is in America we see Methodism in its grandest form. All is here upon a scale of magnitude equal to the grandeur of the lakes, rivers, forests, and mountains of the country. In England Methodism is like a river calmly gliding on; here it is a torrent rushing along, and sweeping all away in its course. Methodism in England is the Methodism of Wesley, methodical, intelligent, and neat; in America it resembles Asbury, it has more roughness and less polish. The good they have done to the blacks is beyond calculation, and the new settlements in different parts of the interior, without such a ministry, might have degenerated into heathens. Methodism has been a peculiar blessing to this new world, which, having no religious establishment, is in many of its remote parts more dependent on such a ministry than can well be conceived by those who never visited the country. Many thousands of the settlers would have been left to precarious and contingent religious instruction, had not the Methodist preachers, with an alacrity and zeal worthy the apostolic age, spread themselves abroad in every direction, and become every man's servant for Christ's sake." [2]

Of the twenty-four itinerants who died in the field, in this period, we have already noticed Hezekiah C. Wooster, the Canadian pioneer, Tobias Gibson, the Southwestern founder and martyr, and William Ormond, the Southern "abolitionist," who fell by the yellow fever. That pestilence prevailed along the Atlantic coast from the South even as far north as Portsmouth, Me., spreading terror everywhere. It desolated Philadelphia in 1793, and reappeared in the North in 1798. Asbury, returning from New England, wrote, in September of the latter year: "The fever is breaking out again in Portsmouth, and it is awful in Philadelphia. It seemeth as if the Lord would humble or destroy that city, by stroke after stroke, until they acknowledge God. Very serious appearances of this fever are now in New York." Later he wrote: "Most awful times in Philadelphia and New York, citizens flying before the fever as if it were the sword. I now wait the providence of God to know which way to go." The General Conference had hitherto been held in winter or autumn, but in 1800 it met, for the first time, in May, through fear of a return of the plague, though it had been appointed for the autumn, a change which it has always since followed; but the preachers braved it at their ministerial posts, and several of them heroically perished. Among its victims was John Ragan, an Irishman, who, after traveling in Maryland, Nova Scotia, and New Jersey, took the disease in Philadelphia, and died in 1797; a very "conscientious man," of "great solitude of mind," "remarkably fond of books," and a successful preacher. James King died of the epidemic at Charleston, S. C., the same year; a "friend of liberty," as well as religion, who had traveled "extensively and preached faithfully" in Georgia and South Carolina, and "gave his life, his labors, and his fortune" to the Church. William Early perished by it, a "zealous and a powerful preacher;" "it was supposed," says Lee, "that he took the yellow fever in Newbern, N. C.; but he continued to travel till the fever came on him so severely that he was forced to lie down by the side of the road, where one of the neighbors found him, and asked him to his house,' where he went, took to his bed, and, after a few days, died;" in the hour of death "he gave tokens of victory." Benton Higgin was another victim, who fell, in 1799, at Baltimore, the eighth who had thus suffered down to this date, say the Minutes. "This man of God," they add, "might have probably saved his life by flight; but he stayed, to live or die, in his station, and charge of souls." In 1800 James Tollison was another martyr, at Portsmouth, Va., a "man of excellent understanding," who had preached from Georgia to New York. He made his will, says Lee, and left all he possessed to his fellow-itinerants; even his clothes were brought to the next Conference and given to them.

But the most distinguished victim was John Dickins, who has often appeared in these pages as one of the chieftains of early Methodism, and who died at his post, as Book Agent and preacher, at Philadelphia, in 1798. He was a man of classical learning, a sound divine, a rare counselor, and a powerful preacher. "According to his time and opportunity," say the Minutes, "he was one of the greatest characters that ever graced the pulpit, or adorned the society of Methodists. After standing the shock of two seasons, 1793 and 1797, of the prevailing fever, he fell in the third and awful visitation of 1798." A short time before his death he wrote to Asbury: "I sit down to write as in the jaws of death. Whether Providence may permit me to see your face again in the flesh I know not. Perhaps I might have left the city, as most of my friends and brethren have done. I commit myself and family into the hands of God for life or death.' " Dying, he said to his wife, "Glory be to God, I can rejoice in his will, whether for life or death! I know all is well. Glory be to Jesus! I hang upon thee. Glory be to thee, O my God! I have made it my constant business, in my feeble manner, to please thee, and now, O God, thou dost comfort me!" Clasping his hands, with tears running down his cheeks, he cried, "Glory be to God! Glory, glory be to God! My soul now enjoys such sweet communion with him, that I would not give it for all the world. Glory be to Jesus! O glory be to my God! I have not felt so much for seven years. Love him, trust him, praise him."

Besides these victims of the pestilence, the obituary list of the Minutes during these years records Albert Van Nostrand in 1797, at White Plains, N. Y., "circumspect and approved;" Michael H. R. Wilson, in 1798, at Strasburgh, Pa., "more than conqueror" in death; John N. Jones, at Charleston, S. C., 1798, "with unshaken confidence and joy in God;" William Wilkerson, in Gloucester County, Va., in 1798, "owned and honored as a witness for Jesus;" Thomas Haymond, in Ohio, in 1799, a man of "great goodness of heart, often laboring beyond his strength," a pioneer in Western Pennsylvania and Ohio; Robert Bonham, 1800, in Baltimore, a young man of "gracious heart, upright walk, and lively ministry;" Abraham Andrews, an old English Methodist, of "great strictness of life;" Salathiel Weeks, in Virginia, who "labored faithfully," and "wasted away with consumption;" in the same year, Charles Burgoon, who was of "a dejected spirit," "worn out with pain," but "died in peace;" Lewis Hunt, in Fleming County, Ky., in 1801, the young itinerant who followed Kobler in Ohio, and returned thence to his father's house to die of consumption, "in assured peace with God;" in 1802, in Hampshire County, Va., Edmund Wyman, who, though "much debilitated," and "apparently near his end," a year before his death, continued to travel till he could do so no more, and fell asleep in great "tranquillity;" in Gloucester, N. J., in 1802, John Leach, circumspect, "pious," "useful," a sufferer of "oppressive affliction," but who "died in great peace;" in Monmouth County, N. J., 1803, Anthony Turck, the Dutch itinerant whom we have met in the Pennsylvania Mountains, "a holy man, indefatigable, successful, subject to great afflictions," with "increasing sweetness in communion with God" toward his end, and "victory in death;" in Virginia, Nathan Jarrett, "a man of great zeal," "pleasing voice," and exceedingly affable, who, after lying insensible some time, "broke out in a rapture," singing, "Behold, the light is come! The glorious conquering King is nigh to take his exiles home," and in a few minutes fell asleep in Jesus; Rezin Cash, "a man of great solemnity of mind and goodness of heart," who "languished away," and "died in peace;" in 1804, at Ashgrove, N. Y., the scene of Embury, Bininger, and Ashton's last years, David Brown, a devout Irishman, who fell there laboring for the Church in the wilderness, dying in "a floodtide of joy," and uttering, as his last words, "My anchor is cast within the vail."

The General Conference of 1804 defined, and published in the Discipline, the boundaries of the Annual Conferences. They show the enlarged geography of the Church.

1. The New England Conference includes the District of Maine, and the Boston, New London and Vermont Districts.

2. The New York Conference comprehends the New York, Pittsfield, Albany, and Upper Canada Districts.

3. The Philadelphia Conference includes the remainder of the state of New York, all New Jersey, that part of Pennsylvania which lies on the east side of the Susquehanna River, except what belongs to the Susquehanna District, the state of Delaware, the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and all the rest of the peninsula.

4. The Baltimore Conference comprises the remainder of Pennsylvania, the Western Shore of Maryland, the Northern Neck of Virginia, and the Greenbrier District.

5. The Virginia Conference includes all that part of Virginia which lies on the south side of the Rappahannock River, and east of the Blue Ridge, and all that part of North Carolina which lies on the north side of Cape Fear River, except Wilmington; also the circuits on the branches of the Yadkin.

6. The South Carolina Conference comprehends the remainder of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.

7. The Western Conference includes the states of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio, and that part of Virginia which lies west of "the great river Kanawha, with the Illinois and the Natchez."

Methodism was now entrenched in every state of the Union, and was penetrating every one of its opened territories. The few itinerants who had followed Gibson to the Natchez country invaded West Florida and East Louisiana. The germs of Churches now obscurely planted in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, were never to die, but to yield, in our day, the mighty harvest of 116,000 members and 600 preachers in Ohio; 90,000 members and 450 preachers in Indiana; 90,000 members and 560 preachers in Illinois; and to spread out sheltering boughs over all the West to the northern lakes and the Pacific coast. We shall hereafter see the yet feeble forces of Western Methodism, hitherto so scattered that we have hardly been able to make anything like adherent record of them, consolidated into thirty-five powerful Conferences, with three thousand itinerants, and half a million communicants, aside from the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and all other branches of the denomination. [3] Though it began in the West nearly a quarter of a century after its beginning in the East, and was yet in the former but a dispersed and struggling band, it was destined to embody, in its ultramontane Conferences by our day, fully one half of its ministerial strength, and to move forward in the van of all the other Protestant Christianity of the Valley of the Mississippi.

But in all other sections of the Republic, not excepting New England, the inherent vitality and progressive energy of Methodism had now become indisputable, and it was henceforward to advance with a celerity [speed — DVM] unknown to any other form of Christianity in the nation. In the last decade of the last century (1790 — 1800) the ratio of the increase of the population of the United States was 35.02 per cent., that of Methodism, meanwhile, was but 12.60 per cent; but this disproportion between the growth of the nation and the denomination was to cease for our age, if not forever, with the close of the eighteenth century. [4] Excepting the periods of the secession of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and of the southern Rebellion, the ratio of the increase of the Church has far outsped that of the nation. Even dating from 1790, and making no allowance for these two formidable drawbacks, the average ratio of the increase of the Methodist Episcopal Church has been, down to our day, (1865,) 56.85 per cent. For each ten years, while that of the population of the republic has been 35.82 per cent. The Church has led the nation at the rate of twenty-three per cent. Each decade. And yet this statement, applying only to the Methodist Episcopal Church, gives no adequate estimate of the incredible vigor of Methodism, for about half its numerical force in the United States is outside of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The astonishing gains of the latter have been made in spite of secessions, (averaging about one for every fifteen years,) by which half the actual strength of American Methodism stands organized beyond its ecclesiastical lines, though identical with it in doctrine and internal discipline, and nearly so in ecclesiastical economy.

We stand, then, at present (1804) in a most interesting stage of its progress, about midway of the decade in which, after faltering long, in the ratio of its growth, behind that of the country, it was about to wheel from its position in the rear and advance with its triumphant banner to the front, not only of all other denominations, but of the nation itself, in the ratio of its increase; and thenceforward, for good or ill, lead the Christianity of the North American continent, adding to its ranks an annually masses of population which not only astonished its own humble laborers, but the Christian world, and sometimes, in a single year, exceeded the entire membership of denominations which had been in the field generations before it. At such a crisis, the detail with which I have thus far recorded the early history of this curious and important religious development, will not perhaps appear irrelevant, for it is by such facts, showing its genetic conditions, but too often ignored in history, that we are to learn its true genius and probable destiny, and unfold, to its present and future people, its primitive and best lessons. The facts of its further progress, though scarcely less striking, will be more general, and can be more rapidly narrated.

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ENDNOTES

1 Bangs, (II, p. 17l,) following the Minutes, gives 113,184; but, as I have stated, the Minutes of 1804 give the Western statistics of the prior year; those for 1804 are given in the Minutes of 1805.

2 Marsden's Narrative of a Mission, etc., p. 107. London, 1827.

3 Minutes of 1805, and Goss's Statistical History of Methodism, corrected by later data.

4 Except at the time of the secession of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, (which, however, did not affect the general numerical strength of American Methodism,) and during the late war. My estimates are by decades from 1790.

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