VOLUME 4 — BOOK VI — CHAPTER XV
REVIEW OF THE PERIOD, 1804 —1820: DEATHS OF WHATCOAT, COKE, ASBURY, AND LEE

Deaths of Preachers — Whatcoat, Character and Death — His Grave — Coke's Death, and Burial in the Indian Ocean — Asbury's Estimate of him — his great Services and Character — Asbury — His Character — Last Scenes of his Life — Funeral Ceremonies at the General Conference of 1816 — Jesse Lee's Death — His Character — His Defeat as Candidate for the Episcopate — His Historical Rank — Conclusion

In casting a glance back over these sixteen years, so replete with great characters and achievements, we are reminded of events which might strike us as catastrophes were it not that they were in the order of Divine Providence, and therefore in "due season," and illustrations of the Methodistic maxim that "God calls home his workmen, but carries on his work." Besides the hosts of men, many of them prominent, who fell by death in the ministerial field, and whose decease has been noticed, Whatcoat, Coke, Asbury, and Lee have all disappeared from the scene as we close the period.

I have heretofore sketched the life and character of Whatcoat as fully as the scanty recorded data will admit. [1] He sustained his episcopal functions with continual disability, from chronic disease, but was ever in motion throughout the whole extent of the Church North, South, East, and West. His beautiful character preached more effectually than his sermons. Peculiarly simple, sober, but serene and cheerful, living as well as teaching his favorite doctrine of sanctification, extremely prudent in his administration, pathetically impressive in discourse, and "made perfect through sufferings," he is pre-eminently the saint in the primitive calendar of American Methodism. In November, 1806, Asbury wrote to Fleming: "Dear Father Whatcoat, after thirteen weeks' illness — gravel, stone, dysentery combined died, a martyr to pain, in all patience and resignation to the will of God. May we, like him, if we live long, live well, and die like him."

He had "finished his sixth episcopal tour through the work after his consecration," says his biographer, [2] "or near that, and, after great suffering, he got an honorable discharge from the Captain of his salvation, and by his permission came in from his post, which he had faithfully kept for fifty years." He took refuge at the home of Senator Bassett, Dover, Del., where he died, "in the full assurance of faith," say the Minutes, July 5, 1806. [3] "He professed," add his brethren, "the justifying and sanctifying grace of God, and all that knew him well might say, If a man on earth possessed these blessings, surely it was Richard Whatcoat."

Nearly a year later Asbury reached Dover, and over his tomb declared that he "knew Richard Whatcoat, from his own age of fourteen to sixty-two years, most intimately — his holy manner of life, in duty at all times, in all places, and before all people, as a Christian and as a minister; his long suffering as a man of great affliction of body and mind, having been exercised with severe diseases and great labors; his charity, his love of God and man, in all its effects, tempers, words, and actions; bearing, with resignation and patience, great temptations, bodily labors, and inexpressible pain. In life and death he was placid and calm. As he lived, so he died."

He was thirty-seven years an itinerant preacher, twenty-two of them in America, six in the episcopate, and died aged seventy. He was buried under the altar of Dover Wesley Chapel, where he had often preached with tears and with power, and where for years his name, inscribed on stone, was a spell of influence to all in the congregation who had known him. [4]

We have witnessed Coke's final departure from the United States in 1804. On his return to England he was made president (in 1805) of the Wesleyan Conference. I have elsewhere recorded, somewhat in detail, his subsequent and sublime life, [5] and have attempted to delineate in the present work his extraordinary character and labors. After his last visit to this country he seemed, for nine years, almost ubiquitous in the United Kingdom, administering the affairs of the Wesleyan Church, founding and conducting its Irish, its Welsh, its "Domestic," and its Foreign Missions, virtually embodying in his own person the whole missionary enterprise of English Methodism. When an old man of nearly seventy years he conceived the project of introducing Methodism into Asia. He presented himself before the British Conference, and, against great opposition, entreated, with tears, to be sent as a missionary to India, offering to defray the expenses of himself and seven chosen colleagues. The Conference could not resist his appeal, and at length, on the 30th of December, 1813, he departed with his little band, consisting of nine persons besides himself, (two of them wives of missionaries,) in a fleet of six Indiamen. Terrible gales swept over them. In the Indian Ocean his health rapidly declined. On the morning of the third of May, 1814, his servant knocked at his cabin door to awake him at his usual time, but heard no response. Opening the door he beheld the lifeless body of the missionary extended on the floor. A "placid smile was upon his countenance." He was cold and stiff, and must have died before midnight. It is supposed that he had risen to call for help, and fell by apoplexy. His cabin was separated by only a thin wainscot from others, in which no noise or struggle had been heard, and it is inferred that he died without violent suffering. Consternation spread among the missionary band, but they lost not their resolution. They prepared to commit him to the deep, and to prosecute, as they might be able, his great design. A coffin was made, and at five o'clock in the afternoon the corpse was solemnly borne up to the leeward gangway, where it was covered with signal flags; the soldiers were drawn up in rank on the deck; the bell of the ship tolled, and the crew and passengers, deeply affected, crowded around the scene. One of the missionaries read the burial service, and the moment that the sun sank below the Indian Ocean the coffin was cast into its depths. He died in his sixty-seventh year. Though the great leader was no more, his spirit remained; and the East Indian Missions of Methodism, "presenting in our day a state of massive strength and inexpressible utility," sprang from the fatal voyage.

The news of his death struck a sensation through all the Methodist world. He was commemorated in funeral sermons in the principal Methodist churches of America. Asbury preached them in all his routes, before the assembled preachers, in Conference, and pronounced him a man "of blessed mind and soul; a gentleman, a scholar, and a bishop, and as a minister of Christ, in zeal, in labors, and in services, the greatest man in the last century."

In the frequent accounts of him in these pages I have not disguised his faults; for, though there was essential greatness in his character, he had, doubtless, characteristic weaknesses also. There have been few great men without them. The faults of such men become the more noticeable, either by contrast with or by partaking of their greatness; and the vanity of ordinary human nature is eagerly disposed, in self-gratulation, to criticize as peculiar defects of superior minds infirmities that are common to all. Coke's attempt with Bishop White to unite the Methodist and Protestant Episcopal Churches has been regarded as a blunder, if not worse than a blunder; but had it been successful it might have appeared quite otherwise. Unquestionably it betrays a want of that keen sagacity which passes for prudence, though it is oftener guile. There was a vein of simplicity running through his whole nature, such as sometimes marks the highest genius. He was profound in nothing except his religious sentiments. A certain capaciousness of soul, really vast, belonged to him, but it never took the character of philosophic generalization. It is impossible to appreciate such a man without taking into the estimate the element of Christian faith. The Christian religion being true, he was among the most rational of men; that being false, he was, like Paul, and all genuine Christians, "of all men the most miserable," and the most irrational. Practical energy was his chief intellectual trait, and if it was sometimes, effervescent [bubbly — DVM], it was never evanescent [transient — DVM]. He had a leading agency in the greatest facts of Methodism, and it was impossible that the series of momentous deeds which mark his career could have been the result of mere accident or fortune. They must have been legitimate to the man. Neither Whitefield nor Wesley exceeded him in ministerial travels. It is probable that no Methodist of his day, it is doubtful whether any Protestant of his day, contributed more from his own property for the spread of the Gospel. His biographer says that he expended the whole of his patrimonial estate, which was large, on his missions and their chapels. He was married twice; both his wives were like-minded with himself, and both had considerable fortunes, which were used like his own. In 1794 was published an account of his missionary receipts and disbursements for the preceding year, in which it appeared that there were due him nearly eleven thousand dollars; but he gave the whole sum to the cause. Flying, during nearly forty years, over England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland; crossing the Atlantic eighteen times; traversing the United States and the West Indies; the first who suggested the organization of English Methodism by Wesley's Deed of Declaration; the organizer, under Wesley, of American Methodism; one of the first, if not the very first, of Protestant bishops in the Western hemisphere; the founder of the Methodist missions in the West Indies, in Africa, and in Asia, as well as in Ireland, Wales, and England; the official and almost sole director of the missionary operations of the denomination during his long public life, and the founder of its first Tract Society, he must be recognized as one of the chief representative men of modern religious history, if not, indeed, as Asbury pronounced him, "the greatest man of the last century" ''as a minister of Christ.''

On the 31st of March, 1816, Francis Asbury fell in death at the head of the hosts of Methodists who had been marshaled and led on, chiefly by himself, over all the republic for nearly half a century. If a distinct portraiture of his character had not been attempted, in the outset of his American career, [6] it would now be superfluous, for he has thus far been the most familiar actor in our story, the dominant hero of American Methodist history. Though not the first, he was the chief founder of the denomination in the new worlds. The history of Christianity, since the apostolic age, affords not a more perfect example of ministerial and personal devotion than was presented in this great man's life. He preached almost daily for more than half a century. During forty-five years he traveled, with hardly an intermission, the North American continent from North to South, and East to West, directing the advancing Church with the skill and authority of a great captain. Beginning his itinerant ministry in England when but seventeen years of age, he came to America in his twenty-sixth year, was ordained bishop of the church when thirty-nine years old, when it comprised less than fifteen thousand members, and but about eighty preachers, and fell in his seventy-first year, commanding an army of more than two hundred and eleven thousand Methodists, and more than seven hundred itinerant preachers. It has been estimated that in his American ministry he preached about sixteen thousand five hundred sermons, or at least one a day, and traveled about two hundred and seventy thousand miles, or six thousand a year; that he presided in no less than two hundred and twenty-four annual Conferences, and ordained more than four thousand preachers. He was, in fine, one of those men of extraordinary, of anomalous greatness, in estimating whom the historian is compelled to use terms which would be irrelevant, as hyperbole, to most men with whom he has to deal. His discrimination of character was marvelous; his administrative talents would have placed him, in civil government or in war, by the side of Richelieu or Caesar, and his success placed him unquestionably at the head of the leading characters of American ecclesiastical history. No one man has done more for Christianity in the western hemisphere. His attitude in the pulpit was solemn and dignified, if not graceful; his voice was sonorous and commanding, and his discourses were often attended with bursts of eloquence "which spoke a soul full of God, and, like a mountain torrent, swept all before it." [7] With Wesley, Whitefield, and Coke, he ranks as one of the four greatest representative men of the Methodistic movement. In American Methodism he ranks immeasurably above all his contemporaries and successors. Notwithstanding his advanced age and shattered health he continued his travels to the last, as we have seen, till he had to be aided up the pulpit steps, and to sit while preaching.

We last took leave of him in the West, some six months before he died, when he wrote: "My eyes fail I will resign the stations to Bishop McKendree I will take away my feet." Thence he journeyed southward, suffering from influenza, which resulted in pulmonary ulceration and consumption. He endeavored to advance northward, to meet, once more, the General Conference at Baltimore, preaching continually on the way. While passing through Virginia he wrote: "I die daily — am made perfect by labor and suffering, and fill up still what is behind. There is no time, no opportunity to take medicine in the day; I must do it at night. I am wasting away with a constant dysentery and cough." In the last entry of his journal (save a single sentence) he says: "My consolations are great. I live in God from moment to moment — broken to pieces." He reached Richmond, Va., and at three o'clock Sunday afternoon, March 24, 1816, preached there in the old Methodist church his last sermon. He was carried to and from the pulpit, and sat while preaching. His faithful traveling companion, Bond, took him to Spottsylvania, where he failed rapidly, and on Sunday 21st, expired, raising both his bands, when unable to speak, in affirmative reply to an inquiry respecting his trust and comfort in Christ.

His remains were disinterred, and borne to Baltimore, at the ensuing General Conference, where, with public solemnities, a sermon from McKendree, and an immense procession, they were laid to rest beneath the altar of Eutaw Street Church.

In that procession, including all the General Conference, and hundreds of other clergymen from the city and neighboring churches, walked Jesse Lee. Thrift, his biographer, who was by his side, says, "The scene was solemn and impressive; Lee's countenance bespoke his emotions. A dignified sorrow, such as veterans led while following to the grave an old companion in arms, was evinced by his words and countenance. They had suffered together, and had long fought in the same ranks. The one had gained his crown, the other was soon to receive his."

In less than six months Lee also had fallen. About the middle of August he went to a camp-meeting near Hillsborough, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. After preaching he was seized with fever; and carried to Hillsborough. All remedies failed. He suffered at first from depression; but "for several days preceding his death he was filled with holy joy. Frequently he cried out, 'Glory, glory, glory! Halleluiah, hallelujah! Jesus reigns!' At another time he spoke with great distinctness and deliberation for nearly twenty minutes, giving directions about his affairs, and sending the assurance he was 'dying in the Lord' to comfort his distant family. Nor did he forget his fellow-laborers. 'Give my respects to Bishop McKendree,' he said, 'and tell him I die in love with all the preachers; that I do love him, and that he lives in my heart.' Having finished his work, he said but little more; but fell asleep on the evening of the 12th of September; 1816." [8] He was borne to Baltimore, and interred in its "old Methodist burial ground."

He was fifty-eight years old. A man of vigorous, though unpolished mind, of rare popular eloquence, and tireless energy, an itinerant evangelist, from the British provinces to Florida, for thirty-five years, a presiding elder for many years, a chief counselor of the Church in its Annual and General Conferences, chaplain to Congress, founder of Methodism in New England, and first historian of the Church, he lacked only the episcopal office to give him rank with Asbury and Coke. Asbury early chose him for that position. Some two or three times it seemed likely that he would be elected to it, but his manly independence and firmness of opinion, in times of party strife, were made the occasions of his defeat. His staunch advocacy of an elective presiding eldership, and his opposition to the ordination of local preachers as elders, (questions of prolonged and spirited controversy,) cost him the suffrages of men who should have been superior to such party considerations, at least in the presence of such a man. But his historic position needed no such addition. No official distinction could enhance its dignity. In public services he may fairly be ranked next to Asbury, and as founder and apostle of eastern Methodism he is above any other official rank. In this respect his historic honor is quite unique for though individual men have, in several other sections of the continent, initiated the denomination, no other founder has, so completely as he, introduced, conducted, and concluded his work, and from no other one man's similar work has proceeded equal advantages to American Methodism.

Thus fell, in arms, but victorious, toward the conclusion of our period, one after another of the most conspicuous heroes of this grand Methodistic battlefield of the new world; the last two, and perhaps the two most important in the American history of the denomination, (in the very year that completed its first half century,) and all of them giving, by both their great deeds and sublime deaths, a sort of epic grandeur and completeness to the history of the Church down to this epoch. In no place can the historian more appropriately drop the curtain of this singular religious drama. And he should have the good sense not to mar it with elaborate reflections, for it needs none. Its every page has been suggestive of lessons, and it requires no epilogue. It demonstrates one obvious and sublime fact: that Christianity, thrown back upon its primordial truths and forces, cannot fail, in its very simplicity, humility, charity, and power, to attain the mastery of the human soul, to win the supremacy of the moral world. This lowly Methodistic story is but the reproduction, in substance, of the apostolic history, and presents, in full vitality, that original, that only example of evangelical propagandism, which, when all dogmatic conflicts and hierarchical pretensions, with their wasted passions and pomps, are recorded as historical failures, will bear forward to universal triumph the ensign of the cross by a catholic, living, working Church of the common people.

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ENDNOTES

1 See vol. ii; vol. iii; vol. iv.

2 Dr. Phoebus: "Memoirs of Bishop Whatcoat," etc., p. 101. New York, 1828; a meager production, out of print.

3 Minutes, 1807.

4 Wesley Chapel stood about a quarter of a mile from Dover. The congregation outgrew its size, and in 1850 its materials were incorporated in a new and costly church in the town. The bishop still sleeps of the old place, near the railroad station. The Philadelphia Conference erected, in 1855, "a beautiful monument" over his grave.

5 History of the Religions Movement, etc., vol. iii, passim. See also the present work, vol. ii.

6 See vol. i, and History of the Religious Movement," etc., vols. ii and iii, passim.

7 Bangs, vol. ii, p. 398.

8 Lee's Life of Lee, p. 503.

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