8249.R53H93

Hundred years of Richmond Methodism
 

 

 

TRINITY CHURCH,
A HUNDRED YEARS OF
RICHMOND METHEDISM

THE STORY AS TOLD AT THE
CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF

1899

EDITED BY

EDWARD LEIGH PELL

RICHMOND VA
THE IDEA PUBLISHING CO
1007 EAST MAIN ST
 

‘ *.Q, E. Flanhart Printing Co., L. H. Jenkins, Binder,
Richmond, Va, Richmond, Va.
EDITOR’S NOTE.

In the selection of material for this volume the aim
has been, first, to preserve all of the historical and
biographical information presented at, or brought
to light by the Centennial celebration; and second,
to publish such other Centennial matter of related
character as the remaining space would allow.

While it is to be regretted that many good things
spoken at the Centennial have not found a place in
these pages, it will be readily perceived that the publi-
cation of all the addresses would have destroyed the
unity of the volume and neutralized its historical
flavor.

The main object has been not to tell the story of
the Centennial celebration, but rather to record the
deeds, principles and methods which made such a
celebration possible.
INTRODUCTORY.

The idea of celebrating the one hundredth anni-
versary of the establishment of Methodism in Rich-
mond originated with the Rev. Joseph T. Mastin,
pastor of Trinity Church. It was fitting that Trinity,
“the old mother church,” should take the initiative
in such a movement, and to this end Mr. Mastin,
early in the autumn of 1898, brought the matter to
the attention of his Official Board, and it was referred
to a committee for consideration. At the next meet-
ing of the Board the committee recommended that
the Methodist Preachers’ Meeting of Richmond and
Manchester “be requested to adopt some plan to
properly celebrate the Centennial of Methodism in
Richmond; ” whereupon Mr. Charles W. Hardwicke
offered as a substitute a resolution committing
Trinity Church to the inauguration of the movement,
and inviting the codperation of all the Methodists
of the city.

The substitute was adopted, and on the evening of
January 26, 1899, at the invitation of the Board,
nearly two hundred representative Methodists of
Richmond met at Trinity Church. After a delightful
social hour, during which supper was served by the

[5]
6 INTRODUCTORY.

ladies of the Church, the meeting was called to order
by the pastor, and the Rev. R. T. Wilson, presiding
elder of the Richmond District, was requested to take
the chair. A brief discussion revealed the fact that
the entire Methodist community was in hearty sym-
pathy with the movement, and on motion of Col.
John P. Branch it was unanimously resolved “to
celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the estab-
lishment of the Methodist Church in this city.” A
committee composed of C. W. Hardwicke (chairman),
Rev. J. T. Mastin, R. H. Hardesty, W. H. Allison,
George L. Bidgood, John P. Branch, J. Thompson
Brown, H. Seldon Taylor, J. 5. Brauer, F. W. Graves,
H. C. Osterbind, C. E. Brauer, A. Maupin, E. M.
Redford and W. F. Hudson was appointed to take
the matter in hand, and to report at a meeting of the
pastors and official members to be held at Centenary
Church in March.

This committee met shortly afterwards at the
residence of Col. John P. Branch, and appointed the
following committee on programme: C. W. Hard-
wicke, Rev. J. T. Mastin, Col. John P. Branch,
Dr. W. V. Tudor, Captain W. H. Allison, Dr. W.
G. Starr, H. Seldon Taylor and Dr. J. Powell
Garland. At this meeting it was resolved to invite
the churches of Manchester, Barton Heights and
Highland Park to unite with the Richmond churches
in the celebration.

The gathering of the pastors and official members
at Centenary on the evening of the ninth of March
INTRODUCTORY. 7

was a notable event. Here, as at Trinity, the social
feature was made prominent, and the evening was
marked by many happy manifestations of fraternal
feeling. The meeting at Trinity had awakened a
deep interest in the welfare of Methodism as related
to the community at large, and a sentiment had been
developed in favor of making the Centennial the
beginning of a great church-extension movement.
This sentiment found expression at Centenary in the
following resolution, which was adopted:

Resolved, That we, the Methodists of Richmond and Man-
chester, form an organization to be known as the Church Exten-
sion Society of Richmond and Vicinity, retaining the present
officers and committees until the first Thursday in November,
and that officers be elected semi-annually thereafter—that is to
say, on the first day of November and the first day of May of
each year.

At this meeting the Centennial Committee was
enlarged by the addition of Messrs. J. H. Busby, A.
D. Shotwell, W. K. Bache, A. H. Thomas and R.
F. Yarborough, representing the churches of Man-
chester, Barton Heights and Highland Park.

The enthusiastic codperation of all the churches
having been obtained the success of the celebration
was assured, and the preparations were now pushed
rapidly to completion. Never were plans more
wisely laid or more faithfully executed. The churches
were fortunate in having such a leader as Mr. Mastin,
whose enthusiasm kindled everyone with whom he
came in contact; and Mr. Mastin was fortunate in
é& INTRODUCTORY.

having at his back a committee representative of the
best executive ability of the churches.

The Methodist Preachers’ Meeting of Richmond
and Manchester adopted by a rising vote a resolution
of thanks to Mr. Mastin “for his untiring efforts
to make the Centennial a notable event in the history
of Methodism in this city.”

Among those who rendered distinguished service
in the movement the name of the chairman of the
committee, Mr. Charles W. Hardwicke, is worthy of
special mention.
CONTENTS.
PAGE.
THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION . : 7 » IL

THE MAKING OF METHODISM IN RICHMOND

I. METHODISM IN RICHMOND FOR ONE HUNDRED

YrEarRs. By A. G. Brown, D. D. ‘ 7 » 25

II. CENTENARY AND HER COLONIES. By the Rev.
W. W. Lear . a 3 7 . 5 : - 55
III. THE Work OF THE LAYMAN’S UNION. - 63

IV. THE SuNDAY SCHOOL AND THE EPWORTH
LEAGUE . ! ‘ 3 - é ‘ - 66

THE MAKERS OF METHODISM IN RICHMOND
I. MEN THAT MADE METHODISM. By the Rev.

J. J. Lafferty, D. L. . : ‘ : é . 73
II. GEORGE FERGUSSON, SAMUEL PUTNEY, AND
WILLIAM WILLIS. By the Rev. J.C. Reed . 93
III. Toe Rev. PHILIP COURTNEY . 5 r - 02
IV. WiiLi1aAM ALLISON. By W.G. Starr, D. D. + 05
V. RICHARD WHITFIELD . - . a . . «Ir2
VI. JAMES M. Tavyor. By W. G. Starr, D. D. . 16
VII. CHARLES TaLBoTr 3 : : . . . 21
VIII. CoRNELIUS CREW. a : ‘ é : . 123
IX. Davip S. DoccETT aND THOMAS BRANCH. By
Paul Whitehead, D. D. c : ‘ : - 126,

[9]
10 CONTENTS.

X. Asa SNYDER . - : ‘ ‘ . :

XI. ALBERT L. Wxst . ; , ; : j .
XII. Winry1amM Hoyt RICHARDSON . :
XIII. T. L. D. WayForD a 3 ‘ ‘ . :
XIV. ELuct LADIES .

CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES

I. THE INFLUENCE OF METHODISM IN THE HIs-
TORY OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. By W.
G. Starr, D. D. . 3 ‘ - - F
IL Business INTERESTS AS AFFECTED BY METH-
ODIsM. By Col. John P. Branch 5 . -
III. THE CONNECTIONAL IDEA AND THE LocaL
CuurcH. By W.V. Tudor, D. D. . .
IV. METHODISM AND CIty EVANGELIZATION. By
W. J. Young, D. D. . 2 . . -
V. THE Social AND REVIVAL MEETINGS OF
METHODISM. By Henry EH. Johnson, D. D.

PAGE.
139

145
148
150

152

I61

189

Ig2

208
THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION.
APRIL 23-27, 1899.
THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION.

The Centennial was celebrated under the law of
liberty. It was meet that the spirit of the fathers
should have the right of way, and it was assumed that
the spirit of the fathers would not choose a way
through the intricacies of imposing ceremony. And
so, instead of a function there was an experience-
meeting; and instead of a parade there was a love-
feast. From beginning to end it was an affair of the
heart.

It began early in the morning of the twenty-third
of April—a Sunday of rare beauty. The congrega-
tion that thronged the lecture room of Trinity Church
at the opening service came already imbued with the
spirit of the hour. The tide of feeling rose with the
gathering of the people, and before the meeting
began it had run over in many a thrilling burst of
song. ;

The Rev. J. T. Mastin, pastor of Trinity, spoke fi
words of welcome, and in presenting the Rev. Dr.
Alexander G. Brown as leader of the meeting, said:
“ Dr. Brown was the first pastor of this church, and
the last pastor of the old church on Franklin street.
Probably the first service in this building was held

[33]
14 RICHMOND MHETHODISM.

in this room. It is fitting therefore that the initial
Centennial service should be held here, and that it
should be conducted by Dr. Brown.”

It was an experience-meeting of the old type. Dr.
Brown read a Scripture lesson, and the congregation
sang, “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.”
Then Mr. J. W. Fergusson, an honored member of
Trinity, and the oldest official member of the Metho-
dist Church in Richmond, led in prayer, and the
meeting was open for testimonies. It was a memora-
ble hour. The atmosphere fairly quivered with the
spirit of the past, and there were times when the walls
that separated the visible from the invisible seemed
a mere tissue, too thin to keep out the sound of
voices from beyond.

The main audience room was packed to the doors
when Bishop Wilson began the eleven o’clock service.
The opening hymn, “ Amazing Grace How Sweet
The Sound,” sung as the old fathers loved to sing it,
struck the key-note of the hour. In this service, as
indeed in all the exercises of the week, the entire
audience came under the spell of the wonderful old
tunes that had been resurrected for the occasion.
The burden of the Bishop’s sermon was that only
those things which are pure and good shall survive
and triumph. The text was Matthew 5:17: “ Think
not that I am come to destroy the law or the
prophets; I am not come to destroy but to fulfill.”
Dr. Paul Whitehead and Dr. J. J. Lafferty assisted
in the devotional exercises.
THE CENTENNIAL OELEBRATION. 16

Services appropriate to the day were held in nearly
all the churches. In the morning the Rev. E. E.
Hoss, LL. D., editor of the “ Nashville Christian
Advocate,” preached at Park Place, Dr. William G.
Starr, at Laurel Street, and the Rev. R. Finley Gayle
at Broad Street. At night Bishop Wilson preached
at Centenary, Dr. Hoss at Broad Street and Dr. W.
V. Tudor at Union Station. Several pastors who
occupied their own pulpits preached Centennial
sermons. At all the churches there were great con-
gregations and many people were turned away for
lack of room. A pleasurable incident of the day
was the playing of old tunes on the Centenary chime.

The Sunday School reunion at Trinity Church in
the afternoon was attended by representatives of
every denomination and every sphere of life. Among
the persons of distinction in the audience were the
Governor of the State and the Mayor of the City.
The exercises, which were conducted by the pastor,
included addresses by the Hon. Addison Maupin,
president of the Methodist Sunday School Society of
Richmond, and the Rev. J. C. Reed (a former pastor
of the church), and impromptu speeches by Governor
Tyler, Dr. W. V. Tudor, Dr. J. Powell Garland (who
was at one time pastor of Trinity), the Rev. James
Cannon, Jr., and Mr. George L. Bidgood. Mr.
Maupin spoke on “ The School of the Present,” Mr.
Reed on “The School of the Future.” Governor
Tyler gave some delightful reminiscences of his work
as a superintendent of a Methodist Sunday School.
16 RIOHMOND METHODISM.

In a brief sketch of the history of Trinity Sunday
School, Mr. Mastin said that it is the oldest Sunday
School in continuous operation in the State, having
maintained its organization without a break since
1814. The school at first met in the gallery of the
church on Nineteenth and Franklin streets, but the
class-meeting being held at the same hour in the body
of the church, the work was so seriously embarrassed
by the songs and shouts of the brethren that a change
of quarters became necessary, and it was moved to
the school-house of Miss Mary Bowles, a Methodist
lady of remarkable gifts and wide influence.

Mr. Mastin’s reference to Miss Bowles led to a
happy incident. The Rev. James Cannon, Jr., arose
and said:

“T have just learned of an instance which I think
will be of interest at this time. Since your remarks
about Miss Bowles this card which I hold in my hand
has been handed to me. It reads as follows:

‘

On one side—

“‘They found the Child inthe Temple, sitting in the midst of
the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions.”’—
St. Luke, 2nd Chapter, 46th verse.
M. B.
Richmond, Va., Dec. 25th, 1828.

“ On the other side—

Master Wallace is entitled to one dollar for punctual attend-
ance, good behavior, and the uncommon progress he has made
in learning. M. B.

To Mr. and Mrs. Bennett.

1
 

 

 

 

 

THE Rev. JOSEPH T. MASTIN,

Pastor Trinity Church,
THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. 7

“This card was given to the late Dr. W. W.
Bennett when he was seven years old, was kept by
him in his pocket-book to the day of his death, when
it was removed and has been carefully preserved
since. Who can tell what influence it had upon his
long and active life!”

After Sunday the meetings were held during the
day at Broad Street Church, and in the evening (with
one exception), at Centenary; and were presided over
alternately by Dr. J. Powell Garland, presiding elder
of the West Richmond District, and the Rev. R. T.
Wilson, presiding elder of the Richmond District.
The exercises on Monday began at eleven o’clock
with a service of song conducted by Dr. Tudor.
The singing was led by a chorus of a hundred voices,
which had been trained for the celebration under the
direction of Dr. Tudor by Mr. J. L. Mitchell, choir-
master, and Mr. Shepherd Webb, organist. At the
conclusion of this service Dr. E. E. Hoss delivered
an address on “The Sources of Power in Metho-
dism.”

In the afternoon there were addresses by Col. A.
S. Buford of Broad Street Church, and Col. John
P. Branch of Centenary, on “Our Church in its
Relations to Business. Life;” and a paper by Dr.
Alexander G. Brown on “ Methodism in Richmond
for One Hundred Years,” which on account of the
author’s indisposition was read by Prof. R. E. Black-
well of Randolph-Macon College.

2
18 RICHMOND METHODISU.

In the evening at Centenary Bishop Wilson de-
livered an address on Foreign Missions.

Tuesday had been set apart as missionary day, but
there were necessary changes in the programme
which gave to the exercises a varied character. At
the morning meeting Dr. J. J. Lafferty portrayed
the trials and triumphs of the men who made Metho-
dism, and Bishop Wilson spoke on Foreign Missions,
with special reference to the work of the Woman’s
Board. In the afternoon, Dr. Henry E. Johnson,
made an address on “ The Social and Revival Meet-
ings of Methodism,” which prepared the way for
an experience meeting, during which the entire
audience was swept by a surge of emotion, and
the thrilling scenes of Sunday morning were repeated.

In the evening at Centenary Dr. W. J. Young,
pastor of Epworth Church, Norfolk, spoke on
“ Methodism and City Evangelization.” The Rev.
W. B. Beauchamp, who was on the programme for
an address on “The Open Door for City Mission
Work in Richmond,” was too unwell to fill his en-
gagement, but his address appears in this volume.

Wednesday morning Dr. William V. Tudor spoke
on “ The Connectional Idea and the Local Church,”
and the Rev. R. Finley Gayle on “ What the Church
is to Me.” The afternoon meeting was devoted
to the memory of the heroes who helped make
Methodism what it is in Richmond. The Rev. James
C. Reed recalled the lives of George Fergusson,
Samuel Putney and William Willis—names identified
THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. 19

with the earliest history of Richmond Methodism.
Dr. W. G. Starr read brief sketches of William Allison
and James M. Taylor, leading spirits who rendered
eminent service to the’ Church “in the midst of the
century,” and the Rev. W. W. Lear read a historical
paper relating to the same period, entitled “ Cente-
nary and her Colonies.” Dr. Paul Whitehead read
a character sketch of David S. Doggett and also of
Thomas Branch, representative Methodists of the
generation that has just passed away.

At night Dr. William G. Starr spoke at Centenary
Church on “The Influence of Methodism in the
History of the American Republic.”

Thursday was Sunday-School day. At the morn-
ing meeting the Hon. Addison Maupin gave a brief
sketch of the Sunday School work of Richmond and
adjacent districts; and the Hon. John Lamb, member
of Congress, delivered an address on the influence
and possibilities of the Sunday School. A feature of
the day was the presence of the Sunday School
Editor of the Church, Dr. James Atkins, who spoke
in the morning on “The Sunday School as an
Educator,” and in the afternoon on “ The Old-time
School and the New.” Other speakers in the after-
noon were Mr. Gilbert J. Hunt of Richmond, who
gave some reminiscences of his work as a Superin-
tendent, and the Rev. C. L. Bane, who prepared the
way for a Sunday School experience-meeting.

The celebration reached its culmination in the
closing exercises, which were held Thursday night in
20 RIOHMOND METHODISM.

Broad Street Church. Although it was known that
the evening would be devoted wholly to an old-time
love-feast, the people came in such numbers that it
became necessary to hold an overflow meeting in
the basement. The exercises in the main auditorium
were conducted by Dr. Tudor, while the overflow
meeting was in charge of Dr. H. E. Johnson. A
pleasing incident at the beginning of the love-feast
was the spontaneous adoption of a suggestion made
by Dr. Garland that the audience, by a rising vote,
tender its thanks to the Rev. J. T. Mastin, to whose
efforts the success of the Centennial was mainly
due. Almost the entire congregation partook of the
elements of the feast, and probably more than half
a hundred persons testified to their love for Christ.
The secular press, in reporting the meeting, thought
it worth while to note that among those who spoke
were representatives of the highest walks of life.
Many of the testimonies were deeply affecting, and
together with the singing of the old-time hymns
kept the audience in a tremor of emotion. The
presence of the Holy Spirit was shown by many
infallible proofs. Souls were converted and wan-
derers were reclaimed. The last moments were full
of tenderness. “The Old Ship of Zion” was sung
as it has probably never been sung since the heroic
age of Methodism, and the meeting came to its close
amid showers of tears and of blessing.

Thus ended one of the greatest religious festivals
Methodism has ever known. The exercises furnished
THE CENTENNIAL OELEBRATION. a1

little material for narrative, being singularly devoid
of parade and sensational incident, but the addresses
furnished much rich material for record, as a glance
at the following pages will show. The best part of
the feast—the revival of sacred memories, the pro-
found stirring of the emotions, and the gracious
manifestations of the Holy Spirit—will have perma-
nent record, it is confidently believed, in the future
of Richmond Methodism and in the lives of a multi-
tude of Richmond Methodists.
THE MAKING OF METHODISM IN
RICHMOND.
i,

METHODISM IN RICHMOND FOR ONE
HUNDRED YEARS.

BY ALEXANDER G. BROWN, D. D.

It will be readily perceived that the subject assigned
to me is too broad to be treated with anything like
thoroughness in the time allotted to this address.
I will not be expected therefore to present a con-
nected history except in outline, tracing as I may be
able the numerical and material growth of Richmond
Methodism from the year 1799, when our first house
of worship was built and when the membership was
only twenty-eight, to this centennial year, when we
have fifteen churches and a membership of 6,458.

Accepting as our starting point the first Methodist
church built in the city of Richmond in the year 1799,
I will ask you to go with me to the site of that sacred
edifice, on the northeast corner of Nineteenth and
Franklin streets.

The house was built of brick, fronting thirty-five
feet on Franklin street, and running back forty feet
in a line with Nineteenth street; and although when
compared with the church architecture of to-day it

[25]
26 RIOHMOND METHODISH.

may be said to have been an inexpensive and un-
attractive edifice, yet as a matter of fact, it surpassed
in cost, quality and seating capacity the old colonial
church of St. John’s parish.

This, our first church, was formally set apart to the
worship of Almighty God early in the year 1800, when
there were only twenty-eight white Methodists in the
city, and these for the most part not of the native
population but immigrants from England and else-
where. The first pastor in charge was Thomas Lyell,
who was transferred by Bishop Asbury from the
Baltimore to the Virginia Conference in May, 1799.
He was a comparatively young man, a good speaker
and full of zeal in the ministry. His talents were of
the popular type, and he soon became a great favorite
and won the admiration and confidence of the com-
munity.

Thanks to the old Baltimore Conference, and to
the venerable and revered Bishop Asbury for the
gift of this man of God who first planted Methodism
firmly in Virginia’s capital city! It is refreshing to
recall that in those early days our episcopacy did not
hesitate when necessary to exercise the transfer
power, and that the transferred brother, when he
came, received a brother’s welcome and worked as
a brother in the name and to the glory of God.

Soon after coming to Richmond Mr. Lyell began
to arrange for the building of this first house of
worship, and after a laborious effort succeeded in
having it completed and in possession of the congre-
THH MAKING OF RICHMOND METHODISM. a

gation by the close of the first and only year of his
pastorate. Indeed, it appears to have been ready for
use before that time. “I would have preached within
the walls of our new house of worship at Richmond,”
writes Bishop Asbury in his journal, September 8,
1799, “ but the excessive rains we had prevented.”

Previous to the erection of this first church, the
Methodists were permitted to worship in the old
Henrico County courthouse, located on East Main
street, where the present courthouse now stands. In
a short while, however, this privilege was withdrawn
on complaint of the people residing in the vicinity
that the loud singing and shouting of the enthusiastic
brethren was a serious disturbance of their peace.
They were compelled therefore to betake themselves
to the common, and to worship, as best they could,
in the open air under the broad canopy of heaven.
But the Lord, who opened the heart of Lydia, Paul’s
first European convert, opened the way for the
Methodist Church through the heart of an elect lady
whose name and noble deeds should never be for-
gotten by our Methodist people.

Among the strangers from abroad who had settled
in Richmond was a family by the name of Parrott.
Though neither rich nor influential, they seem to have
possessed a comfortable home, with means sufficient
to enable them to help their brethren and to dispense
a generous hospitality. Mr. Parrott, though not a
member of the church, was warmly attached to the
Methodists and showed them great kindness and
28 RICHMOND METHODISH.

liberality. His wife and daughters were Wesleyan
Methodists of the best type, full of zeal and liberality,
ever ready to do anything in their power for the cause
of Christ. The family resided on the south side of
Main street, near the first market, and their house
was recognized as the Methodist preacher’s home.
Bishop Asbury refers in complimentary terms to this
family in his journal. “Who could be kinder
to us than Mr. Parrott and his wife?” he asks.
Again after a visit to this family accompanied by Dr.
Coke and Richard Whatcoat, he makes this entry:
“Who could make sickly travelers more welcome
than Mr. Parrott and his wife?” There was in the
rear of the Parrott residence a large building, which
had been used as a barn or stable. With the consent
and cooperation of her husband, Mrs. Parrott caused
this building to be fitted up for a place of worship
for the Methodist people, and here the feeble band of
Richmond Methodists assembled regularly for wor-
ship.

In this lowly retreat, many of the ablest and most
eloquent of the early Methodist preachers dispensed
the word of Life, God being graciously with them
and revealing to them his power and glory. Among
them was Asbury, the recognized apostle and founder
of American Methodism; Dr. Coke, the great scholar
and missionary, who gave not only a large fortune
but a great personality—and his own life also—to the
work of Christian missions in this and in other lands.
I may also add the names of McKendree, Jesse Lee
THE MAKING OF RICHMOND METHODISM. 29

and Bishop Whatcoat—names that have been made
immortal not only in Methodist history, but in the
hearts of thousands and tens of thousand whose souls
have been saved through the Methodist ministry.

The congregation having grown too large to be ac-
commodated in the “ stable church,” as it was called,
application was made for the privilege of returning
to the county courthouse. This was granted, and
here the Methodists continued to worship until their
church was completed.

Richmond had been for some years an appointment
on a circuit, but in May, 1799, it was made a separate
pastoral charge, or station, and, as already stated,
the Rev. Thomas Lyell was assigned as its pastor.
He held service every Sunday morning in the old
county courthouse, and in the afternoon of the same
day preached in the hall of the House of Delegates,
to which his talents attracted large crowds.

It is well known that in 1772 Methodism was
planted and took root at Norfolk, and quickly spread
through the cities and counties of the southside
section of the State, under the leadership and power-
ful ministry of Robert Williams, to whom belongs
the honor of having been the founder and great
apostle of Methodism in this Commonwealth. As
Norfolk was in comparatively easy and regular com-
munication with Richmond, it seems strange that
twenty-eight years should have elapsed before Metho-
dism was organized in Richmond, and before any
attempt was made to provide a house of worship for
80 RICHMOND METHODISM.

its people in our capital city. But perhaps it is not
less surprising that at a time when the entire popula-
tion of Richmond did not exceed 5,000, and when the
inhabitants were for the most part indifferent, if not
hostile, to religious enterprises, and especially to
Methodism, that a few Methodists of scanty resources
should have attempted to erect such a church building
as that which, after a desperate struggle, they suc-
ceeded in completing at the corner of Nineteenth
and Franklin streets. It is worthy of remark that,
with the exception of a small mission chapel erected
by the Baptists in the extreme western section of the
city, near where the State penitentiary now stands,
this was the first house of worship built in Richmond
by the voluntary contributions of the people. It is
true that St. John’s Church, on Church Hill, dates
from the year 1740, and is, therefore, the oldest
church in the city; but it must be remembered that:
it is a colonial building, erected by the English
government and that it belonged to the Established
Church of England. For many years before the era
of American independence it derived its support not
from the people, but from the ecclesiastical revenues
of the English government. At the time of the
Revolution St. John’s Church was seldom open for
religious worship, for the rector preached there only
three times a year, namely, at Christmas, Easter and
Whitsuntide; and this was done, so the historian tells
us, not to supply the religious wants of the com-
THE MAKING OF RICHMOND METHODISM. 31

munity, but to prevent a forfeiture of his right to the
glebe lands and the revenues derived therefrom.
These remarks must not be understood in any
invidious sense; for nothing could be further from my
heart than to utter a word to the disparagement of
that old church, dear to us all, which, with only slight
architectural modifications, still stands, as in the days
of the colony, in the center of the old cemetery, em-
bosomed in a beautiful grove where some of Vir-
ginia’s earliest and most illustrious citizens and
patriots sleep in honored graves. It was around the
altar of that ancient church that the celebrated Vir-
ginia Convention of 1788 met to ratify the federal
constitution of which Jefferson, Monroe, Madison,
Marshall, Randolph, Taswell, Barbour and Lee were
among the most distinguished members; and here it
was that, in the convention of 1775, just before the
outbreak of the Revolutionary war, when Patrick
Henry was urging the convention to take decisive
steps against English tyranny and oppression he used
the immortal words that became the battle cry of the
war for our national independence, and fired the hearts
of the American people from one end of the land to
the other. “ There is no retreat but in submission and
slavery. Our chains are already forged; their clank-
ing may be heard on the plains of Boston Commons:
the next gale that sweeps from the north will bring
the clash of resounding arms. I know not what
course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty,
or give me death!” It may be a question with some
82 RICHMOND METHODISU.

whether the House of God was a proper place for
such a convention to have been held, but who can
doubt that God was then and there in his holy temple,
and that the divine Spirit inspired the tongue of
Virginia’s greatest orator!

Richmond was permanently established as a station
in 1808, and the following year reported 112 white
members. In 1812 there were 256 white members.
The highest point reached in any one of the thirteen
years next succeeding was 244, but in 1825, when
Rev. Joseph Carson took charge, there were only 200.
Thus during the seventeen years from 1808 to 1825,
the net increase in the church membership was only
88. Mr. Carson served two years, at the end of which
time he reported 385, a net gain of 185, nearly
doubling the membership. These figures attest more
eloquently than any words I could employ, the power
and effectiveness at that time of the ministry of
Joseph Carson, who was one of the most eminent
revivalists of his day. Other denominations shared
largely in the fruits of his labors in Richmond, and
a religious sentiment was generated which was a
great uplift and a permanent benefit to the whole
community. Indeed his ministry here marks a new
era of prosperity and power in Richmond Methodism.

In 1827 two churches, Trinity and Shocco Hill,
appear on the minutes, with William Hammett and
G. W. Carlton as preachers in charge. At this time,
although the progress of Methodism had not been
so great as could have been desired, our church stood
 

 

 

 

ALEXANDER G. BROWN, D. D.
THE MAKING OF RICHMOND METHODISU. 83

cm

fully abreast, if not in advance, of other denomina-
tions in the city.

Before proceeding to trace the further progress
of the church, I wish to invite your attention to a
scene in the early history of the old First Church,
which rises to the highest point of sublimity. It was
on the occasion of Bishop Asbury’s last sermon. The
time was three o’clock in the afternoon of March 24,
1816. Faint yet pursuing, the tireless and self-deny-
ing Bishop on reaching Richmond on his way to
Baltimore, after resting a while in the companionship
of dear friends, expressed a desire to deliver what he
thought would be, and what in fact proved to be,
his last sermon to our people. His brethren, fearing
that he might die in the effort, endeavored to dissuade
him, but he insisted, saying, “I must, once more,
deliver the gospel message in Richmond.” He was
taken to the door of the church in a carriage, and
thence borne in a chair to the pulpit and the chair
placed on a table. For nearly an hour he preached
with much fervour and affection from the words,
“For He will finish the work and cut it short in
righteousness, because a short work will the Lord
make upon the earth.” (Romans 9: 28.) He spoke |
with great difficulty, being compelled to pause at
- brief intervals to recover breath, and his hearers were
deeply and profoundly affected. It could hardly have
been otherwise. To behold a venerable old man,
bent and wasting away under the labors of many
years, whose silver locks and pallid countenance and

3
84 RICHMOND METHODISM.

trembling limbs presaged that his earthly race was
nearly finished—yet to see in the midst of these
melancholy signals of decaying nature a great soul
brightly beaming with immortality, and a heart
kindled with fire from heaven’s altar—to behold such
a man, and hear from his lips such an address on the
concerns of time and eternity—what heart could be
so insensible as to withstand the impressions which
this scene was calculated to produce?

Exhausted almost to fainting by the effort, he was
borne to his carriage and taken to his lodgings. On
Monday he rested. Tuesday he set out, hoping to
be able to reach Baltimore by easy stages, but he
did not get farther than Spottsylvania County, where,
at the house of his old friend, George Arnold, on
Sunday, March 31, 1816, he breathed his last. Thus
fell this great man (who in other fields might have
been a Richelieu or a Cesar), leading an army of over
two hundred thousand Methodists, which, when he
was ordained bishop, did not number fifteen thou-
sand.

In the year 1812, Shocco Methodist Church, on
the south side of Marshall street, between Fourth
and Fifth streets, was completed, and dedicated to
the worship of God by the Rev. Thomas Logan
Douglas. Its first pastor was G. W. Carlton, a man
of splendid abilities. The completion of the building
was delayed by serious financial embarrassments.
When Bishop Asbury came through Richmond in
1811, the friends of the movement were about to
THE MAKING OF RICHMOND METHODISM. 85

abandon it. The house was then under roof, but,
for lack of means, work upon it had been suspended
for some time. He reached the city on Saturday,
February 24, and on Sunday morning called together
a number of the leading church-members, who re-
paired to the unfinished building, and upon a few
loose boards laid down for the occasion, held a prayer-
meeting. He urged the people to go forward with
the work they had in hand. They nobly responded.
The necessary amount of money was raised, and the
work was soon finished. This building was used by
the congregation until 1841, when it was sold to Mr.
Wm. Evans for $2,200. Shocco Church is still
standing, though abandoned as a church, and has
been converted into residences.

In 1827, the congregation worshipping at the old
First Church, began a commodious church edifice on
the south side of Franklin street, next to the site now
occupied by the Exchange Hotel, between Fourteenth
and Fifteenth streets. The location was then con-
sidered a good one, being in the midst of a desirable
‘community and convenient to the congregation. The
work on this house was completed in the year 1828.
Its first pastor was Wm. Hammett, a man of Irish
ancestry, and one of the most eloquent and powerful
ministers of his day, but who, in after years, yielding
to the promptings of an unholy ambition, renounced
the ministry of the gospel, and entered political life.
From his adopted State, Mississippi, he was elected
to Congress, but he seems to have been comparatively
36 RICHMOND METHODISM.

unnoticed in that body. He was succeeded in his
pastorate of this church by Simon Sykes, Wm. A.
Smith, G. W. Nolley, Abram Penn, Joseph Carson,
David S. Doggett and Leroy M. Lee—all men of
great ability, fidelity and success in the ministry.

Dr. Lee’s appointment was made at the session of
the Conference at Lynchburg, Va., February 11,
1835. His work, hopefully begun Sunday, March
2, 1835, soon came to an untimely end.. On the night
of the 2oth of June the church building caught fire
and was entirely destroyed. For several months there-
after Dr. Lee remained with his unfortunate flock,
serving them as best he could, preaching as he found
opportunity and striving to rebuild the house. His
success was highly gratifying, but in the following
November when the work of rebuilding was well
under way, failing health required him to desist from
his labors.

He left the city intending to spend the winter in
Florida, but he returned the following January, arriv-
ing at Norfolk during the session of the Conference
in that city. He was surprised to find that the
“ Christian Sentinel,” a Methodist paper which had
been published in Richmond since 1832, had been
purchased by the Conference, and that he was to be
its editor. As neither the Bishop nor the Conference
had authority to make that appointment, his name
appears in the minutes of that year as colleague of
the Rev. Wm. A. Smith, D. D., his successor at
Trinity.
THE MAKING OF RICHMOND METHODISMY. 87

In connection with the rebuilding of Trinity there
was an exhibition on the part of the Christian people
of Richmond, especially the Presbyterian brethren,
of a spirit of Christian fraternity and liberality which
I must not omit to mention. The late Dr. Plummer,
who at that time was pastor of the Presbyterian
Church on Franklin street, located on the site now
occupied by the Randolph Paper Box Factory,
tendered the use of his church to the Trinity people,
and appealed eloquently and successfully to his con-
gregation to aid them by liberal contributions in
their effort to rebuild their house of worship. The
new building was dedicated August 28, 1836, by the
pastor, Dr. Smith, whose great powers were then at
their best. His powerful and eloquent preaching
drew large congregations and greatly edified, com-
forted and encouraged his people. The church under
his ministry grew and was multiplied in all the ele-
ments of material and spiritual strength.

The Centenary of the rise of Methodism in England
occurred in 1839, and was celebrated throughout the
United States with suitable religious exercises, and
collections were taken for the benefit of various
church enterprises. In Richmond appropriate ser-
vices were held in. Trinity and Shocco churches, and
subscriptions were taken amounting to more than
$11,000. A part of this was given to the cause of
missions and to the Superannuated Preachers’ Fund
of the Virginia Conference, and the remainder was
applied to the erection of a new church on Shocco
88 RICHMOND METHODISM.

Hill. This new church was Centenary. To this enter-
prise the Shocco congregation contributed $2,200,
the proceeds of the sale of their building, to which
reference has already been made. Centenary—the
successor to Shocco—was dedicated on the first
Sunday in June, 1843, by the Rev. Edward Wads-
worth, then stationed in Petersburg.

It is a pleasure to note that Centenary is now one
of the handsomest, as well as one of the most com-
modious and prosperous churches in Southern
Methodism, having been several times enlarged and
beautified. It has a chime of nine bells, presented in
1883 by the family of the late Charles Talbott, who
was a useful member and officer in our church, first
at Trinity and then at Centenary. It has also a mag-
nificent organ and is, in all other respects, fully
equipped for the comfort of that large, intelligent
and progressive congregation. From Centenary,
directly, and indirectly, have sprung four other
churches; namely, Laurel Street, taking place of
Oregon Hill; Clay Street, taking the place of Clay
Street Chapel; Park Place, taking the place of Sidney
in the west end; and Highland Park in the northern
suburbs of the city. _

In November, 1857, the late Rev. James A.
Duncan, D. D., was assigned to Trinity. The
changes in that part of the city since the rebuilding
of the church, and the general environment, made
the location most unfortunate, in consequence of
which the church for several years had seriously de-
THE MAKING OF RICHMOND METHODISM. 89

clined. This mother church of Richmond Methodism
deeply realized the fact that the tide of population
was rapidly flowing to more attractive sections of
the city, and that a change of location was necessary
to her future usefulness. Indeed, a crisis had been
reached in its history and existing conditions
seemed to preclude the possibility of success, even
with such a pastor in charge as the gifted, honored
and beloved Dr. Duncan. But rising above all dis-
couragements, the young pastor soon had this old
and unsightly building crowded with eager and de-
lighted congregations. His thrilling appeals filled
the city with his fame, and before the close of the
first year of his pastorate it was proposed that old
Trinity should be divided, and that two new churches,
_ larger and more attractive, should be built on Broad
street, the main boulevard of the city. Dr. Duncan
was the leader and the life of this great movement,
and our beautiful Broad Street Church, standing on
the corner of Tenth and Broad streets in the imme-
diate vicinity of the State Capitol, the Governor’s
Mansion and the City Hall, was built the following
year. This splendid and spacious structure is a monu-
ment to the genius of James A. Duncan, its founder
and first pastor, and to the liberality of his devoted
and lifelong friends, W. K. Watts, Samuel Putney,
W. W. Parker, James and William Allison, Stephen
Putney and others.

The pulpit of this beautiful house of God, to which
he was twice assigned, first in 1857 and again in 1863,
40 RICHMOND METHODISY.

was the chief throne of Dr. Duncan’s wonderful power
as a preacher of the gospel during the eventful years
of his pastorate. Thousands flocked to hear him.
His influence widened and deepened to the close of
his pastoral term, and no man in our day accom-
plished more than he did for Methodism and for the
cause of Christ.

The fact that at this time Richmond was the
capital of the Confederate States end the headquarters
of the Confederate army, gave it great prominence,
made it the favorite city of our South-land, and filled
it with the flower of Southern society, talent and
wealth. In these eventful years Dr. Duncan’s preach-
ing reached the highest pitch of his transcendent
power and was heard by multitudes that no man
can number. Jefferson Davis, the honored President
of the Confederacy, though an Episcopalian, was a
frequent visitor at his church, as was also Gen. R. E.
Lee, and other notable men of the time, both in civic
and military life. And when the gallant leader of the
Lost Cause saw that he could no longer defend
Richmond against the overwhelming hosts of the
advancing foe, Dr. Duncan was invited to a seat in
the car which took Mr. Davis, his family and official
staff from the city.

After the surrender of the Southern army, Dr.
Duncan quickly returned to his pulpit and to his
people; and amid the ashes and ruins of the fallen
capital his church was again filled with overflowing
congregations. His eloquent tongue comforted,
THE MAKING OF RICHMOND METHODISM. 41

edified and deeply impressed those who waited upon
his faithful, spiritual and eloquent ministry. From
the autumn of 1860 to 1866 he was editor-in-chief of
the “ Richmond Christian Advocate.” When Rich-
mond fell his paper was temporarily suspended, and
a new paper, the “ Episcopal Methodist,” took pos-
session of the field; but on returning to the city he
immediately resumed its publication. The readiness
and versatility of his talents were admirably displayed
in his editorial office, and he developed a wonderful
genius for work of every kind. For, while taxed and
burdened with ministerial and pastoral duties, he
wrote not only the editorials, but much of the most
popular and enjoyable correspondence that enriched
the columns of the “ Advocate” during these years.
A marble tablet in Broad Street Church perpetuates
his immortal name, and his sacred dust sleeps in
Hollywood Cemetery, his resting place being marked
by a massive shaft of Virginia granite, erected by
his many friends and admirers.

Dr. Duncan was succeeded at Trinity by the Rev.
J. D. Blackwell, D. D., who remained but one year,
and was followed by Alexander G. Brown, D. D.,
in November, 1859. Soon thereafter the old church
building on Franklin street was sold, and the building
of “ New Trinity”? on the corner of Twentieth and
Broad streets was rapidly pushed by the zeal and
liberality of such noble men as Cornelius Crew, Chas.
Talbott, Wm. Willis, Sr., and his brother Joseph,
Thomas Pemberton, J. W. Fergusson and others.
42 RICHMOND METHODISM.

The spacious and beautiful lecture room, superior
to any in the city at that time, was dedicated February
3, 1860, by Dr. David S. Doggett, presiding elder.
Dr. Wm. A. Smith, President of Randolph Macon
College, preached at night, and the pastor, Dr. A.
G. Brown, in the afternoon of the same day. The
main auditorium was not completed until November,
1866, when the dedicatory sermon was preached by
Dr. R. N. Sledd, Dr. John E. Edwards, the pastor,
preaching at night. This building was erected at a
cost of $35,000, and is in many respects a gem of
architectural beauty and comfort. Thus it appears
that the congregation which found themselves unable
to maintain their position at Old Trinity with credit
and success, after dividing, demonstrated their perfect
ability to build, maintain and push forward with
great success two of the largest, most costly and
attractive church edifices in the city. This they did in
the troublous times of the unhappy war between the
States. From this fact we may derive lessons of
great practical value, on which I have not time now
to dwell.

There is an incident, however, connected with the
removal of the congregation from “ Old Trinity” to
“New Trinity,” which must not be omitted. The
last service held in the old building on Franklin street
was a love-feast, to which all the Methodists in the
city were invited, in order that before turning over
the property to the purchasers, the brethren, many
of whom had been converted at the altar now to be
THE MAKING OF RICHMOND METHODISM. 48

abandoned, might attest their love one for another,
and by unity of spirit in the bond of peace give a
practical demonstration of the blessedness, the power
and the divine origin of our holy religion. The
pastor, Dr. Brown, was present and presided on this
interesting occasion. The house was filled to its ut-
most capacity. The brethren told with great tender-
ness and unction what the Lord had done for their
souls. The hearts of the congregation were thrilled
by their testimonies. There was scarcely an eye in
the house that was not suffused with tears. Truly, it
was good to be there. God was with us and made
the occasion memorable by his presence. In this
congregation there appeared a stranger who sat un-
observed near the door. Before the meeting was
closed the late Wm. Willis, Sr., than whom Richmond’
Methodism has not produced a purer, nobler type of
Christian character, arose and addressed the meeting,
and said that while he had greatly enjoyed the occa-
sion there was a thought in his mind which had
filled him with unutterable sadness. It was that the
man of God who was the first pastor of that church,
and who was largely instrumental in establishing it—
the Rev. Wm. Hammett—so eminent at that time in
the ministry, and so much beloved in Richmond,
had since fallen away from Christ, abandoned the
ministry, and entered the arena of partisan politics,
and was then a very worldly and wicked man. With
tears streaming from his eyes, he proposed that be-
fore departing from the church the congregation
44 RICHMOND METHODISM.

should join in prayer to God for this fallen man. The
proposition was responded to promptly and with
deep feeling. The congregation bowed in prayer,
led by Brother Willis. He was a man especially gifted
in prayer, and no words can give an idea of the power
with which he prayed on this occasion. He seemed
to be talking face to face with God, and with an
earnestness and felicity of expression never surpassed
he pleaded for the fallen man and former pastor. A
few months afterwards, it came to our knowledge,
through one of the church papers, that the un-
observed stranger was the Hon. Wm. Hammett.
Returning to his home in Mississippi from Washing-
ton, he was stopping for the night at the Exchange
Hotel, next door to Trinity Church, and observing
that the house was open and service was being con-
ducted there, he entered the auditorium and heard
all that passed. The words of Wm. Willis and the
prayer that followed pierced his heart. He strove to
extract the arrow, but was unable to do so. He
continued his journey to his home in Mississippi
where under the power of his convictions he sent for
a Methodist minister to whom he opened his heart,
told the sad story of his fall, and expressed a desire
to return to Christ and to the church. The door of
the Kingdom, always open to penitent sinners, was
not closed against him. He was restored to member-
ship in the church and soon thereafter died in the
faith of Him who is able to save unto the uttermost.

I have spoken of Trinity as the mother church of
THE MAKING OF RICHMOND METHODISN. 45

Richmond Methodism, a title of honor of which she
is eminently worthy; for she was the direct successor
of the old “ First Church” on the corner of Nine-
teenth and Franklin, and was instrumental, directly
or indirectly, in all the movements for the extension
of Methodism in Richmond. Among her most pros-
perous daughters is Union Station, of which I will
now speak.

Early in the forties it was deemed desirable by the
Methodists living in the eastern part of the city to
provide a more convenient place of worship, Trinity
being entirely too remote to accommodate the people
of that rapidly growing section. Among those who
took the initiative were Joseph R. Keiningham, Abner
W. Richardson, John Nettles, Wm. McAlister, Wm.
Catlin, Isaac Austin, H. A. Atkinson, and others.
They began by holding prayer meetings and a Sunday
School in a small building located on Venable street,
between Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth streets.
The undertaking proved successful, and in 1843 the
Rev. Leonidas Rosser, D. D., was assigned by Epis-
copal appointment to the charge of this new enter-
prise. He quickly effected an organization with one
hundred members from Trinity, nineteen from Man-
chester and two from Centenary, reaching a member-
ship to start with of 121.

Of the one hundred from Trinity not one remains
among us, all having been transferred to the church
above. The last one,-Henry Atkinson, was removed
only a few days ago.
46 RICHMOND METHODISM.

Dr. Rosser prosecuted the work with great vigor
and success, and during the year provided for the
erection of a more commodious house—a plain but
comfortable wooden structure on the west side of
Twenty-fiith street, between Nelson and Otis streets.
It is still in existence, and is occupied by a colored
congregation of the M. E. Church. This church
appears in the minutes of 1843, under the name of
Union, and from that time until 1852 first as Union
and then as Asbury. The new house was dedicated
by Dr. Rosser, June 16, 1844. During Dr. Rosser’s
first pastorate, which ended in November of that
year, there was an extensive revival of religion in
his charge, resulting in an addition to his church of
more than one hundred members. The same year,
1844, through the enterprise and liberality of the
Rev. B. R. Duvali, a house of worship, known as
Wesley Chapel, was built on Seventeenth street north
of Union; but though it was served by faithful
ministers it maintained only a feeble existence, and
in 1860 it ceased to be used as a house of worship,
and was sold for residential purposes.

In 1854, during the pastorate of Rev. F. J. Boggs,
the congregation on Union Hill grew too large for
the house. Plans were made for a handsome brick
building which was erected on the corner of Twenty-
fourth and Nelson streets, and named Union Station.
This enterprise was begun amid the anxious fore-
bodings of some who feared that the members were
incurring a debt beyond their ability to pay. Their
THE MAKING OF RICHMOND METHODISM. 4r

fears proved groundless, but the debt had scarcely
been paid before—to quote from the historian of
Union station, Mr. Hazelwood—“ the City Engineer
cut down the street and involved the church in
another burdensome debt. This was also paid in due
time. Later a lot adjoining the church was pur-
chased and a handsome parsonage erected thereon.
The filling in of the great ravine which separated
Church and Union hills, and the introduction of
electric railways, which have brought this church in
easy communication with the most distant points of
the city, and the rapid increase of population, oc-
casioned such a demand for houses that there is left
scarcely a vacant lot where in the memory of the few
survivors of Old Union the eye was greeted with
barren fields and unsightly gullies.” Be it said to
the glory of God and to the honor of the noble people
of Union Station that this church has kept pace with
the material prosperity of this part of the city.

It soon became evident that even this large build-
ing could not accommodate the growing congrega-
tion, and to meet the increasing demand it was
resolved to build another house of worship of greater
capacity and of modern architecture. On the 13th
of April, 1893, the walls which had stood for thirty-
nine years were leveled to the ground, and nothing
was left of the old building around which clustered
so many hallowed associations.

On the 11th of July, 1893, the corner-stone of the
new church was laid with impressive ceremonies by
48 RICHMOND METHODISM.

the masonic fraternity. The orator of the occasion
was Rev. W. V. Tudor, D. D., then pastor of Broad
Street Church. This church was projected and com-
pleted under the intelligent and efficient leadership
of the pastor, Rev. George H. Ray, D. D., whose
efforts were ably seconded and assisted by Charles
H. Hasker, V. Heckler, Jr.. C. E. Brauer, Richard
C. Bristol, C. W. Enos, Frank C. Bates, and J. H. C.
Walker. It is one of the handsomest church build-
ings in the city, being Gothic in style, with brown-
stone and terra-cotta trimmings, and covered with
blue slate, with copper ridges and copper cornices.
The interior is a marvel of architectural skill and
beauty. The windows (one of which is a memorial
of the first pastor, Dr. Rosser,) are stained glass and
exceedingly beautiful, both in design and in execu-
tion. It has a seating capacity of fifteen hundred.
In less than a year after the laying of the corner-
stone the new church was dedicated, and though a
considerable debt remains, the interest thereon has
always been promptly paid, and the principal is being
greatly reduced year by year—a grand achievement,
I must add, in view of the financial depression
through which the brethren have labored. With a
membership of more than a thousand men and wo-
men of zeal and liberality, it is a question of only a
short time when this magnificent property will be
free from financial embarrassment. Hasker Me-
morial (named in honor of the memory of the late
Charles H. Hasker) is an offshoot from this parent
 

 

 

 

CHARLES W, HARDWICKE,

 

Chairman Centennial Committe
THE MAKING OF RICHMOND METHODISM. 49

stock, and prospers under the ministry of its promis-
ing young pastor, Rev. L. C. Shearer.

Fairmount Avenue is also an offshoot from Union,
and is quite a handsome building well located on the
corner of Twentieth street and the avenue whose
name it bears. It was dedicated to the worship of
God, January 29, 1895, by Bishop A. W. Wilson.
This enterprise, begun under the ministry of Rev.
L. J. Phaup, was brought to completion under the
ministry of Rev. H. E. Johnson, D. D., and is now
prospering under its talented young pastor, Rev.
George E. Booker, Jr. A neat and comfortable
parsonage has also been built. They have a flourish-
ing Sunday School, a prosperous Epworth League,
and are well equipped in every department of church
enterprise. This church meets the religious wants

-of Methodism in a growing and rapidly improving
section of our city.

To the Layman’s Union, which was organized
some years ago (but which I regret to say has been
recently abandoned), Richmond Methodism is in-
debted for a work that deserves high commendation,.
and merits honorable record in this historical narra-
tive. It was chiefly through the instrumentality of
this organization that our handsome brick church
(St.. James) on the corner of Twenty-ninth and
Marshall streets was built in 1891.

This church was largely an offshoot from Trinity,
and its membership is composed chiefly of our
younger brethren who, under the burden of an em-

4
50 RICHMOND METHODISM.

barrassing debt have labored faithfully not only to
meet the financial obligations of the church, but to
win souls to Christ and to advance the work to which
they are committed. They have shown great zeal
and liberality and have met with gratifying success.
Their pastor, the Rev. William B. Beauchamp, is in
high favor with his people, and with the community,
and is by every token a workman that needeth not
to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth to
a growing and most interesting congregation. The
time is not far distant when this will be one of the
most useful churches in Richmond Methodism.

The Layman’s Union also established a church on
the corner of Washington and Cary streets, which
was afterwards removed to a more eligible locality,
and is now known by the name of Asbury. This
church has before it one of the widest and most
attractive fields of work in the West End. The
pastor, Rev. B. M. Beckham, whose hands are upheld
by an appreciative band of brethren, is going forward
with this worthy enterprise.

Denny Street, in Fulton, which grew out of a
mission enterprise in Rocketts, has made rapid strides
in recent years, her membership having more than
doubled. Congregations are large and growing, and
the pastor, Rev. J. T. Routten, has won not only the
hearts of his own people but holds a high place in the
confidence and affections of this prosperous and im-
proving section of our city.

The church at Barton Heights is doing a great
THE MAKING OF RICHMOND METHODISM. b1

work for Methodism in that new and attractive com-
munity, and the pastor, Rev. J. Sidney Peters, though
for a long time embarrassed in his work by serious
illness is laboring with great efficiency, and the work
of God is prospering under his ministry.

Epworth, the youngest of our church enterprises
in Richmond, is an offshoot from Laurel Street
Church, and was built under the leadership of the
Rev. Travis J. Taylor. It is a valuable addition to
the working force of Methodism in the southwestern
section of the city.

Our history began when the Methodists had no
church, but worshipped in the courthouse or in the
open air. We have seen them provided by a godly
woman with a place of meeting in the “Stable
Church,” where they worshipped until it could no
longer accommodate the congregation. We have
beheld the rise of the first church on the corner of
Nineteenth and Franklin streets, built under great
difficulties and under serious embarrassments. We
have followed this church in its removal to what was
then a more promising locality, on Franklin street
near the Exchange Hotel. We have seen this
mother-church send out colonies to all parts of the
city, and the work of colonization taken up by the
churches thus established until now every portion
of the city and every suburb is provided with Metho-
dist churches—not temporary chapels, but substan-
tial and beautiful houses of worship. Beginning with
one church, we now have fifteen; beginning with
&2 RICHMOND METHODISM.

twenty-eight members we now have six thousand.
The following table shows by decades the increase
in membership made by our church as compared with
the progress made in the city’s development:

 

 

 

 

Percentage of | percentage of
VEAR. 2 oer ae Increase in

Membership. Population.
39-31 22.54
90.54 33-09
40.52 25.48
84.64 36.78
29.75 33-91
29:93, 34.63
53-70 | 26.51
55-44 24.84
46.00 27.50
52.20 ‘29.475

 

 

 

 

It will be noticed that the last figures indicate
the increase for eight years only. This table shows
that whereas the increase of population in the city
averaged less than thirty per cent. for each decade,
the increase in church membership averaged more
than fifty-two per cent. The net gain in church
membership since 1870 is more than two hundred
per cent., while for the preceding twenty years it was
only sixty per cent.

There is an impression in some quarters that
Methodism in Richmond, so far from advancing,
is barely holding its own. Let those who entertain
this opinion examine the following table and perhaps
THE MAKING OF RICHMOND METHODISM. 58

they will come to a different conclusion. While the
showing is not all we could desire, nor perhaps as
good as it might have been, still it must be con-
sidered highly encouraging for the future of our
church in this city.

 

 

 

1880. 1890. 1898.
Church edifices.................00.. 8 Io 14
Parsonages... 0.0.0.0... cee eae I 2 7
PAStOLrS yee gdeiec a Haas Hedvevkes. oveys (orci 9 Ir 14
Church members.................. 2,742 4,263 6,224
In Sunday schools................ 1,965 3,368 45579
Salaries of pastors................ $ 9,648 |$ 14,718 |$ 21,282
For missions, all sources.......... 1,050 35577 3,636
Raised for all purposes............ 27,454 435379 69,387
Value of church property......... 178,500 | 292,200 | 352,200

 

 

 

 

We are happy to know that other evangelical de-
nominations in the city, with all of whom the Metho-
dists have maintained the most fraternal relations,
have shown a like zeal in the work of city evangeli-
zation. It may now be truly said that Richmond,
where for so long a time there was but one church,

.1s now a city of churches, with ample seating capacity
to accommodate on any Lord’s day the entire church-
going population, both white and colored.

As we greet the coming century, we exclaim
“ Behold what hath God wrought!” What shall
the future be? The future alone can answer; but
let us all thank God and take courage. We have no
ground for boasting; but we have strong reason for
54 RIOHMOND METHODISM.

gratitude for the past and for renewed consecration
for the future. We have come into this great in-
heritance through the prayers, the zeal and the labors
of our fathers, and we ought to hand it down to our
children unimpaired in its vigor. God in his provi-
dence is opening new fields for the American church
not only in our own land, but in other lands also;
and not only in evangelistic work but in education
and in literature. We ought to follow our founder,
John Wesley, who subsidized the press and the
school, and made all these agencies tributary to the
gospel. Let our “ Twentieth Century’ movement
show by its fruits what Southern Methodism can do.
And above all let the world take knowledge of us
that we have been with Christ, and exclaim, “ Behold,
how these Christians love one another.” Let Rich-
mond Methodism set an example for the Virginia
Conference; and let the Virginia Conference, the
oldest in the sisterhood of conferences, by unity and
brotherly love, and by a holy zeal, set an example
for Southern Methodism.

Brethren, the Old Ship of Zion flies at its mast-
head the battle-signal, ‘Our Captain expects every
man to do his duty.”
IT.
CENTENARY AND HER COLONIES.

BY THE REV. WILLIAM W. LEAR.

The celebration, in 1839, of the hundredth anni-
versary of the Wesleyan movement gave a distinct
impetus to Methodism, both in England and America.
Our English brethren in token of their gratitude to
God for his goodness to them made during the year
an offering of a million dollars, while our own thank-
offerings amounted to six hundred thousand. The
latter was a large sum for our people, whose incomes
were even more modest than their numbers; but their
wonderful history, which they had for the first time
paused to recall, and the assurance which it gave them
of the presence of God in their work, put them
on their mettle and quickened their spirits for the
highest endeavor. Our missionary contributions
doubled in one year. New fields were occupied,
new schools projected, new churches begun and new
energy injected into enterprises already on hand.

There were in Richmond at this time two life
centres of Methodism—Old Trinity and Shocco.
Centennial rallies were held in both of these churches
during the year. At the Trinity meeting the sub-
scription for the thank-offering was started. Dr.

[55]
56 RIOHMOND METHODISM.

Leroy M. Lee, who was then editor of our church
paper, gave out of his scanty salary one hundred
dollars. Others followed with larger or smaller
amounts, till the sum of eleven thousand dollars had
been raised. About one-half of this amount was set
aside to be used in the building of a new house of
worship to take the place of Shocco. This new
church, which, to perpetuate the memory of its ori-
gin, was to bear the name of Centenary, was not built
without serious difficulties. The reputation which
the early Methodists had made for loud singing and
shouting still clung to the denomination, and when
a suitable lot was sought in a popular locality the real
estate dealers hesitated to sell for fear the presence of
the church would lower the value of realty in the
neighborhood. For two years those who had the
matter in hand tried in vain to secure a lot and
finally succeeded only by getting a disinterested party
to buy for them. When it was learned that the
purchaser represented Richard Whitfield, the leading
layman of Shocco Church, the property owners in
the neighborhood quickly took in the situation and
sent Mr. Whitfield a proposition to take the lot off
his hands at a large advance on the price he had paid
for it. But the brethren refused to sell. Though
the doctrine of falling from grace is in their creed,
Methodists usually know a good thing when they
get it, and generally hold on to it—when they have
it sure enough.

The Rev. James A. Riddick was pastor of Shocco
THE MAKING OF RIOHMOND METHODISM. 57

Church at this time and took an active part in secur-
ing the lot and developing the plans for the new
building. The record of the ministry of this man of
God is in the annals of the church. It is not for me
to tell here the story of his life. I saw him but a
few days ago. It is a benediction to be in his pres-
ence. He dwells near the mountain top of religious
experience and the glow and quiet of a summer
sunset linger around him. Under the weight of four-
score years and more the tabernacle of clay is crum-
bling to dust, but his mental strength yet abides and
his faith strengthens to the end. And with a delight-
ful consciousness of the divine presence, he looks
ahead to the crowning time with a smile of eager
expectation.

Brother Riddick was succeeded at Shocco Church
by the Rev. George W. Nolley, a man of splendid
proportions, physical, mental and spiritual. He was
a kinsman of Richmond Nolley and was cast in the
same heroic mould. He dared do anything that the
Master bade him do, or to suffer anything that duty
called him to suffer; yet he was genial and guileless,
and as gentle as a little child. He was converted at
sixteen years of age. He had the unique experience
of feeling, long before his conversion, that he was
called to preach, and perhaps the no less unique
experience of being licensed to preach without his
knowledge or consent. For fifty-five consecutive
years he answered to his name on the first day of
the Annual Conference, and then, full of faith and
58 RICHMOND METHODISM.

good works, he answered to the general roll-call of
the saints in glory.

Brother Nolley was just such a man as the Shocco
people needed at that time to push their new enter-
prise to completion, and it goes without say-
ing that he did not sit idly by while others toiled.
He was not, however, too busy building a new house
for his flock to look after their spiritual life, and his
ministry this year (1842) was attended by a sweeping
revival, in which between one and two hundred souls
were converted and brought into the church. From
among the young ladies who were converted during
this revival he selected his second wife, who bore
him seven sons and daughters, six of whom are still
living. Two of his daughters married Methodist
preachers.

Owing to the fact that the time for holding the
Annual Conference was changed in 1842 from Feb-
ruary to November, there were two sessions of Con-
ference that year, and Brother Nolley’s pastorate
was in consequence limited to nine months. But
during that period the work on the new church was
pushed so rapidly that it was ready for occupancy
before he left the charge, though it was not com-
pleted and dedicated until the spring of the following
year.

It does not fall within the purpose of this paper
to review the later history of Centenary Church.
Its success from the start and its continued prosperity
after nearly sixty years justify the wisdom of its
THE MAKING OF RICHMOND METHODISM. 59

founders and speak volumes for the piety of those
who came after them. Since the church was first
erected, it has been so greatly enlarged and improved
that it is impossible to recognize in the present
building the modest structure of former days.

The noble laymen who were active in the establish-
ment of Centenary are deserving of more honor-
able mention than I can give them here. The original
trustees were Richard Whitfield, William Evans,
Thos. H. Lambeth (the father of Dr. S. S. Lambeth
of our Conference), William Willis, John J. Binford
and Henry Tatum. Richard Whitfield, who seems to
have been the prime mover in the enterprise, was
born in Yorkshire, England, in 1777. He was left
an orphan at an early age, and was thrown entirely
upon his own resources. When about twenty-four
years old he embarked for America, landing in New
York in 1801. While in New York he was converted
and at once joined the Methodist Church. In 1807
he came to Richmond. His piety was of a generous
and liberal character. His faith never wavered. As
a business man he was sagacious, energetic and suc-
cessful. His liberality abounded for every good
work. Honored by the church with every lay office
within its power he was efficient and useful in them
all. With the increase of years he increased in heav-
enly virtues, until in 1866, at the ripe age of nearly
ninety years, he went home to glory. In Centenary
Church, which he had helped to build and where he
had worshipped so long, Bishop Doggett preached
60 RICHMOND METHODISM.

his funeral sermon and the sacred dust was laid
away in Shocco Hill Cemetery to await the resurrec-
tion of the just. His descendants to the third gen-
eration are among us. May the mantle of this man
of God ever rest upon them!

A brief mention of the churches that may be said
to have grown out of Centenary will serve as a fitting
close to this paper.

On a rainy Sunday afternoon in October, 1849, a
few earnest workers from Centenary got together in
a private house in the southwestern part of the city
not far from the State Penitentiary, and organized
a Sunday School with Watkins Taylor as superin-
tendent. A few weeks afterwards a society was
organized, and a house of worship (known as Oregon
Chapel) was erected on the corner of Church street
and Maiden Lane. The first pastor of the new
church was the Rev. James E. Joyner, the second,
the Rev. John L. Clark and the third, the Rev.
Samuel L. Eskridge.

For a number of years Oregon was a small and
struggling church, but under the ministry of the
Rev. H. B. Cowles matters mightily improved. Then
came the Rev. William P. Wright, who remained
four years, and labored with untiring energy to build
a new church. Before he left he had the pleasure
of seeing the old structure in which this little band
had so long worshipped, sold and the proceeds put
into a larger enterprise on Laurel street. After a
year Brother Wright was returned and the building
THE MAKING OF RICHMOND METHODISM. 61

was completed during his second pastorate. Since
then it has been greatly enlarged, and Laurel Street
is now one of our most flourishing churches.

But Centenary did not exhaust all her energies in
this one enterprise. Five years after the establish-
ment of the Oregon society, a Sunday School was
started in the home of Mrs. Bethel, an elect lady of
our church, who lived on Main street near what is
now known as Monroe Park. This school, out of
which grew Sidney Chapel, had a very modest be-
ginning, only seven pupils being enrolled. It was
organized by Albert L. West, who for forty-seven
years was a faithful and honored member of Cente-
nary Church. He has so recently gone home that
there is no need to tell Virginia Methodists about
him. We never had a man who was more enthusi-
astic and energetic as a Sunday School worker than
he. For many years, at much cost of time and
energy, he watched over the little vine he had
planted, and his faith was at last rewarded by seeing
it blossom into a great church.

Sidney Chapel was built in 1856, two years after
the organization of the Sunday School. In 1871, the
Conference Mission Board made an appropriation of
$360.00 to Oregon and Sidney, and the Rev. George
C. Vanderslice was sent as preacher in charge of the
latter church. It proved to be a wise investment of
the Lord’s money. Gracious revivals accompanied
the preaching of Brother Vanderslice through the
whole four years of his ministry, and large numbers
62 RICHMOND METHODISM.

were added to the church, so that by 1875 Sidney
had become a self-supporting charge. Its name was
then changed to Main Street Church. Brother
Vanderslice was succeeded by the Rev. George H.
Ray, who remained one year.’ The rapid growth of
the congregation necessitated the building of a new
church, which was soon accomplished through the
generosity of our large-hearted layman, James B.
Pace, and the beautiful Park Place Church stands to-
day as a monument to his munificence. Park Place
was dedicated in 1870, by Dr. John E. Edwards, who
had been appointed its first pastor.

Out of Laurel Street grew Asbury (formerly
Washington Street), and more recently Epworth,
while from Centenary has sprung still another
church—Highland Park. And so the good work
goes on. May it continue till the church militant
shall be merged into the church triumphant. And
may the spirit of our fathers, who worked so well in
the establishment of these churches, linger long in
the hearts of their sons and daughters, making them
workmen that need not to be ashamed.
III.
THE WORK OF THE LAYMAN’S UNION.

The Layman’s Union of Richmond originated
at a meeting of representatives of the Methodist
churches of the city in the interest of the endowment
fund of Randolph-Macon College. This meeting—
which, by the way, resulted in the contribution of
$56,000 to the endowment fund by Richmond
Methodists—was held at Pizzini’s Parlors, March
3, 1887. There were about sixty persons present
and the fraternal feeling manifested suggested the
formation of a permanent organization for the general
purposes cf bringing the laity of the church together °
socially, and the maturing of plans for the more
efficient prosecution of the work of church extension
in the city. Specifically, the object was to co-
operate with the Sunday School Society, which had
alone undertaken the Home Mission work of the
city, by looking after the material development of
the church in unoccupied territory while the Society
looked after its spiritual development.

The first meeting of the Union was held in June,
1887. At this meeting, which was largely attended,

[63]
64 RIOHMOND METHODIESM.

Col. John P. Branch was elected president. Shortly
afterwards the Union in conjunction with the Sunday
School Society moved a chapel irom near the toll-
gate on Mechanicsville pike to Howard’s Grove,
where the Sunday School Society was already at
work. The little church thus started grew rapidly
under the care of the Society, and in a little while
the congregation built a handsome church on Fair-
mount Avenue. ,

In June, 1888, the Union and the Sunday School
Society held a mass-meeting at Broad Street Church
in the interest of church extension in the city. This
meeting was presided over by Mr. John Morton, and
nearly $10,000 was raised for missionary purposes in
the East and West ends of the city. This movement
was watched with the deepest interest. The Rev.
Dr. Garland expressed the opinion that if the work
was prosecuted according to the plans adopted, it
would solve the problem of Home Missions in the
Southern Methodist Church. The money raised at
this meeting was used partly to build what was
known as Washington Street Church, at the corner
of Cary and Washington streets in the West end,
and partly to purchase a lot at the corner of Twenty-
ninth and Marshall streets in the Eastern part of the
city. Washington Street Church soon outgrew the
neighborhood in which it was erected, and in a few
years the building was moved to Lombardy street,
between Grove and Hanover, and the name changed
to Asbury Church.
 

 

Cot. JOHN P. BRANCH.
THE MAKING OF RICHMOND METHODISM. 65

For some years Trinity had conducted a mission
school at the corner of Twenty-ninth and Marshall
streets. This school was now turned over to the
Sunday School Society,and the work was pushed with
a view to the establishment of a church in that part of
the city. By the aid of the Layman’s Union the
Sunday School Society erected St. James Church at
a cost exceeding $5,000. The success of this enter-
prise was due largely to the zeal and liberality of the
late Robert H. Whitlock. These two churches,
Asbury and Washington Street, are now among the
most progressive churches in the city.

The work of the Union, of which but a partial
account is here given, covers a period of about seven
years. During this period of great activity it was
presided over by Col. John P. Branch, Mr. John P-.
Morton and Mr. Arthur L. Lumsden successively.

Among the most zealous members of the Union
were the late T. L. D. Walford and the late Charles
H. Hasker.

The emphasis which the Union placed upon the
connectional idea gave a new impulse to the work
of church extension throughout the city, and resulted
in the establishment of more churches during its
short life than had been established in the forty
years preceding its organization.
IV

THE SUNDAY SCHOOL AND THE
EPWORTH LEAGUE.

Sunday Schools are like mothers, in that while they
have furnished much material for history, they have
furnished scarcely any material for a history of them-
selves. The Sunday Schools of Richmond are not
exceptions to the rule. Their deeds are recorded in
the lives of men, not on parchments. In the general
turning up of old manuscripts preparatory to the
Centennial hardly anything came to light relating
to the Sunday School work of the past. Even the
Sunday School Society, which has been in operation
for nearly forty years, and has done probably as much
for Richmond Methodism as any other single agency,
has preserved nothing from which one might get even
a faint idea of the magnitude of its achievements.
Almost the only record of real value is to be found in
the present condition of the Sunday Schools of the
city and vicinity. There are at present eighteen Sun-
day Schools in Richmond and suburbs, not including
Manchester. The latest’ complete annual report
available is for the year 1897. Of the 4,914 officers,

[66]
THE MAKING OF RICHMOND METHODISMN. 67

teachers and pupils then on the roll, 2,189 were
members of the church. The conversions reported
during the year aggregated 399. Eighty-eight in-
digent pupils were assisted, and the sum of $4,084.84
was raised for all purposes. According to this report
the largest Sunday School in the city was Union
Station, having a membership of 763—Laurel Street
coming next with 412 members, and Clay Street with
409. The membership in the other schools ranged
from 394 (Denny Street) to forty-seven (High-
land Springs). The largest number of conversions
(eighty-eight) was reported from Union Station.
Trinity assisted twenty indigent pupils, Centenary
eighteen, Denny Street, Hasker Memorial and Laurel
Street ten each, Union Station nine, St. James five
and Epworth two.

The report for 1899 will hardly differ very mate-
tially from these figures. There has been some
growth, though the present total membership is little
in excess of five thousand. The schools are in a
healthy condition, the character of the work is
steadily improving, and the outlook is altogether
promising.

The Sunday School Society continues its useful-
ness under the presidency of the Hon. Addison
Maupin. Besides Mr. Maupin, this society has had
ten presidents; viz: William Couling, Asa Snyder,
William Willis, Jr., A. L. West, C. H. Hasker, R. A.
Richardson, John Morton, C. W. Hunter, R. S. M.
“Valentine and Alfred Gary.
68 RICHMOND METHODISH.

THe Epwortu LeaGuE came into existence at so
recent a date that it can hardly be said to have
completed the first chapter of its history. The first
League in Richmond was organized in 1892 at Clay
Street Church by the pastor, the Rev. E. H. Rawlings.
The second League was formed in 1893 at Fair-
mount under the pastorate of the Rev. H. E. Johnson.
In 1894 Union Station Mission (Hasker Memorial)
was added to the list, and during the following year
Centenary, West End (Manchester), Laurel Street,
Asbury, Union Station, Trinity, St. James, Park
Place and Broad Street. In 1895 a Local Council
was organized with a membership of fourteen
Leagues. The first president of the Council was the
Rev. J. W. Moore; the first secretary, Mr. Frank T.
Bates, Jr. Mr. Moore was succeded by Mr. E. W.
Bandy of St.James Church, who continued in office
until the present year, when he was succeeded by
Mr. Frank L. Wells of Park Place.

The Richmond League has from the beginning
occupied a prominent place in the general work. Per-
haps no one did so much to get the organization
under way in Virginia as the Rev. E. H. Rawlings,
who is now serving his second term as pastor of Clay
Street Church. Mr. Rawlings has been for several
years a valuable member of the Epworth League
Board of the Church, South. Of the present officers.
of the State League, the president, the Rev. W. B.
Beauchamp, and the secretary, Mr. W. Reginald:
Walker, are members of Richmond Leagues.
4

THH MAKING OF RICHMOND METHODISM. 69

While the League has not grown as rapidly in
Richmond and vicinity as could have been desired
the condition of the work as a whole is gratifying,
and gives promise of a bright future. In most of
our churches pastors have found the League an in-
valuable aid, especially in revival seasons.

In addition to the societies already mentioned
Leagues are now in successful operation at Fifth
Street and Asbury, Manchester, and Denny Street,
this city.

The officers of the Local Council are: President,
Mr. Frank L. Wells, Park Place; first vice-president,
Mr. J. Frank Tiller, of Centenary; second vice-presi-
dent, Mr. J. H. Busby, of Fifth Street, Manchester;
third vice-president, Mrs. G. M. Smithdeal, Broad
Street; secretary, Mr. Asa Johnson, Clay Street;
treasurer, Dr. W. D. Willis, of Asbury.
MAKERS OF METHODISM IN RICHMOND.
I.
MEN THAT MADE METHODISM.

BY THE REV. JOHN J. LAFFERTY, D. L.

I have taken it as the task set me, to tell of the
type of men in the ministry who made Methodism in
this capital of Virginia.

Our Church in Richmond has gained, as do all
growing denominations, its accretions in part from
the country chapels. In the pioneer period the
changes of ministers were frequent. At first they
remained but three or six months in a pastorate.
They were now in the North; next year in the South.
The evangelist of Vermont would pass during one
revolving year to the frontiermen of Daniel Boone
in Kentucky or to the rice regions of Carolina.

When an average itinerant of that age is described,
we know the entire body of ministers.

The era of the American Revolution was signal-
ized by phenomenal men—statesmen and warriors.
Mr. Gladstone gave opinion that the Constitution
of the United States was the greatest single product
of the human mind at any given period. It seems
Providence prepared the men for the need and occa-
sion. The early annals of our Church in this country

[73]
74 RIOHMOND METHODISM.

coerces to the conclusion that God raised up fit men
for the demands of religion in the new nation. When
God intends “to turn the world upside down,” he
selects stout instruments.

Statesmanship, constitutions and governments
could have success only among a people fit for self-
control by reason of moral poise. The philosophic
historian must reckon Methodism as a mighty factor
in the experiment of ordered liberty on this new con-
tinent. It must be conceded that Methodism to no
little degree made ready the soil in which has grown
this great banyan tree of popular government, with
its spreading shade, protecting boughs, widening,
self-rooting power. There remains to be written a
treatise giving full credit to the saddle-bag cohorts
for their work as patriots in building up this vast
temple of free institutions—a wonder to the earth’s
nations. Such a theme does not fall within the limits
prescribed by the programme for my hour. I draw
myself within narrower confines.

Churches like nations have birth from the genius of
giants. The tribe dates its genesis to victorious and
mighty men—heroic founders. The Greek sung the
song of “ Troy divine,” captured by Argive warriors,
Agamemnon, Ajax, Achilles—great chieftains whose
prowess and genius for affairs had made powerful
peoples by the sunny sea and along the “isles of
Greece.” The story of martial ancestors inspired
the sons to make Marathon, Thermopyle, Salamis
scenes of unperishing glory. And so too, the forti-
THH MAKERS. "5

tude that kept at bay, under the walls of Troy, for ten
long years the marshalled host of the Hellenes by
the Scamander and Simois, till strategy and hostile
gods prevailed over courage, was cherished on the
shores of distant Latium, where the exiles from
Priam’s fated and royal city, reared a mightier Illium
on the banks ofthe Tiber. The thrilling numbers
of the AZnead surcharged the clans of Romulus and
Remus in Alba Longa to do and dare as worthy of
Hector and the heroes, their ancestors.

It must not be forgotten that “ Peace hath her
victories no less renowned than war.” We come to
recount the deeds of men who wrought righteous-
ness in the earth by personal sacrifices and exertions
worthy of all praise. If mortal ever merited the
title of hero the American itinerant can justly claim
it. We honor ourselves in recalling his career. Not
since the days of Paul, have there appeared apostolic
men with equal zeal, loyalty to Jesus and self-abne-
gation. They were engaged in the greatest religious
movement since the apostolic age. Or, to use the
words of a Presbyterian author, “the rise of Metho-
dism is among the greatest marvels of human his-
tory.” It will amaze you, if you have not read the
page of the Church’s progress, to know that the pio-
neers of Methodism surpassed even the apostles in
results. ‘‘ Methodism gained nearly three times as
many members to its Communion in its first century
as the Apostolic Church during its first century.”
This statement, true to the letter, is below exact
76 RICHMOND METHODISM.

figures. The numbers inside our ranks are only
a part of the sheaves of our sowing and reaping.
Virtue went out of our ministry to other pulpits.
We harvested only two-thirds of our crop of con-
verts. Who can tabulate the influence of Metho-
dism beyond our pale? ;

We must estimate the difficulties overcome to
rightly gauge the force that crushed them. The
ballistic power of a gun has relation to the resistance
to be overcome. The missile that pierces the pre-
pared and protected plate of great thickness and
toughness wins upon the admiration of naval experts.
The shattered steel sheath of the ship certifies the
velocity, hardness, impact of the projectile.

What were the obstacles to Methodism—what the
resources to master them? As the century closes,
Methodism in America is the national Church. It
has its millions of members, noble temples in the
cities, countless chapels in the country, its colleges
in many Commonwealths. American Methodism
_builds a thousand churches each year. The preach-
ers now “go” to their pastorates in Pullman palace
coaches. The chief citizens welcome them on arri-
val. The elegant official residence of our “clergy”
vies with the architecture and comforts of bank presi-
dents. Costly choirs “raise the tune.” In primi-
tive organizations, the chieftain chosen for statue,
force, edged sword, led with claymore in his good,
right hand, cleaving a path through the foes. The
“Major General” in after ages can sit in a private
THE MAKERS. 77

car, subduing heat by “cooling drinks” and bath
tubs, directing movements of troops by “ field wire.”
Once the Sheik planned and in person charged “ the
armies of the alien.” Progress of events puts the
army in battle array and the chief captain in the rear.
Von Moltke reading Dickens on the grassy slope
far from the shot of French artillery, and Richard
of the Lion Heart, with battle ax swinging in the
air, making a circle of metallic sheen, as it splits
skulls of Saracens, measure the diameter of distance
made in the art of war. The pioneer preacher of
our Church in this country was Richard and Von
Moltke in one. He thought out the campaign and
brought it to victory by his own presence and prow-
ess. Men making large history seldom record their
achievements—the pen fits the fingers of sedentary
champions, the sword fits the iron grip of centurions.
The only information of many “men of statue” in
the heroic age of our Church is dim tradition.
They brought things to pass and their deeds are tes-
timony and eulogy. The Himalayas are proof of
the power that heaved this range of rocks into the
clouds. Methodism is a stupendous achievement.
There surely were “ giants in those days,” for feeble
muscle erects no pyramid on the plain.

When the little band of evangelists, led by Banas
a hundred years ago began, they were confronted by
difficulties that would have staggered men if their
“lives had been dear unto themselves.” Religion
had lost its power in the land. The pulpits seemed
78 RICHMOND METHODISM.

slumbering. They aroused themselves only to as-
sail the Methodist preachers. The parsons of the
Church of England in the South had become a by-
word of contempt. They were fed on taxes, wrung
from a protesting people. Their lives were scanda-
lous. There were rare exceptions. The devout
Devereux Jarratt, the rector of Sapony, Butterwood,
in Virginia, showed kindness to the Methodists and
incurred the displeasure of his brother clergy. The
evangelical preachers found no favor with such min-
isters. Jarratt wrote that only one rector in Vir-
ginia out of ninety-four was a devout man. There
was a statute in the Virginia Code that “ ministers
shall not give themselves to riot, playing at dice,
cards and other unlawful games, but that at all times
convenient they shall hear or read somewhat of the
Scriptures.” One had to be “tied in his gig” to
prevent tumbling out. When the precentor (leader
of singing) announced the hymn “was out,” the
drowsy parson in the pulpit muttered, “Fill it up
again.” We know the depraved condition of morals
in England among many clergy. The official eccle-
siastic in the colonies was “tarred with the same
stick.” In America “ high Church officials and min-
isters drank immoderately without seriously compro-
mising their position.” The Rev. Leonard Woods
said, “I remember forty ministers who were intem-
perate.” “A great many deacons in New England
died drunkards.” “TI have a list of 123 intemperate
deacons in Massachusetts; forty-three became sots.”
THE MAKERS. 79

Bishop Meade speaks of the “vices” of the clergy
in Virginia. “In Maryland the Lord’s Day was
profaned, religion despised and all notorious vices
committed, so that it became a Sodom of unclean-
ness and a pest-house of iniquity.” Infidel books
were sold for a small price or given away, and “ lead-
ing statesmen were Atheists or Deists.” “ With
few exceptions all the great men engaged in laying
the foundation of the government of the United
States” held infidel sentiments. Chancellor Kent
said: “In my younger days there were very few
professional men that were not infidels.” Bishop
Meade records: “I can truly say that in every edu-
cated young man in Virginia whom I met I expected
to find a skeptic, if not an avowed unbeliever.”
Princeton College and William and Mary were “ hot-
beds of infidelity.” Transylvania University, Ken-
tucky, founded by the Presbyterians, was wrested
from them by infidelity. Ordinations of ministers in
New England were made occasion for festivity, often
ended in an “ordination ball,” accompanied with
“ copious drinking.” The continental army of Gen-
eral Washington, when disbanded, “poisoned every
“community with skepticism and immorality.” In
1789 the General Assembly of the Presbyterian
Church in their address say, “a dissolution of reli-
gious society seems threatened.” In Kentucky and
in other States, newly settled, there was fearful im-
morality. Peter Cartright says Kentucky was called

oes

“ Rogues’ Harbor” and the bad element was “in
80 RICHMOND METHODISM.

the majority.” Under Whitefield’s preaching in New
England a number of Congregational ministers were
converted. And the church members in this immoral
condition and their clergy stood opposing the Metho-
dist preachers.

A dozen ministers dare to inaugurate a campaign
against sodden vice in low places, and against in-
fidelity, almost universal among the intelligent
citizenship. These itinerants were without money,
social influence, homeless, hated, yet they threw
themselves into the battle with a courage equal to
the fortitude of a Paul. The continent, from Canada
to the lands of the red savages.in upper Georgia and
on the Ohio, was their parish. American civilization
was a narrow strip along the Atlantic from Maine to
Florida, with the savages on the western and southern
border. There was no turnpike, no stage, seldom
a bridge, few ferries. Rivers must be crossed by
swimming. Roads were trails. The itinerant might
secure lodging in a one-room hut, “ with husband,
wife and six children, one always moving about,”
and a piece of fat bacon and corn-pone for breakfast.
It was not uncommon to be refused a shelter.
Drenched, he must lay down in the forest' to rise at
dawn bitten by frost, and ride on, hungry. In New
York a young’ woman repulsed Bishop Asbury, who
was sick, from her door and he rode on in darkness
and tempest, refused again and again. Jesse Lee,
the apostle to New England, preached three months
without an invitation to a house. These apostolic
 

 

 

 

 

GEORGE FERGUSSON.
THH MAKHRS. 8&1

men here and there were put in jail for telling men
of a Saviour. The mob in Charleston, S. C., dragged
the saintly and eloquent Douherty to the town pump
and would have drowned him but for a kind woman
using her apron to stop the spout. He caught a
cold that killed him. Not a few carried scars.
Garrettson was left for dead on the roadside. A
woman relieved him. A planter in Mississippi drove
Richmond Nolley from the smoke-stack of his sugar
mill, where he was warming himself. Lee was glad
to find shelter in South Carolina “jin a log cabin
without doors, with thirty to forty hogs sleeping
under the house.”

Asbury, the Bishop, kept a journal. He gives a
glimpse into sufferings. He travelled from Canada
to the frontier in Georgia and Kentucky, chiefly on
horseback. He crossed the Alleghanies sixty times
along bear trails. He mentions the three ranges
between North Carolina and Virginia he was accus-
tomed to cross, which he calls, “ first steel, second
stone, third iron, they are right difficult to climb.”
“ Awful thunder and lightning, accompanied by
heavy rain,” attended the trip. “We crept for shelter
into a little dirty house where the filth might have
been taken from the floor with a spade.” They were
wet; could get no fire as the wood was soaked.
In the mean time “ both horses were foundered and
had sore backs.” In passing through West Virginia,
he and his companions could find no food but “ what
grew in the woods.” His lodging is described. “I

6
82 RICHMOND METHODISM.

lay on the floor on a few deerskins with the fleas.
Brothers Phoebus and Cook took to the woods.”
We can appreciate his cry, “O how glad should
I be of a plain clean plank to lie on, as preferable to
most beds.” He gives the reason. “The beds are
in a bad state, the floors are worse.” It was a luxury
to get into the shed part of a cabin with a bed
mounted on posts driven in the ground with clap-
boards on cross poles. He wore a “ brimstone shirt ”
for weeks to relieve him of a tormenting malady
contracted in some filthy bed. He relates that cold
corn-bread and cucumbers were his sole food while
sighing for a bowl of milk. A companion tells us the
Bishop “ rode all day in a storm, taking calomel every
two hours,” till he loaded up with “eighty grains”
of this metallic drug. He pushed ahead, with “ great
blisters drawing on his body.” These men of God
had a rule “ that no weather a man can live in, must
stop a preacher.” For forty-five years he, a delicate
man, often ill, travelled a distance equal to the cir-
cumference of the globe every four years. He was
accustomed to rise by dawn, and ride twenty miles
to breakfast, preaching two or three times a day and
covering forty to fifty miles. He attended 224 Con-
ferences and ordained 4,000 ministers; preached
16,000 times. He continued his tours till age and
disease had smitten him sorely. His travelling com-
panion lifted him from his horse. In this city he
rested himself on a table and preached his last sermon.
Then helped to his horse he pressed northward, but
THE MAKERS. 88

death gave him his rest in Spottsylvania County.
Such was Francis Asbury—apostle and statesman,
worthy of any age of the church.

Asbury endured hardships; yet his office gave him
advantage over his brethren in comforts. If the chief
captain suffered these things, what were the depri-
vations of the men in the ranks? They left no word
of complaint, no record of exploit; even their tombs
are unknown. “ They labored, suffered and triumphed
in obscurity. No admiring population to cheer them
on. No great newspaper gazetted them into fame.”
When a call came from the men on the frontier, for
more preachers to help, directions were given to send
no man who was “ afraid to die.” It was added, “ their
lives will be in jeopardy from the red men.” The
Rev. Thomas Ware relates that while preaching
the alarm was raised, “Indians!” Two lads came
running and shouted, “The Indians have killed
mother.” It was true. The outlaw and the Indian
were there. The red barbarian killed all. The mem-
bers of “ Rogues’ Harbor” preferred to murder a
Methodist itinerant to heeding him. Richmond
Nolley was found frozen to death on his route to
fill an appointment for preaching. He died on his
knees. Only fibre of steel could hold out against
such privations, toil and miasma. Dauntless courage
nerved every breast.

These apostles left home, friends, parents, sisters and
brothers behind them. Before them were strangers,
sacrifices, wanderings. They could hope only for sub-
84 RIOHMOND METHODISM.

sistence. They could not draw drafts on a mission-
ary treasury. Had‘one been a Baptist or Presbyterian,
he might have had hope of meeting, in a new place,
people friendly to him, but there were no Methodists.
His business was to plant.

There was a frontier settlement called the Natchez
country on the Mississippi. The trail led through the
Indian tribes of Georgia and Alabama. They were
at times on the war-path. Gibson volunteered to
visit Natchez. He rode to the Cumberland River,
sold his horse, bought a canoe, put bridle and saddle-
bags in the boat, floated on the Cumberland to the
Ohio, down it to the Mississippi, on to “ Circuit.”
Such was the sanctified grit of that generation. And
what was the earthly gain? Let the historian record
one specimen. The condition of an itinerant who
had visited nearly every cabin in wide regions,
preaching in North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky,
Ohio, praying with the inmates of the log homes,
is described, ‘‘ patch above patch until the patches
themselves were worn out, bare kneed, bare elbowed,
without a cent in his pocket or a friend to give him
a new garment,” yet worthy of the raiment of a
prince. Asbury, at a Conference, was so moved at
the ragged appearance of these noble men, that he
records how he “ parted with my watch, my coat,
my shirt” to supply their need. One preacher wore
out one sleeve of his coat but continued to expound,
though one arm had only a shirt sleeve.

The achievements of these evangelists are without

*
THE MAKERS. 85

a parallel. The men who companied with Jesus did
not in the same time accomplish equal results. They
were highly endowed. Jesse Lee, a Virginian, had
extraordinary gifts. Ata time when Methodism was
ridiculed, Lee was elected chaplain to Congress and
reélected. He retired of his own will. There were
statesmen, jurists, orators in Congress. They selected
Lee to preach on each Sabbath. He ranks with the
greatest Americans of that notable era.

The Rev. Edward Drumgoole, of Brunswick
County, was distinctly a man of might. His weight,
tact and godliness prevented a split in early Metho-
dism. “ High order of intellect, deep piety, great
moral worth, eloquent, effective, original, needing
not to repeat sermons, unassuming.” The late Rev.
Benjamin Devany spoke of his discourses as “ awfully
sublime beyond description, with the most thrilling
effect I ever witnessed.” He was born in Ireland and
inherited the genius of his people. At eighty-one
he was still a master of assemblies.

There is no portrait of Drumgoole, but our State
Library has a printed image of his great son, a mem-
ber of Congress, and in the opinion of Mr. Madison,
equal to the presidency of the United States which
was within his reach. His face testifies to the great-
ness of the statesman and orator.

John Easter, of Mecklenburg county, lives in
history as a spiritual wonder. Unlettered and rude
in speech, he dominated vast crowds. Like Elijah he
carried the keys to the clouds. When a storm was
86 RICHMOND METHODISYM.

nearly overhead, threatening a great congregation
in the woods, and the people were restless, he called
on God to protect the audience. The cloud divided,
raining on each side of the grounds, but not a drop
falling on man or woman. Next day a shower came
upon the land not watered the day before. On
another occasion, in the forest, there was a sudden
noise in the tree-tops as if a hurricane was passing,
though not a leaf moved. This display was followed
by a descent of the Spirit, and there arose strong cries
for mercy and shouts of joy. These are unquestioned
facts. Tradition has brought down many kindred
demonstrations.

Among his converts were Enoch George and Wil-
liam McKendree, two bishops.

The men who compassed this American Refor-
mation were endowed with phenomenal powers.
They were not scholars, though one would be sur-
prised at the extent of their reading. Lee one year
read five thousand pages while, preaching every day,
riding forty miles. Among the volumes was a work
of Aristotle. They had “ mental vigor, shrewdness,
extraordinary knowledge of human nature; many of
them commanded an overwhelming eloquence.” It
cannot be questioned that among these itinerants
were men matching with Patrick Henry in prevailing
speech. Mr. Asbury, always careful in speech, men-
tions one as equal to Jefferson and Madison in native
outfit. They were men of superior parts. The first
governor of Ohio was a Methodist preacher. A
THE MAKERS. 87

supreme judge and a district judge, on the inaugura-
tion of that State, each an itinerant. One was Philip
Gatch, who had lost an eye by persecution. Bishop
Coke, a Doctor of Civil Laws from Oxford, misled by
their homespun suits in thinking them common men,
was so surprised on hearing them preach that he
exclaimed in his impetuous manner, “I can’t preach
a bit, I can’t preach a bit!” So in debate, it was the
wrestling of giants—nothing new has been added to
their arguments. Their code, government, customs
make clear the legislators were wise. They had
pathos, humor, and wit. Lee was the Sidney Smith
of the itinerancy—quick at repartee. They could
terrify as well as win. They shook one world with
the thunders of another. When a pioneer preacher
of that epoch spoke to the people it soon became
“very tempestuous around about.”

The displays of their spiritual and mental force
are marvels. As Josiah Everett, of Virginia, began
his services a thunder-cloud approached. He prayed
for it to come nearer. It roared. ‘“O Lord, nearer
and nearer.” The house blazed with electric flame.
There was a great outcry for mercy. One of the
scared sinners applied to a magistrate to restrain
Everett. “If he had asked a third time, there would
not have been one of us alive.” The squire was shy
of such a master of such a weapon.

In 1787 the converts in Sussex were sixteen
hundred; in Brunswick, eighteen hundred; Amelia,
eight hundred. Audiences of five thousand to ten
88 RICHMOND METHODISM.

thousand assembled to hear these apostles. At two
camp-meetings on the Eastern Shore there were two
thousand converts. Rev. Jacob Kobler, of Freder-
icksburg, pioneer to Ohio, could count only twenty-
five Methodists in the State. In less than forty years
there were one hundred thousand. A log meeting-
house on Sam’s Creek in Maryland was the beginning
of American Methodism. Strawbridge, an Irish
preacher, was the single apostle to the continent.
In 1899 the Methodists are millions. Their ad-
herents number every third citizen.

The other churches had the start of the Methodists. .
The Baptist began in 1638; the Presbyterian in 1684;
the Episcopal in 1600. The Methodists organized in
1784. The census shows that our church numbers
one million and a half more than the regular Baptists,
three millions more than the Presbyterian and three
and three-quarter millions in excess of the Episco-
palian. These denominations were working two
hundred, one hundred and fifty, and one hundred
years before we began. In 1784 we had no college;
now, three hundred.

Nothing could withstand the “ thundering legion ”
on horseback. The proud were humbled; the scoffer
fell flat and howled in horror. Jesse Lee records
scenes of interest. ‘“‘ Here were many of the first
quality in the country wallowing in the dust, with
their silks, broadcloth, powdered heads, rings and
ruffles. And some of them so convulsed they could
neither speak nor stir.” At another revival he
THE MAKERS. 89

reports that the “roarings could be heard over a
mile ’—such the loud cries for mercy. A “ Baptist
came in the church to bring out his sister before she
‘disgraced herself.’ He fell down and began to
cry out, ‘Save or I sink into hell.” <A gang of
mockers remained near the church during a revival.
One went to report. He tumbled to the earth and
yelled for the prayers of the Christians. A doctor
fetched a vial of hartshorn to relieve a penitent. He
and his liquid medicine rolled over on the floor while
he set up a clamor for pardon and pity. Under the
preaching of men like Benjamin Abbott hundreds
fell prostrate. Southey says Abbott not only threw
his hearer into fits, but fainted himself. “ The people
screamed and clung to each other” while Abbott
preached during a storm. At a camp-meeting in
Kentucky three thousand were struck down. It
was a common event for the “ floor and the yard” to
be used to “lay out” the stricken sinners. The
scornful infidel, the loud ranter against religion,
equally with the plain people, went down before the
mighty power of God.

A band of young men, chiefly from the agricultural
class (Virginia contributing many notable ones),
attempt to evangelize a continent of commonwealths.
Infidelity in high places ricidule them. The priests
and the people oppose. The long distances and bad
roads hinder. The preachers are poor. A war rages
in the civilized sections and bloody barbarians murder
families on the frontier. Paul, confronted with such
90 RIOHMOND METHODISM.

difficulties, might have cried out, “ Who is sufficient
for these things? ”

May it not be said that Asbury, Lee, Garrettson,
Dickens, McKendree, Drumgoole, McHenry, Poy-
thress and their colaborers fertilized the statesman-
ship of Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson. America with-
out Methodism could not have been the Republic
of 1899. Greece had leaders without peers in the
past or present, but the Hellenes never had a suffi-
cient moral soil to grow a great nation, free from
factions and internecine strife.

The men that seeded down the people with godli-
ness at this juncture deserve well of the Republic.

So severe was the service that in a few years the
young men had a weather-beaten look. They died
early. Exposure, bad fare, ceaseless exertions under-
mined health. We have meagre memoranda of their
lives. Their works and wonders measure the men
for eye of posterity. A controlling aim absorbed their
attention and commanded their lives—saving men.
They did not wait for a “call,” or chaffer about
salary. They went where needed, hailing men to a
better life, under a tree, in a barn, in a court-house.
While one spoke the words of this life in Richmond,
Boston, Charleston, another was following a trail,
yet red with blood of butchered travellers by the
“ Hazzle Patch” and “Crab Orchard,” to the set-
tlement in Kentucky, where Tory, murderer, bandit
had fled to escape the law. In the wigwam of the
savage, the hut of the slave, in the hall of the planter,
the voice of the missionary was heard.
THE MAKBRS. 91

One circuit embraced an entire State. In Virginia
a single charge took in fourteen counties in this
Commonwealth and two across the Roanoke. Lee
weighed 250 pounds, yet rode the United States on
horseback, delivering 270 sermons a year. Asbury
called him “steel.” Bishop McKendree, after forty
years of touring throughout the whole nation, con-
tinued to journey through mud and over mountains,
though “afflicted with rheumatism, piles, hernia,
vertigo, asthma.” The older Bishop, Asbury, is de-
scribed as he reached Baltimore: “ Mr. Asbury came
into the city wrapped up in a blanket and habited
like an Indian, with his clothes worn out.” Behold
the state and circumstance of this chief of the Church.
The Archbishop of York, in his palace, with pay
of $75,000 per annum, could see nothing apostolic
in this “ Paul, the aged.” There is an incident in
his journal that tells how absorbed he was in his
one task. In the three volumes there is no mention
of the battles of the Revolutionary War, nor of the
organization of the Continental Congress, not even
an allusion to the Declaration of Independence!
Such was Asbury. Jesse Lee was only second to
him, if second at all. Lee tied in the ballot for the
bishopric Mr. Whatcoat. Defeated, as Lee was, by
the base influence and infamous deed of a man who
soon “took orders,” detected after the election, yet
he preached at dawn at the market-house in Balti-
more next morning, with an unction and eloquence
above any minister at the General Conference, and
92 RIOHMOND METHODISM.

he records the sessions as sweetest seasons of love
and divine joy. Such was the spirit of the leaders.

Seldom does sculptured stone mark the dust of in-
trepid heroes that made Methodism. The Church
itself is their monument. The building is the silent
eulogy of the architect. Institutions portray the men
of valor that created them. The mighty spirits of
that epochal period are the giant mould in which
Methodism was cast and fashioned. Our grand sys-
tem is the lengthened shadow of its founders. Where
a baronial home is built of a single tree we know it is
a Red-Wood of the Sierras.

It is a law of life that victories are achieved only
at personal cost. The harvest follows when men “ go
forth weeping, bearing precious seed.” Christianity
has its roots in the earth, fattened by the blood of
martyrs. Methodism had birth from the loins of
heroes. Let us salute their memory.
IT.

GEORGE FERGUSSON, SAMUEL PUTNEY
AND WILLIAM WILLIS.

BY THE REV. JAMES C. REED.

The stability and perpetuity of a building depend
upon the foundation and the character of the material
used in the laying of the foundation. If the founda-
tion be laid upon the rock, and the material used in
laying it be stones true and tried, then neither
descending rain, nor rushing flood, nor winds that
blow however fierce and strong, shall cause that
house to fall.

The church is founded on the Rock, Christ Jesus.
“Upon this rock I will build my church; and the
gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” “ For other
foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is
Jesus Christ.” The stones which go into this spiri-
tual temple of God, from foundation to topmost
turret, are men redeemed and washed in the precious
blood of Jesus. “ Ye also, as lively stones, are built
up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer
up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus
Christ.” (I Peter 2: 5.) “And are built upon the
foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ

[93]
94 RIOHMOND METHODISM.

himself being the chief corner stone; in whom all
the building fitly framed together, groweth unto an
holy temple in the Lord; in whom ye also are builded
together for an habitation of God through the spirit.”
(Eph. 2: 20-22.) Such were the men who began the
work of Methodism in Richmond and laid the foun-
dations. They were soundly converted men. Their
feet, as they so often sung, had been taken from the
miry clay and placed upon the Rock of Ages. They
knew whom they had believed. The Spirit of God had
written his pardon “in fleshy tables of the heart”
and they became living epistles “ known and read of
all men.”

Among those who took an active part in the
beginning of Methodism in this city, I am permitted
to speak at this hour of George Fergusson, Samuel
Putney and William Willis. These men of God,
and of the olden times, filled well their places as
“lively stones” in the laying of the foundations of
the Methodist Church in the capital of the Old
Dominion. Their bodies have long since mouldered
into dust, but the spiritual influence of their con-
secrated hearts and holy lives, still lives and will
continue to live in the Methodism of this city, until
God’s great spiritual temple shall be completed and
“the headstone be laid with shoutings, crying Grace,
grace unto it.” Each of these present to us a peculiar
phase or characteristic of Methodist experience and
work in their day. It is to be exceedingly regretted
that such scant memorabilia should be left of the lives
THH MAKERS. 95

of men so potent for good. The characteristic which
will be mentioned as discriptive of each was in a large
measure possessed and illustrated by all, and it is
hard to decide in which department each excelled,
where all were so gifted, active, and useful.

GrEorGE Fercusson, the eldest of this triumviri,
was born January 22, 1795, and died September
20, 1864, aged sixty-nine years. Within these dates
are enclosed a long and useful life. A member
of the first Trinity Church for many years, he subse-
quently held his membership at Union Station.
His funeral sermon was preached in that church by
Dr. W. W. Bennett. His son, John W. Fergusson,
is an honored member and steward of Trinity Church
to-day.

Brother George Fergusson may well stand as a
type of the old time Methodist singer. He was of
a fervent temperament and the fervor and glow of
his spirit found expression in sacred song. It is
true that he was a class-leader and a steward, and
filled well these offices in the church; a man also of
power in prayer; but he was especially gifted in song.
The hymns of Charles Wesley fitted well his lips, and
expressed the experiences of his fervent soul, The
early Methodists sang much and well. John Wesley
gave much attention to this handmaid of religion.
Wesley himself was no mean poet and musician, and
his people are noted for their eminent musical skill
to this day; but the lips and soul of his brother
Charles were touched with a coal from the altar of
96 RICHMOND METHODISM.

God for this peculiar service. The old time Metho-
dists sang well, because they sang with the Spirit
and with the understanding. They may have oc-
casionally slipped up on a flat, and in turning the
tune knocked off the corner of a sharp, but the
singing was not flat, and its divine power was
“ sharper than a two-edged sword.” to penetrate the
hearts of men and turn them to God.

The hymns of Charles Wesley are the best the
world ever saw. They are the best of poetry—
thoroughly scriptural, and expressing the feelings of
the human soul in all of its varied experiences. As
Abel Stevens has well said, ‘They march at times,
like lengthened processions with solemn grandeur;
they sweep at other times like chariots of fire through
the heavens; they are broken like the sobs of grief at
the grave side, and play like the joyful affection of
childhood at the hearth, or shout like victors in the
fray of battle.”

SAMUEL PuTNEY stands before us as a type of the
old time Methodist class-leader. A fatherless boy,
seventeen. years of age, was walking down Franklin
street in this city one Sabbath morning in May, 1818,
and making enquiries for a place of worship. He
was directed to the corner of Nineteenth and Frank-
lin streets, and on entering the church found himself
in an old-fashioned Methodist class-meeting, and was
‘at home. That fatherless boy was Samuel Putney.
He was born near Boston, Mass., August, 1801, and
came to Richmond in May, 1818, and died April 28,
 

 

 

 

SAMUEL PUTNEY.

 
THE MAKERS. 7

1880. The following facts and quotations are taken
from a sketch written by Dr. John E. Edwards:

“Mr. Putney lost his father by death when he was
a mere child. He was thrown upon his own re-
sources while yet a boy. By what he regarded as a
providential opening he was invited to a business
house in Richmond when he was but seventeen years
of age. Self-reliant and trusting in God, he left
his home, his mother, his associates and friends, and
came to Richmond, where he landed, May, 1818, and
commenced his business life in a merchantile shoe
store on Main street.

“ His early religious training had been under the
ministry of the Rev. Mr. Emmerson of the Con-
gregational denomination. When but thirteen years
of age he became shocked and offended by the
doctrines he heard from the pulpit, touching the
possible damnation of infants. He forsook that
Church, walked Sunday after Sunday three or four
miles to a Methodist Church, professed conversion
at that early age, joined the Methodist Church, and
brought his certificate of Church membership with
him, which he deposited the Sunday after his arrival
with the only Methodist Church then in Richmond,
located at the corner of what is now Nineteenth and
Franklin streets. He at once joined the Sunday
School (which had been organized by Miss Polly
Bowles) and was soon taking an active interest in
the work of the Church.”

As a man of business Samuel Putney took high

7
98 RICHMOND. METHODISM.

rank. Dr. Edwards, in describing him as a man
of business, says: ‘‘ Mr. Putney’s firm and unshaken
adherence to principles of rectitude, honesty and
integrity laid the foundation of his business success.”
“He amassed a fortune, and at the commencement
of the late Civil War retired from active business
with an ample competency for the future of his life.”

“ He was gentle, courteous in his manner; warm
and sympathetic in impulses. His hospitality un-
bounded, his charity to the poor unstinted, and his
liberality to the Church—its enterprises and bene-
volent objects—munificent and princely. In the
course of his long connection with the Church in
Richmond, he saw all of the houses of worship
now occupied by the Methodists erected; and was a
liberal contributor to them all.’ He was the next to
the largest contributor to the erection of Broad
Street Church. “ One of the last acts of his life was
to reslate the roof and reconstruct the steeple of
Broad Street Church, at a personal cost of $3,000.”

He was. never absent, unless providentially hin-
dered, from the public services of the sanctuary. “The
Wednesday-night lecture and Friday-night prayer-
meeting always found him present. He attended
the official meetings of the church with a punctuality
which never wavered. In all his Christian duties he
was a model.”

Samuel Putney was early in life made a class-leader.
In this means of grace he excelled, and became a
helper to many a doubting and sorely tried child of
THH MAKERS. 99

God. He had an experience of divine grace in his
own heart and knew how to lead the troubled soul
out of darkness into light.

The old time Methodists believed in, sought and
obtained the conscious assurance of pardoned sin.
They believed that men in this life might be saved from
sin and have the witness of the Holy Ghost attesting
the fact of their salvation. This was not the prevail-
ing belief of those by whom they were surrounded.
The popular teaching in that day ran somewhat on
this wise: “If you seek religion you won’t find it;
if you find it, you won’t know it; if you know it, you
haven’t got it; if you get it, you can’t lose it; if you
lose it, you never had it.” The teaching of the
Methodists ran quite the reverse: ‘If you seek reli-
gion, you will find it; if you find it, you will know it;
if you know it, you have got it; if you get it, you may
lose it; if you lose it, you must have had it.” The
class-meeting was a means of grace to bring men to
a conscious knowledge of sins forgiven, and then to
help them keep the blessed assurance, and grow in
the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Samuel Putney, though a man of large business
cares, was never too busy to leave his temporal busi-
ness in the daytime, and with a glad heart go to meet
his class and talk of heavenly things. Diligent in
business, he was also fervent in spirit, serving the
Lord.

Wit.1am WILLIs stands before us as a man of
great power in prayer. He was born in Henrico
100 RICHMOND METHODISM.

County February 5, 1802, and died in this city March
17, 1872. At the time of his death he was a mem-
ber of Broad Street Church, and his funeral services
were held in that church, Dr. John E. Edwards
preaching the sermon. Ina sketch by Dr. Edwards,
written shortly afterwards, we find the following faith-
ful portraiture of this man of God:

As a man of sterling integrity, probity and honor,
he had no superiors, and but too few equals. He
was loved, honored and respected by all who knew
him. He professed conversion under the ministry
of Rev. Joseph Carson in the great revival in the old
Methodist Church in Richmond in 1826, joined the
church, was class-leader, steward, recording steward,
Sunday school superintendent—filling every position
with honor and credit to himself, and profit to the
church. He was a decided Methodist, but no bigot.
He was an eminent Christian, uniform, quiet, con-
sistent. His life and conversation commanded the
respect and confidence of all who were brought in
association with him. Take him all in all we shall
rarely look upon his like again. One who knew him
long and intimately remarked that “he never knew
him to utter an indiscreet word. He loved his
church. He was eloquent and powerful in prayer.”

The Methodists of the olden times believed in
prayer and lived much on their knees. They had
their places of prayer and times for prayer and they
allowed nothing to hinder their approaches to the
throne of grace. They heard the voice of their
THE MAKERS. 101

divine Lord saying, “ But thou, when thou prayest,
enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy
door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy
Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.”
The secret place of prayer heard their cries and
groans, and they came forth having power with God
and prevailing with man. Whose heart has not been
thrilled during this Centennial by Dr. Brown’s de-
scription of that scene at the last service in Old
Trinity, when William Willis prayed for a former
pastor who had fallen astray?

Has the Church lost the power of prevailing
prayer? If we lived to-day as much on our knees as
did the old Methodist fathers would not the same
mighty results that followed their labors follow ours?

Oh, for more men like George Fergusson, Samuel
Putney and William Willis in this our day!

.
III.
THE REV. PHILIP COURTNEY.

Probably no man did more for Methodism in
Richmond at the beginning than the Rev. Philip
Courtney, for more than sixty years an honored local
preacher in our church. He was born in the county
of King and Queen December 19, 1779. In 1786
his father, who was a Baptist minister, moved with
his family to New Kent where they lived seven years.
Here Philip, to use his own language, enjoyed the
advantages of an old field school, where in three years
he learned all that the master could teach. After
leaving school he worked on the farm until 1795,
when the family moved to Richmond. As a youth
he always had an eager desire for an education, but
his circumstances in life were not favorable, and after
many efforts to obtain a position favorable to his
intellectual advancement he resigned himself to learn
a trade and entered the service of a tailor for that
purpose. While thus engaged his chief delight was
in reading, and ‘having a retentive memory he derived
great advantage, as he tells us, from spending his
leisure moments in this manner. He was married in
1799. About this time the Methodist Episcopal
Church was organized in Richmond under the pas-

[102]
THD MAKERS. 108

toral care of Rev. Thomas Lyell, then of the Balti-
more Conference. The preaching of the Methodists
soon attracted Mr. Courtney and in 1800 he and his
wife were converted and joined the church. He at
once took an active part in church work, was ap-
pointed a class leader, made himself useful as an
exhorter, and in 1809 was licensed to preach. In
1816 he was ordained deacon by Bishop McKendree
and elder four years afterward by Bishop George. In
1822 he was elected manager of the Bible Society
of Virginia, and in 1825 became principal of the male
department of the Lancasterian School of Richmond.
He continued in this position until 1846 when he was
transferred to the female department, over which he
presided the remainder of his life. For many years
he was president of the Bible Society of Virginia.
It is said that his manners were exceedingly affable
and pleasing, and that his whole bearing was gentle
and courteous.

At the time of his death, which occurred Septem-
ber 10, 1865, he was verging on ninety years of age;
but until he had long passed fourscore years, he had
retained his vigor and elasticity of body and mind
in an extraordinary degree. Through all his long
life he enjoyed, without interruption, the confidence,
respect and affection of as large a portion of the
citizens as any man that ever lived in the city. As
long as he was able to stand up in the pulpit, he

‘continued, as opportunity presented, to preach the
gospel. In an appreciative sketch of his life the
104 RICHMOND METHODISM.

“ Episcopal Methodist ” described him as animated,
earnest and spiritual in his ministrations. He never
grew stale, but to the last’ was heard by those who
had heard him all their lives, with unabated interest,
profit and pleasure. He was a man of a high grade
of piety. His life was almost faultless; his career
unsullied. As a preacher, and as a teacher, he pre-
served a spotless and unblemished reputation. His
conversational powers were singularly fine. He
possessed an inexhaustible supply of good humor
and a fund of pleasing anecdote, which, together
with the treasures of a remarkable memory, made him
a delightful companion for the passing hour in what-
ever circle he might be thrown. He was a man of
excellent spirit, faithful in all the relations of life,
full of zeal for the work of the Lord and eminently
useful in his day and generation.
 

 

 

 

 

WILLIAM ALLISON,

 
ly;
WILLIAM ALLISON.
BY WILLIAM G. STARR, D. D.

An epoch; is impossible as a distinct space in
history, if we leave out the men who made it memo-
rable by their presence and their work.

A church on earth is a congregation of souls, but
the construction of such an organization is dependent
upon the wisdom and skill of some master-builder.

The gathering of assemblies and the erection of
buildings for public worship among the early Metho-
dists in America, developed heroic leaders—men of
large mental calibre and of imperial character. Their
names may not have been heralded at the time; their
‘humility may have intercepted honorable mention
of their far-reaching plans as a part of the elect forces
then at work, but the results of their patient toil will
ever remain as an abiding influence among the people
of God.

On the roll of loyal men who took part in the
establishment of Methodism in Richmond, we find
the name of William Allison.

He was a native of Ireland, but evidently descended
from Scotch-English stock, as the family name would
indicate. His ancestors bequeathed to him the in-
valuable legacy of both physical and mental strength,

[105]
106 RIOHMOND METHODISM.

and when he came from Alexandria to Richmond as
the representative of an important commercial en-
terprise, he at once began to impress both the busi-
ness and the religious community around him with
the trustworthiness of his opinions, and the wonderful
individuality of the man in public life.

He was a member of the first “ Trinity Church in
the Valley,” and was a trustee of the new church,
which was erected in 1828, near the corner of Four-
teenth and Franklin streets.

Loyal and helpful to its membership and its benev-
olent work, he remained in fellowship with the
Trinity congregation until the close of his life. He
died in 1850, and was buried from Trinity Church.

We are not dependent upon tradition for infor-
mation relating to the useful career of this noble
man of God.

It was upon the Atlantic ocean, while crossing
over to make his future home in America, that the
young traveler gave his heart to God. The hardships
of the voyage, which included six weeks, were made
memorable by peril and privation. The value of
life—the danger of losing it—and the duty of conse-
crating it to God, seemed to have wrought a revolu-
tion in his methods of thought, and he sought in
prayer the blessed opportunity of dedicating soul and
body to the great Saviour of the world. He never
regretted that step voluntarily taken away out at sea,
with none save God to hear his plea for safety.

In the luggage of young Allison was a little Bible,
THE MAKERS. 107

which was printed in London, in 1795, and bought
by him in the year 1800. It was at the age of eigh-
teen that he left home. Many equally as intrepid and
enterprising youths, coming away from the old home-
stead, would not have thought of the Word of God
as an indispensable part of a personal outfit, when the
baggage was all ready to be shipped to the deck of
the waiting craft in the harbor. That book was to
be the pilgrim staff of that young man in his new
home away over the briny deep, and he was careful
to keep it in easy reach of both hand and heart. He
read its tidings of “ good news from a far country ”;
and its lessons of divine truth opened the way to the
auspicious place and hour when, at sea, he “ found
peace in believing,” and registered his citizenship
in heaven. That Bible became the property of one
of his daughters, and her children still treasure it as
a priceless legacy—an heirloom in safe-keeping under
the roof of a Christian home.

His first resting-place upon the soil of Virginia
was, as I have already intimated, the city of Alex-
andria. From that point he came to Richmond in
the year 1814.

To his credit let it be spoken and written, that
although his genius for business life led to the largest
success, and secured for him an ample fortune, he
never permitted secular interests, no matter how
valuable and important, to interfere with his religious
duties as a servant of God in the Methodist Church.
There were local attractions to tempt the young at
108 RIOHMOND METHODISM.

that remote day, but his principles were too firmly
fixed to be moved, and his will too inflexible to be
bent out of harmony with the general tenor of his
life.

At one time he was a Justice of the Peace by the
will of the people, but political engagements at that
early period in the history of the republic did not
require the sacrifice of conscience and character to
achieve party success. While in office he maintained
an even temper of mind, and, when released from the
responsibilities of his position, he retired from the
post of honor with an untarnished reputation.

His generosity of soul led him to perform many
acts of Christian beneficence. The poor always found
in him a friend upon whom they could rely in time of
trouble. He loved to give. He helped a number of
young men to start in business. His brother mer-
chants were frequently indebted to him for financial
favors, which enabled them to tide over the em-
barrassments of a stringent money market. He paid
numerous security debts amounting to $100,000.
Overcoming every reverse with a most wonderful
recuperative energy, he left a large estate as one of
the results of his life-long work.

He loved his church. His house was the home of
the Methodist preacher, and the humblest itinerant
always found a cordial welcome awaiting him at the
front door. He was never so happy as when enter-
taining the prophets of God, or listening reverently
to the message of salvation from their lips in the
sanctuary.
THE MAKERS. 109

He was largely instrumental in the erection of the
second Trinity in 1828, and in the restoration of the
building in 1837. When the edifice was complete,
he kindly donated a bond of $500, which he held
against the trustees of the church, who had borrowed
that amount to assist in paying for the construction
of the sacred edifice.

He married Miss Ann Waters, a beautiful and
cultured Christian woman. To the wedded pair the
Lord gave thirteen children, five of whom were living
at the time of his death in 1850. His wife survived
him, and the casket which contained her mortal re-
mains was the last to be borne from the doorway of
“ Old Trinity ” in the year 1861, shortly before the
transfer of the congregation to their new temple of
worship, on the corner of Twentieth and Broad
streets.

His portrait may be found in the residence of his
son, Capt. William H. Allison, on West Franklin
street in this city. It represents a manly figure with
a broad brow, a firm mouth, and a twinkling eye,
radiant with gentleness and good humor. The por-
trait of his wife reveals a lovely face with a cast of
countenance indicative of a charitable soul and a
lofty elevation of character. It is not strange that
they should have wielded a wide social influence, and
impressed their friends and neighbors with respect
and reverence for the church of God.

It was Lord Chesterfield who said: “ Those who
in the common course of the world, will call them-
110 RIOHMOND METHODISM.

selves your friends; or whom, according to the
common notions of friendship, you may probably
think such, will never tell you of your faults. But, on
the contrary, more desirous to make you their friend
than to prove their friendship for you, they patronize
' your follies in order to use you.” William Allison
was not that kind of a friend. He attracted true
hearts, and was careful to live so that no one could
question his sincerity, or doubt for a moment that
his word was pure gold. This is the reason why his
business relations with his fellow-merchants never
resulted in even a temporary estrangement.

His personal income grew steadily, not by specula-
tion, but by the use of just such sound judgment as
that for which Benjamin Franklin contended when
he wrote: ‘‘ The way to wealth is as plain as the way
to market. It depends chiefly on two words, industry
and frugality; that is, waste neither time nor money,
but make the best use of both.”

But it was in the development of his religious life
that our sainted friend exemplified most conspic-
uously those traits of character which made him a
man worthy of imitation. The even tenor of his
unvarying loyalty to his church reminds one of that
remarkable declaration of Baxter: “It is one thing
to take God and heaven for your portion, as believers
do; and another thing to be desirous of it, as a reserve
when you can keep the world no longer. It is one
thing to submit to heaven as a lesser evil than hell;
and another thing to desire it as a greater good than
THE MAKERS. 111

earth. It is one thing to lay up treasures and hopes
in heaven, and seek it first; and another thing to be
contented with it in our necessity, and to seek the
world before it, and give God only what the flesh can
spare.”

A servant of the Lord with such a record as our *
departed friend and pioneer carried to heaven with
him, could never have debated the propriety of self-
denial or self-sacrifice after the consecrated ear had
heard the call of the Master. His uplifted example
ought to be a stimulus and a blessing to the present
generation. Would that all the Lord’s people were
as willing to spend and be spent for the sake of that
Christ whose friendship is our only hope.
Vv.
RICHARD WHITFIELD.

Richard Whitfield was born in Whitby, Yorkshire,
England, September 12, 1777. To a writer in the
Christian Advocate we are indebted for the following
facts concerning his life:

Deprived by death of all his relatives, he attached
himself in youth to the merchant marine. The pre-
mature discharge of a cannon, while firing a salute,
severely and permanently disabling his right hand,
he was led to a total change of his pursuits. In 1801
he embarked for America and landed in New York,
where he lived for six years. In 1807 he removed
to Richmond, and made it his home for the rest of his
life.

As a citizen, Mr. Whitfield was unambitious of
public honors, though animated by a laudable public
spirit. The esteem in which his judgment and in-
tegrity were held, is partially evidenced by his service
for fifteen years as a justice, to which position he was
elected against his wish, and twice reélected against
his protest. As a business man he was sagacious,
energetic and indefatigable. His industry and good
judgment, and the conspicuous integrity that marked

[112]
THH MAKERS. 118

all his transactions, were rewarded by a handsome
property, and together with his general capacity,
gave him prominence among the leading citizens of
Richmond. He was in all, the architect of his own
fortunes, and won his way by solid merit.

Mr. Whitfield was converted to God while living in
New York, and under the ministry of Rev. Nicholas
Snethen. He at once joined the Methodist Church,
of which he remained a communicant till his death.
As a member of our church in Richmond he was,
throughout his long life, exceedingly useful. He
filled all its lay offices with honor. His zeal and
liberality abounded in behalf of all the enterprises of
the church. His house was ever a preacher’s home—
a term, the whole virtue and charm of which, none
but itinerant preachers, and especially those of the
earlier days, can fully appreciate. There are still
many of these who hold him in blessed remembrance.

Mr. Whitfield’s piety was deep, his life consistent,
and his faith firm and intelligent, always ready to give
the reasons on which it was founded. His testimony
and example were as a candle set upon a candlestick.
With advancing years his Christian character gained

‘new development, verifying the words of the wise
man, that the path of the just is as the shining light,
that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.
His attendance at church became less frequent as his
infirmities increased, until finally he could come no
more. Never can the writer forget the picture of
holy rapture on the last or nearly the last of these

8
114 RICHMOND METHODISM.

occasions, as the venerable Christian, with lifted eyes
and beaming countenance united in singing the grand
doxology of Bishop Kerr, in which men below and
angels above are invoked to join in praising the triune
God, the source of all our blessings. It is thus that
memory sees him whenever his name is called, in
his accustomed place next to the altar of Centenary
Church, with features radiant and heart aglow with
the near foretaste of the joys of heaven. But he is
not there now, save only as the mind pictures him.
He is indeed singing the same song as then; but he
sings it above.

The last years of Mr. Whitfield’s life were spent
in what Bunyan describes as the land of Beulah.
His Christian warfare was already accomplished, his
fight of faith was over, his perils were past, and
thenceforth there was laid up for him a crown of
righteousness. In beatific prospect of the eternal
joys, he was but waiting until his change should
come. It had pleased God to grant him the blessing
of Abraham—“ full of years” and “satisfied with
long life’; it only remained to call him to the upper
mansions. Finally the summons arrived. To use
the figure of Bunyan, a post came from the Celestial
City, with a notification to Richard Whitfield, that
he would soon be sent for, and the messenger gave
a token that his message was true: “The keepers
of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shal!
bow themselves, and the golden bowl shall be
broken.” These signs Mr. Whitfield bore for a
THE MAKERS. 115

season. His infirmities increased, but so did his faith
and his consolation. His bliss was sometimes ecstatic.
At last, on the 4th of August, 1866, the angelic
convoy came for him, and he went to his God.

His funeral was preached the next day by Bishop
Doggett, to a large congregation in Centenary
Church, and his body was committed to the grave
in Shocco Cemetery, to await the “first resurrec-
tion.”
VI.
JAMES M. TAYLOR.
BY WILLIAM G. STARR, D. D.

In the county of New Kent nearly one hundred
years ago was born one of the truest friends that
Richmond: Methodism has ever enrolled upon the
list of tireless and successful workers in the vineyard
of the Lord. He died at the age of seventy-one, after
having served his generation in the fear of God.

James M. Taylor was converted at an early age,
and at once gave evidence of his own personal belief
that a saved man ought to be thoroughly consecrated
to the service of his Saviour. For many years he held
his membership with Centenary Church in this city
and was always in his seat in the house of God when
the time came for public worship. He was an en-
thusiastic friend of the preacher. On the Sabbath
day he listened to the man of God with a glad heart,
and during the secular week he held himself in readi-
ness to serve his pastor as promptly as if summoned
by the ringing of a bell. He kept his heart full of the
love of God by trusting in Christ implicitly, and then
by exemplifying that love in deeds of charity and in

loyal devotion to the church of his choice.
[116]
 

 

 

ue
—
ats) sa
———

 

JAMES M TAYLOR.

 
THE MAKERS. 17

He was a man of such positive convictions touching
duty to God and his fellow men that nothing could
swerve him an inch from what he believed to be the
path of the just. It is related that when the work
upon the present Centenary Church building was at
one time arrested, owing to the apprehension of the
builders that they might not be paid in due time for
their labor and material, Wm. Evans (the father-
in-law of Bro. Taylor), Richard Whitfield and James
‘M. Taylor assumed the payment of the debt, and
directed the builders to continue the work without
fear until the work was complete. In his judgment,
justice leaned toward the obligation of the people
binding them to make good their contract with the
workmen, but he entertained a loftier sense of justice
toward that God whose house might be to many
souls the very gate of heaven.

In the year 1845 Brother Taylor saw the need of
a new church enterprise in a section of the city ad-
jacent to the intersection of the two streets known as
Clay street and Brook avenue. Without waiting
until some result might be reached through the fre-
quent sessions of committees he at once purchased
a lot and proceeded to erect what was known for
many years as “ Clay Street Chapel.” He nailed the
shingles on the roof with his own hands, and paid
every dollar of the cost of the entire structure as soon
as it was due. When the edifice was finished, it was
ready for the immediate use of the little group of
worshippers who were gathered there to receive it
118 RICHMOND METHODISM.

without any fear of financial embarrassment—the last
item of indebtedness having already been provided
for by this noble man of God.

A wise field of usefulness was providentially pro-
vided for the peculiar gifts of Brother Taylor in this
new sphere of labor. He undertook, as soon as the
congregation entered the new building, to organize
a Sunday School, and for twenty-five years he was its
energetic and faithful superintendent. If the treasury
of the church was not in condition to help the school
at any time, it mattered not, inasmuch as the money
was always at the disposal of God’s people through
the liberality of this prince in Israel. He loved
children, and every member of the chapel school
looked to him who presided over its destiny as a father
and a friend. They, often halted him upon the street
to recite in his hearing the simple story of their
everyday cares and sorrows, and he was ever ready
to cancel their griefs. with the sympathy of his great
heart.

Bishop McTyiere once said to a body of young
ministers in our Conference, “ Be courteous and kind
to every one, but never forget to cultivate the friend-
ship of the children of the church.”

Nestor H. Forbes was the teacher of the male Bible
class in that old Clay Street Sunday School. Out of
that company of young men God called four to the
ministry of the Word. It was always the first
question with Brother Taylor, whenever he met any
one of the four, to enquire also about the ministerial
THH MAKERS. 119

success of all the rest of them. He felt that their lives
and his own had only been parted asunder down here
by the call of duty, and that by God’s will they would
meet again in heaven.

As a steward and trustee of the church, our hal-
lowed friend was a model of promptness and fidelity.
His physical endurance enabled him to accomplish
everything he attempted to do in the service of his
Lord, but behind this there was a mighty impulse
from God—a holy longing to see the work prospering
everywhere. He kept back nothing of time, energy
or estate which he could possibly carry to the altar
as an offering to the Christ who had saved him.

When advancing years reminded him that the end
might not be far off he calmly faced the issue with
triumphant faith in God. Under the roof of his son,
H. Seldon Taylor, now an honored steward of, Park
Place Church, this venerable man of God breathed
his last in full hope of the glorious resurrection of the
just.

His memory will linger through long years to
come, carefully treasured in the hearts of those who
knew him well and loved him with filial devotion.
His best memorial has already been written and
re-written in the lines of those whose thoughts were
moulded by his broad views of Christian liberality,
and the missionary spirit which filled his soul will
be a living power among Richmond Methodists so
long as the Angel of the Covenant shall lead us to
newer fields of toil and make us brave to meet the
largest claims of Christian work.
120 RIOHMOND METHODISM.

Several years ago Bishop Atticus G. Haygood said
in a letter to a church paper: “Let us never fail to
cherish and care for our old men so long as they live,
and then our love for them will prompt us to take
care of their memory when they are gone.” The
deeds of our fathers are a sacred trust committed to
coming generations by the providence of God, and we
ought to meet the obligation during our brief day
on earth by a systematic preservation of their in-
spiring words and heroic achievments. Centuries ago
Tacitus wrote, “ This I hold to be the chief office of
history, to rescue virtuous actions from the oblivion
to which a want of records would consign them; ” and
we cannot conscientiously let perish from the annals
of Methodism in Virginia any item of information
that may be of service to those who will come after
us.

The grand old men, who left shining footprints
behind them when they were transferred to the
heavenly home still live in the affections of every
grateful servant of the Lord Jesus, and they deserve
to be honored by all who love the church of God.
VII.
CHARLES TALBOTT,

Charles Talbott was born September 15, 1813, in
Anne Arundel county, Maryland, at the ancestral
_ home of his father, John Lawrence Talbott. In 1839
he came to Richmond, and in 1848 he became a mem-
ber of old Trinity Church under the ministry of the
Rev. John E. Edwards. He was one of the leaders in
the movement to build new Trinity on the corner of
Twentieth and Franklin streets. He believed that a
church was needed in that locality and he showed his
faith not only by his liberality, being one of the
largest contributors to the enterprise, but by the
unceasing care which he gave to it.

He was a born architect and the plans of the new
church were largely the result of his thought. The
erection of the building absorbed him so completely
that he could be usually found there when he was
sought in his home. He saw every brick and stone
go into it. The beauty and comfort of the Sunday
School room, which has often been remarked upon,
is largely the result of his planning and untiring
efforts. :

For many years he gave to Trinity bountifully of

[raz]
122 RICHMOND METHODISM.

his thought, his heart and his means. His bene-
ficence was characteristic of the man. It was his joy
to give without ostentation. He had the grace of
hospitality. His home was the preacher’s home, and
there was nothing too good and no service too great
for him to render the itinerant who came under his
roof.

As a man of business he was conspicuous for in-
tegrity. He illustrated the truth that a man may
prosper in the pursuit of any honorable avocation if
honesty be with him a matter of principle rather than
of policy.

As a citizen he desired nothing save the approba-
tion of God and the good opinion of his fellow men.
More than once he declined to receive municipal
honors, which his many friends would gladly have
conferred upon him.

He died December 16, 1881, after a career of great
usefulness in the various relations of life, and his
name lives in the grateful memory of all who knew

him.
VIII.
CORNELIUS CREW.

Cornelius Crew, for many years one of the most
influential Methodists in Richmond, was born in
Charles City County, January 22, 1805. His parents
were Quakers, and to their faith and worship he
adhered till he reached the full maturity of his years.
After his marriage in 1831 he began more frequently
to attend religious worship at old Trinity Methodist
Church, and in 1841, under the ministry of the Rev.
John Newland Maffitt, he made a profession of ex-
perimental conversion and joined the Methodist
Episcopal Church.

Within one year from the time of his union with
the church—we quote from a sketch written by the
late Dr. John E. Edwards—he was appointed leader,
and not long thereafter a steward, both of which
offices he filled with great usefulness and fidelity as
long as his health would allow him to attend to his
duties. He took a lively interest in all the institutions
and enterprises of the church, and was a liberal con-
tributor to all its plans for church extension, and for
the furtherance of the gospel in the world.

[123]
124 RIOHMOND METHODISMN.

After the division of old Trinity Church member-
ship he united with that portion which concluded to
build what is now known as new Trinity. Brother
Crew took an active and leading part in the erection
of this church edifice. He gave his time and atten-
tion to the work and contributed his money with an
unstinted hand.

He was the friend and patron of education and
educational enterprises. More than once he took
aul active part—in efforts that proved unsuccessful—
in getting up a large female college in Richmond,
to be directly under the direction of the church of |
his choice. The Sunday School engaged his atten-
tion and labors, and shared largely in his contribu-
tions from the time he entered the church until he
was unable to walk to the Sunday School room. He
spoke of it frequently during his last illness, and
seemed to desire, more than almost anything else,
a return to his accustomed place and duties in this
work of benevolence and charity.

He was a sincere and conscientious Christian. He
often complained of his want of that measure of
religious enjoyment which he thought others ex-
perienced; but he was constant in prayer, uniform in
his attendance on the church services, and always led
an irreproachable Christian life.

But it remained for his last illness to bring up his
religious experience to its climax of enjoyment. His
deep and earnest piety exhibited itself in its beauty
and power as his strength declined, and as he verged
THH MAKERS. 125

to the close of his life. He acquired a complete
victory over death, and looked forward to it and
spoke of it with all the composure with which the
toil-worn laborer looks to the close of the day, or
the weary mariner, after a tedious voyage, looks to
the port of his destination.

His humility was a most conspicuous trait in his
character. He shrank with an instinctive recoil from
anything like praise that might be bestowed upon
him, and strictly enjoined time and again, that noth-
ing should be said or written about him that might
not tend to glorify the grace of God. He wished to
sink into nothing and let Christ be all in all. When
his pastor would say, “ We shall miss you; what will
the church do without you?” he would reply: “ God
can do without me; he is not dependent upon such
a poor worm as I am for the support of his cause.”

He died January 22, 1865, at his home in this city.
The day before his death, when his strength was
rapidly failing, he requested his pastor, with his
family, to sing his favorite hymn—‘ How firm a
foundation, ye saints of the Lord ”—and at the close
of the hymn, at his request, prayer was offered up;
and as the party rose from their knees, he repeated:
“Blessed Jesus, dear Redeemer—how precious is
Christ.”

Never was there a softer, gentler falling asleep in
Jesus than was witnessed in his death.
IX.

DAVID S. DOGGETT AND THOMAS
BRANCH.

BY PAUL WHITEHEAD, D. D.

The subject assigned to me connects the names
of two men of mark, widely different in personal
characteristics, in the spheres of life and activity
providentially falling to them, and in the species of
influence exerted by them upon mankind and the
church of God.

The one was a distinguished preacher of the
gospel, and at length a bishop of his church; the other
a layman, a merchant and banker. The one was a
student and scholar, a man of letters, prominent in
style and utterance; the other spending little time
upon books; having no leisure for study; blunt,
direct and positive in his address. The one spending
much of his time in seclusion from society, in lonely
study and meditation in the pastor’s retirement, “ far
from a world of grief and sin,” temporarily, if not
“ forevermore with God shut in;” the other in marts
of trade and traffic, in strugglings, battlings and
endeavorings, ofttimes in boisterous conflicts, where

man’s selfish interests and schemes to get gain, clash
[126]
THH MAKERS. 127

and collide and strike fire; where a man must think
quickly and decide important questions upon a
moment’s consideration; where he needs much prayer
and looking to God to do right and yet must “ pray
on the wing” and take hold upon God by the
“upward glancing of an eye,” through the smoke of
the battle of trade; where above all every provocation
to anger, bitterness and distrust of our fellow men,
arises from the numerous examples, constantly before
one’s eyes, of the unworthiness of ordinary human
nature.

The one called to prominence and office and
authority in the church by the force of his reputation
and the splendor of his gifts improved by grace; the
other moved by the sense of duty and the earnest
desire of his heart to better things around him, to
come to the front of service and without fee or reward
of money or fame, serve his generation and lay upon
the altar of the Divine glory his abilities and contri-
butions.

-Both touched deeply and strongly, the life current
of Richmond Methodism, as at another place, they
had touched for good and eternal help, each other’s
souls.

The period of life in Richmond common to both,
was cofhparatively short, extending from 1865 to
1880. The labors and influence of Bishop Doggett
in ‘the community, began, however, long before the
earlier of these dates; and Mr. Branch in age and
feebleness continued on the stage of life here for
128 RIOHMOND METHODISM.

eight years after the bishop’s mortal part slept under
his monument in Hollywood.

David S. Doggett was stationed in Richmond four
times; namely, at Trinity in 1834 (the year of his
marriage); in 1850-1 and 1852-3 at Centenary; in
1861-2 and 1862-3 at Broad Street; and finally in
1863-4, 1864-5 and 1865-6 at Centenary, being elected
Bishop in April of the last year. He also served as
presiding elder of the Richmond District for four
years—from 1857 to 1861. He had bought real
estate and gradually enlarged his property in the
capital city of the commonwealth, and naturally
selected it as his home when he was elected Bishop.
He had therefore long known it and become in a
general way well acquainted with its Methodist popu-
lation and membership before Thomas Branch’s
removal from Petersburg.

The range of his intimate friends was not large;
he did not seek company and had often an abstracted
manner in which he was comparatively silent and
took little part in conversation; hence his influence
was very largely that of a public man; in the pulpit,
in public meeting, or in the small groups of trustees,
managers or directors of some interdenominational
body like the Virginia Bible Society, of which he
was some time president. He was known to, and
more or less well acquainted with, the leading
preachers of other churches in his day; for example,
Drs. Plumer and Hoge of the Presbyterians, Dr.
Jeter of the Baptists, Dr. Minnegerode of the Episco-
THH MAKERS. 129

palians; and had often preached in churches of other
denominations.

In the judgment of most men capable of giving an
opinion, he was facile princeps of the Richmond
pulpit whenever he had a charge in the city. No man
I have ever heard could preach a hundred consecutive
sermons of a higher order of merit, or make a deeper
or more abiding impression on the minds and hearts
of his hearers. He was too classic and elegant for
the taste of some men; too elaborate and thoughtful
for others; not noisy enough and too regardful of
proprieties for a few; but the average man, while
listening to him, had broader views of Scripture,
deeper views of religious life, thrilled with higher
resolves to be a whole hearted and more devoted
disciple of the Lord Jesus, and ofttimes was swept
off his feet by the rush of a heaven-endowed
eloquence that carried the listener to supernal heights
of enjoyment or enthusiastic readiness to do and dare
all things for Christ’s sake.

It cannot be doubted that in addition to the direct
and immediate good done to individual souls by such
a preacher, one great service rendered to Methodism,
here as elsewhere, was to take away much of its
reproach, in the eyes of men at large, as a church
with an ignorant, uncultivated or inelegant ministry.
David S. Doggett was the peer of any body's mimster.
There was no discount on his scholarship. He was as
polished as Addison, as faultless in diction as Ma-
caulay. His religious fervor was as exalted as that

9
180 RICHMOND METHODISMN.

of Doddridge, and his theology as clear and well
adjusted as John Wesley’s. His illustrations gave
signs of wide reading and a pure taste. He never
even leaned towards coarseness, levity or irreverence.

He was a splendid example of the successful ex-
tempore speaker. I heard him in Norfolk in 1851
deliver an elaborate and powerful discourse on the
text “It it finished.” I wrote from memory a full
outline of it, but of necessity a mere outline, for I
was not a stenographer or even a practised note-
taker. Years afterwards I showed him the sketch.
He read it with interest and exclaimed, “ You have
more of it than I have!” I did not ask an expla-
nation, but I thought that he had somehow lost the
full manuscript; I strove in vain to understand him
as meaning literally what he said. Yet after his
death, I inspected his manuscripts in the possession
of Dr. John E. Edwards, and I saw that his remark
was precisely true! He carried in his mind, with
some marvelous power to reproduce it, the filling
out of the great sermons of which he had never, for
the most part, constructed formally in writing any-
thing but the frame-work.

In delivery he was perfectly natural, without a
trace of affectation or artificiality. He was a preacher
and not an actor; absorbed in his subject, not in
elocutionary effects, yet violating no canon of true
art. When, immediately after admission into the
Conference, I asked him what advice he would give
to a beginner in preaching, he replied, “ Study to
THE MAKERS. 181

be natural, and try to find out and correct your
faults:” a simple and exhaustive direction, though
difficult of execution. He was a great preacher made
on that model.

Though a man of ability in the use of the pen, and,
when aroused, not devoid of power as a debater, and
also an intelligent student of our church polity,
Bishop Doggett was not a leader in ecclesiastical
circles like Dr. William A. Smith or Dr. Leroy M.
Lee, or Bishop John Early. The superior of any of
them on the throne of his power, the pulpit, they
excelled him in dealing with “ State affairs” in the
Church, and in governing and controlling men or
bodies of men for governmental purposes. His
“days” then bear his impress chiefly as an able
minister of the New Testament of our Lord Jesus
Christ the Saviour, “rightly dividing the word of
truth.” The day of Eternity alone will reveal fully
his share in this respect, in the coloring and shaping
of Methodist life and Methodist development here,
where so large a portion of his mature life and
ministry was spent.

Since he “fell asleep” in 1880 there has risen
among us no such man: the splendor of no such light
has blazed along the track upon which the car of
Methodism in this city has been rolling.

He was great in death. Among other things
notable, his reply to the hope expressed by a brother
minister that he would soon be better and recover
from his attack, is worthy of remembrance. “No,
182 RICHMOND METHODISN.

”

no,” said he, “I have gone too far now, I wish to
step out on the shores of Eternity, clad in the robes
of my immortality.” After much patient endurance
of suffering, and a clear, powerful witness through-
out, to the saving efficacy of the grace and blood of
our Lord Jesus Christ, he breathed his life out peace-
fully upon the breast of his Redeemer—the refuge
to which he had pointed and led many a troubled,
sin-sick soul.

Tuomas BRANCH was getting to be an old man
when, in 1865, he came to Richmond to reside.
About the last fourth of his life was spent here. He
had been for over thirty years a prominent Methodist
in Petersburg—second there only to D’Arcy Paul,
the incomparable Irishman, whose exalted piety, un-
bounded liberality and unselfish personal services to
the church and Conference, have made his name
“as ointment poured forth.” The “ Cockade City”
has always been a strong hold of Methodism. It had
many noble Christians in our churches. Next to
D’Arcy Paul, as I have said, was Thomas Branch,
converted in Dinwiddie County, and joining the ,
church in Petersburg when David S. Doggett was
our pastor there. When High Street Church was
organized, he went thither and gave some of the best
years of his life to the service of God in that section
of our Petersburg membership. After years of com-
panionship with D’Arcy Paul and other men of a
high type, he joined the ranks of Richmond Metho-
dists as they rallied their thin lines for reorganization
THE MAKERS. 183

and fresh movement after the terrible convulsion of
the Civil War.

Thenceforward till his death his unique figure and
personality were to be reckoned upon in all our
denominational demonstrations. At Annual and
General Conferences and especially in rallies or
special meetings, at home, he was seen and heard
and always made an impression.

His influence over the people of his day, and his
power for good are to be ascribed, under God, as I
conceive, to three things :—

1. His true and unfeigned personal religion. He
was a genuinely converted man, born again in those
camp meeting days of 1831, when with the men of
the world it was little short of disgrace to go to a
Methodist “ mourner’s bench” and “ seek religion.”
He trampled under foot pride and the world, and
came down into the dust, and was really and wonder-
fully changed from nature to grace. And this “ pearl
of great price ” he retained amidst all the corruptions
and temptations which assailed him in a long and
varied life. We may never know with what difficulty
he “kept the faith.” He was unquestionably the

‘subject of painful struggles, and had fears and dark
hours; but by the power of the Holy Spirit, with a
free use, of the ministry of sorrow and bereavement
(for he passed through some deep waters), he was
kept through faith unto salvation.

Men whose personal religion is doubtful, or more
than doubtful, may have influence proceeding from
* 184 RICHMOND METHODISH.

wealth, or great intellect, or social connections; but
people do not hearken to them in matters of religion,
nor can they take the flag of the Cross and stand in
the front of battle in an evil day. Thomas Branch
could. He was devout; he loved worship and the
Bible at home and in Church. He loved the company
of good men, and chose such for his special intimates.
He kept himself unspotted from corrupt and doubtful
associations.

2. His decided love of Methodism, its doctrines
and its polity. This was true on the whole. He had
hesitated for a while about joining the Methodists.
The influence of a distinguished and very able
minister of. another communion kept his mind for
some time undecided. But he made his choice and
did not substantially swerve from it. He was at-
tracted, especially late in life, by the idea of church
unity which has engaged the thoughts and interested
the hearts of many devout and broad-minded men.
He was greatly enamored of the idea' that there could
be a great church which all good men might join,
and love and labor for Christ’s cause without so
many sects of varying opinions. But while he sup-
posed himself to be very liberal in the concessions
which he could make to this great idea, it was in-
teresting to note how Methodistic was the origin and
source of what he counted indispensable. In truth
the Methodism in him had given him the catholicity
which sought yet broader paths in which to walk.
A true Methodist is ready always to say to all others,
THE MAKERS. 136

“Tf thy heart be right, as my heart is with thy heart,
give me thy hand.” Like John Wesley he values
good living above even right opinions. He strikes
hands with good people on all sides. The Methodist
people, with good reason, counted Thomas Branch
to be among them, not by accident but by deliberate
and earnest choice—a choice tested by the events
of over fifty years, in an exciting, laborious and event-
ful life.

3. His liberality. Few men have been more
generous and free-hearted in their gifts of private
kindness and charity and of public benevolence. He
had a tender, sympathetic, affectionate disposition,
Strangely mingled with an abrupt manner which
sometimes appeared harsh. Touch his heart and you
could lead him any whither except to do wrong.
The church and community soon took his gauge.
They knew that he would give, and that he was not
of those men who are always studying how to avoid
doing what conscience and public opinion demand
of them. And so the blessing of his example was
large in his day, and remains in Richmond Metho-
dism yet. His will of record in the Court of this
city, contained the largest bequest to our church
work of any man of our generation.

A rich Methodist, not compromising and refining
away the doctrines of religion taught by the fathers
of the church; not ashamed of its polity and usages;
of pure living and unfeigned devoutness and spiri-
tuality of mind; charitable, liberal, benevolent, not
136 RICHMOND METHODISM.

close or narrow in the use of money, particularly for
the cause of religion, but free handed, ready to relieve
distress, setting an example of broad-minded and
broad-hearted giving, turning no good cause or
worthy object away empty——deserves to be held in
everlasting remembrance.

Such I believe was Thomas Branch. In a very
advanced age, he gradually declined until death
“ sealed ” God’s “ endless mercies” to him and made
“the sacrifice complete.”

I will not conclude this paper without making
some remarks on the value to our church of a well
preserved balance between the two elements, clerical
and lay. These two elements are strongly typified
by Bishop Doggett and Mr. Branch.

It was a defect, if not an error, in the original
development of Methodism, that in its government
the clerical element so largely predominated. The
laymen were confined to a subordinate sphere as
stewards and class-leaders. They did not participate
at all in church legislation. Men like Thomas Branch
must always have chafed under this state of things.
They felt competent to make laws for the church as
well as for the State. They saw some things more
clearly than the clergy seemed to do. They saw no
reason why a preacher’s parchment of ordination
should make a man wiser in matters of finance than
experience as a merchant or banker, nor why the
same preparation should enable one to deal with
questions of jurisprudence like a lawyer. Their zeal
 
THE MAKERS. 187

languished for lack of exercise. Their powers of
service were, in many things, dwarfed so far as the
Church organization was concerned. Gradually this
evil was removed, and no one enjoyed its removal
more than Thomas Branch.

A few preachers have talent and special gifts for
Church business. Let such be recognized and hon-
ored and employed in that sphere as well as in the
clerical work proper. On the other hand, not every
layman can be decidedly useful in those departments
of work which belong to the list of serving tables.
They are particularly called to give themselves to
“ prayer ” as much as any preacher is to the “ ministry
of the world.” It is as great a blunder to set them
over the temporalities of the Church because they
are “ good men,” “ filled with the Holy Spirit ” as it
would be to employ in the same work an eloquent
preacher for that reason. This is an age calling for
the best methods and the best men to use them. The
clerical ranks ought to be weeded of unworthy in-
cumbents, and the lay officials selected from our most
gifted as well as our most consecrated men. Then
the worship and the service of God, in the desk and
in the pew, in the study and in the council chamber,
shall be alike strong and effective, and not too sadly
like ‘“‘ the legs of the lame.”

With a better educated, better drilled, higher-
toned ministry, and the pressing into service of every
layman of ability and gifts for every species of work
he is prepared to do, we shall need only a powerful
188 RICHMOND METHODISM.

and constant baptism of the Holy Spirit to make the
twentieth century as notable in our annals as the
eighteenth century, the earlier part of which saw the
birth of Methodism in the world, and its latter days,
the introduction of the same heaven-blessed organi-
zation into the capital city of the Old Dominion.
X.
ASA SNYDER.*

He was born in Ulster county, N. Y., March 30,
1825. His parents, devout and zealous Methodists,
brought him up in the nurture and admonition of
the Lord. In 1846 he was married to Miss Blandina
Storry, of the same county, who proved herself a
faithful, devoted helpmeet through his life, and now
sorrows at his grave, yet not as others who have no
hope. In 1851 he moved to Richmond, Va., where
he was engaged in active business, until declining
health compelled him to retire to Unter Walden, his
country-seat in Fluvanna. From a child he led a
moral life, but not until 1856 did he profess saving
faith in Christ. October 5th of that year, he united
with Centenary M. E. Church, South, Dr. J. E.
Edwards being the pastor. In a brief interview with
him last spring, I spoke of the appreciation and
affection of his brethren of Centenary to him; his
eyes filled with grateful tears, and he acknowledged

* This sketch is taken from an article by Bishop J. C. Gran-
bery, which appeared in the ‘“‘ Richmond Christian Advocate”
shortly after Mr. Snyder’s death.

[139]
140 RICHMOND METHODISH.

with warmth and pathos the uniform kindness and,
as he said, forbearance and undeserved honor they
had shown him. He was an ornament of grace and
pillar of strength to that church.

I do not know the number of years he was super-
intendent of the Sunday School. But I do know that
he was a model superintendent in fidelity and zeal,
in wisdom and energy. His heart was in the work;
he gave to it his life. It was his thought day and
night. It occupied him seven days of the week. He
studied the Bible lessons, and illustrated and enforced
them with singular beauty and force by blackboard
and speech. He had the confidence and love of
teachers and scholars and they were plastic in his
hands. He was full of enterprise, and knew how to
carry his plans into successful operation by a happy
combination of tact and tenacity. He met and over-
came opposition with a smile on his face, and words
of courtesy and gentleness on his lips, but with
strength and firmness of conviction and purpose. He
won over to his way of thinking those who at first
withstood the improvements he advocated, and soon
kindled in their hearts his own enthusiasm. He
could stir up the negligent to diligence without
offending them. He got a great deal of labor and
money out of the officers and teachers, ever setting
them the example. Indeed, he kept the Sunday
School prominently before the entire Church, and
enlisted hearty codperation.

His influence was not confined to Centenary Sun-

.
THE MAKBRS. I

day School. His inaugurated the Sunday School
Society of Richmond and Manchester, whose monthly
meetings still fill to overflow our largest churches.
His large heart took in all our stations and eircuits,
and he was felt as a wholesome stimulus and power
in many places.

Sympathy with the poor was a marked feature of
his character. It manifested itself in the unbounded
energy and liberality with which he enlarged and
supported the Dorcas department of his Sunday
School. But this was only one of its many generous
forms. As his pastor I happened to learn something
of his generous feeling to the needy and of his active
help. He was not merely beneficent in gifts; he
searched them out, examined into their cases, listened
patiently and with interest to their story, gave them
immediate relief, and labored to secure for them
permanent means of living. He might have used the
words of Job: “ The blessing of him that was ready
to perish came upon me: and I caused the widow’s
heart to sing for joy.”

When I became preacher in charge of Centenary,
I expected to find Brother Snyder an enthusiast in
the Sabbath School, but with little time for other
kinds of church work. But there was no man in
that large and noble society who gave me readier
sympathy, wiser counsel, or more active support in
all my labors, than he. He was an attentive and
efficient steward. He was present at the weekly
lecture and prayer-meeting. I could count on him
142 RICHMOND METHODISM.

in all revival meetings. If I consulted him about a
weak or erring brother, he entered with deep and
tender solicitude into the case. Communion with
him on personal religion and the kingdom of our
Lord was ever refreshing.

His home was a blessed spot. There he delighted
to seek rest and solace after the toils and cares of
the day. There his sunshiny cheerfulness and love
showed forth to greatest advantage. There was no
more devoted husband, no fonder father, than he.
He neglected nothing which could promote the
refined, intelligent, virtuous, and pious happiness of
the household. There, too, he dispensed the most
genial hospitality.

I have praised him as a Methodist. But he was
no bigot. True to his own church, he admired all
who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity, and
gladly bade them godspeed, and became their co-
worker. He was known and honored beyond Metho-
dism. When his health prevented him from attend-
ing night service at his own church, he spent his
Sunday afternoons at the Penitentiary Sunday School,
and was enthusiastic in the cause. In 1880 he was
appointed a delegate to the Raikes’ Sunday School
Convention in London, and his parting address to
the convicts on the Sunday before going abroad was
most touching; tears streamed down the hardened
faces, and they crowded around him, eager to clasp
his hand, and receive his autograph and farewell
blessing.
THE MAKERS. 148

On that trip he contracted asthma, which termi-
nated in pulmonary disease. Compelled to resign
the superintendency of Centenary Sunday School
he continued his prompt attendance, and his interest
was unabated, teaching whenever strength permitted.
For three years he enjoyed the sweet seclusion and
pure atmosphere of his Fluvanna home. In daily
supervision of the farm, he enjoyed communion with
nature and nature’s God, admiring all vegetable and
animal life, wild flower and geological specimen,
insect, bird and beast. The last time he spoke in
public was in October, 1883, at Wesley chapel, where
he was requested to address the congregation in the
absence of the pastor. As he expounded the first
part of the Lord’s Prayer his whole being seemed
aglow with heavenly fire, and the people were thrilled
and feasted. After a violent cold contracted in
March, 1884, he never spoke in his natural voice,
but always in a faint whisper. His wife and one son
were his constant attendants, and in the following
June his entire family gathered around him. His
appetite and strength improved, awaking delusive
hope. July 18th he was thrown from his buggy,
and, though he suffered only bruises, from that time
he. sank rapidly. Speechless from the shock for
many minutes, his lips were afterwards seen to move,
a look of holy triumph and praise was on his face,
and his daughter, bending, caught the whisper,
“ Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within
me, bless his holy name!” Tender of others’ com-
1p RICHMOND METHODISM.

fort, thankful for every service rendered, placid and
lovely he faded away. He kept his Bible by his side,
and to the last day of his life never neglected private
prayer. The family altar was not slighted even in
his extreme feebleness: the last evening, as usual,
one of the children read a chapter in the Bible, they
all knelt in silent prayer, then the Lord’s Prayer was
uttered, his faint voice leading, and he closed with
his wonted petition, “O Lord take not thy Holy
Spirit from us,” the last words the family heard
him speak. Thus he lingered at the very gate of the
Celestial City, until the night of August 4th, when
it opened, and he entered within. He had given
minute instructions about the management of the
farm, and his modest “ dying request ” that his family
should not wear mourning nor erect over him a
monument, concluding with this emphatic testimony:
“And my dear child! remember that my hope is in
the Lord Jesus Christ.”
XI.
ALBERT L. WEST.*

Albert L. West was born in Chesterfield county,
Va., on the roth of May, 1825, and died at his home,
in the city of Richmond, on the 27th of September,
1892.

With the exception of a few years spent in Peters-
burg and in Augusta, Ga.—in the latter city in the
service of the Confederate Government—he had lived
in Richmond from his early manhood. He was
closely identified with the interests of the city, and,
as a public-spirited citizen, took a lively interest in
all enterprises looking to its prosperity. He was an
architect by profession; and many edifices, public
and private, here and elsewhere, stand as monuments
to his skill and fidelity.

For more than half a century he was a member
of the Methodist Church. As such he was consistent,
faithful, devoted. He was seldom absent from his
place in the sanctuary; and by prayer and song and
exhortation was always glad to contribute to the

*A sketch by the late Dr. R. N. Sledd, published in the
‘*Richmond Christian Advocate.”
10 [145]
146 RICHMOND METHODISM.

interest of the social service. He was ready for every
good word and work.

He was a diligent, earnest student of the Word of
God. Many years ago he wrote in his diary: “I
have finished reading the Bible through the eighth
time. I propose hereafter to read it not consecu-
tively, but by books or subjects.” He read it with
commentary and concordance at hand for the expla-
nation of difficult passages and for comparing things
spiritual with spiritual. He read it not as an in-
tellectual pastime, but for the spiritual light and
guidance, strength and comfort which he found in
it. It was good for his soul. He grew thereby.

He was specially active in the Sunday School work.
As teacher, superintendent, and for many years
president of the Sunday School Association of
Richmond and Manchester, he rendered faithful and
efficient service. At the time of his death he was
chairman of the Executive Committee of the State
Sunday School Union. Few men have labored more
earnestly. in this department of church enterprise
than he; none ever rejoiced more in its success.

The mission work of the Church enlisted his
deepest sympathies and active co6peration. For
many years he was in.constant correspondence with
one or more of our missionaries in foreign fields,
kept fully abreast with their movements, and did what
he could for their temporal welfare. ‘“ Uncle Larry”
had in him a strong friend and ally. The Rosebuds
are familiar with his name, and are indebted to him
THH MAKERS. 147

in no small measure for the stability and enlargement
of their work.

It was through his efforts in connection with those
of one other gentleman that the Young Men’s Chris-
tian Association, of Richmond, was organized and
put into successful operation. There was no move-
ment having in view the moral and religious welfare
of the community that did not enlist his sympathy
and help.

He was of broad, catholic spirit—thoroughly
Methodistic in principle and preference, but a
stranger to intolerance and bigotry. The presence
at his funeral of about twenty ministers and a great
audience of all denominations was a splendid testi-
mony to his Christian catholicity.

His home-life was simple and beautiful. As hus-
band and father, he was tender and true, finding
his own happiness in the happiness of those he loved.
To them his memory is precious.

A kind neighbor, an unfaltering friend, an upright
citizen, a devoted follower of Christ, he rests from
his labors, and his works do follow him. In beautiful
Hollywood he waits the trumpet call of the resurrec-
tion morn.
XII.
WILLIAM HOLT RICHARDSON.

William Holt Richardson was for many years a
member of Trinity Church, but in 1859 he resolved
to unite with the little group of worshippers who fol-
lowed the movement and plan of the Rev. Dr. James
A. Duncan to erect a church building upon the cor-
ner of Broad and Tenth streets. He became, then,
one of the founders of the present Broad Street
Church. In the new organization he was a trustee,
and a member of the Official Board until the close
of his life. His pastor loved him and committed to
his hands much of that class of church work which
requires for its successful transaction a clear mind and
extraordinary soundness of judgment.

He was born in 1817 and died June 16, 1883—in
the very prime of his Christian manhood, having at-
tained his sixty-sixth year. During the period of
his long residence in Richmond he bore a spotless
reputation and was looked upon as a model man in
all his business relations with his fellow-men. Never
did the Methodist banner trail in the dust when Wil-
liam Holt Richardson had the flag staff. Out of a

[148]
THE MAKERS. 149

Methodist home and surrounded by a family of Meth-
odist children, he passed to his heavenly reward.

Amiable, charitable, just, heroic in affliction, gentle
as a child, meek and unoffending, diligent in every
duty, he was a man who lovingly but unobtrusively
walked near his Maker, modestly shrinking as it were
from His presence as well as from the observation of
men, and seeking to avoid giving offense by any ex-
hibition of self-righteousness. Like the incense of
a sweet flower, his was a pure and lovely character
to be envied by those who seek the higher life. Few
Methodists dispensed more genuine hospitality than
he. He appeared to be unconscious of his many
acts of charity, absolutely so forgetting them that
they never restrained the freedom of those who took
part with him in any benevolent enterprise.

He completed a life of great usefulness on earth
and left behind him the legacy of a good name.
XIIT.
T. L. D. WALFORD.

Thomas Logan Douglas Walford was born in this
city, September 25, 1829. His parents died when he
was very young and he grew up under the care of his
sisters—noble Christian women, who continued to
train him as his parents had begun, for a life of
Christian usefulness. His father was for many years
a highly respected school-teacher in Richmond. In
early life he was employed by the Methodist Book
Concern, which was then located in this city. Here
he imbibed a love for good books, which gave direc-
tion to his subsequent career.

The greater part of his life was spent in the book
business. In his latter days he was the agent of the
Virginia Bible Society, a position he retained until
his death. He was all his life a devoted Methodist.
He believed with all his heart in the doctrines of
his church, loved her institutions and was loyal to
all her demands of duty.

He took deep interest in all the public affairs of
the Church. He was often a delegate to the District
and Annual Conferences and was one of the most

[150]
THE MAKERS. 161

influential members of the Sunday School Association
and also of the Layman’s Union. His church elected
him to many positions of honor and trust. The
position which he most appreciated and in which he
found his greatest pleasure was that of infant-class
teacher in Trinity Sunday School. He had a talent
for imparting to children the truths of the Bible. He
believed that the Bible was for childhood as well as
old age, and he seldom failed to make it interesting to
all the little ones under his care. He taught this
class for more than twenty-five years and many
hundreds remember him with affection as their first
Sunday School teacher. To a casual observer he
seemed at times a stern disciplinarian, but the children
always loved him and were reluctant to leave his
room for the higher classes.

His health, never very robust, gave way when he
was in his sixty-eighth year, and on January 27, 1896,
his spirit was released and he went home to be with
loved ones who had long passed before him into a
better world.

He was an affable and courteous gentleman, a
fervent Christian, of blameless life and faithful to
every duty. No man labored more earnestly or more
efficiently for Richmond Methodism in his day than
he.
XIV.
ELECT LADIES.

Elsewhere in this volume mention has been made
of the singular scarcity of records relating to the
deeds of the heroic men who helped to make Metho-
dism what it is in Richmond. If our fathers showed
little concern for the perpetuation of the memory of
their deeds, it is not strange that our mothers should
have left no record whatever from which one might
get even a hint of their labors. Yet there is abundant
evidence that no women ever gave themselves more
fully to the church than they. The impress of
woman’s hand is to be found upon every part of
Richmond Methodism, and while the very names of
many of the elect ladies of the heroic age of the
church have been forgotten the influence of their
lives still abides with us.

We are indebted to Bishop Asbury for the preser-
vation of the name of the first woman who took a
leading part in the development of Richmond Metho-
dism. Among the immigrants who came to Rich-
mond after the Revolution was a Mr. Parrott, a
highly respectable Englishman of moderate means.

[152]
THH MAKHRS. 158

His wife and daughters were zealous Wesleyans, and
while he was not a member of the church he had a
warm place in his heart for the Methodist itinerant,
and was proud to call his house the preacher’s home.
The family lived on Main street near the old market,
and for many years their home was the regular .
stopping place of our preachers. Bishop Asbury was
several times their guest and in his journal he refers
in considerate terms to the gracious hospitality for
which they were noted. Mrs. Parrott seems to have
been the leading spirit in the little Methodist society
which was formed in Richmond in 1793, and which
after a severe struggle secured a foothold by erecting
a church in 1799. It was during this period of
struggle that she provided at her own expense a
shelter for the society, as related by Dr. Brown in
his paper on “ Methodism In Richmond For One
Hundred Years.”

A second name on the brief list of heroic women
that has come down to us is Miss Mary (familiarly
known as Miss Polly) Bowles. Miss Bowles was one
of the most remarkable women of her day. It has
been frequently stated by persons little acquainted
with the history of this city that the early Methodists
of Richmond were wholly without influence. As a
matter of fact there was never a time when the
Church was without leaders of high repute and of
commanding influence in the community. The
leading spirit of Richmond in the early part of this.
century was “ Miss Polly.” Much as she did for
abd RIOHMOND METHODISM.

Methodism she did more for the community at large.
For many years she taught a school on Nineteenth
street which was the intellectual center of the com-
munity. At this school the best people of the city
received their early training. She was a woman
of strong intellect, noble character, and “taught as
one having authority.” Her indefatigable energy
and her zeal for the Lord filled her life with labors
up to the very moment of her departure. She ceased
to work only when she ceased to live. When Dr.
Leroy M. Lee announced his text at her funeral,-he
paused a moment and then said: “ We have met to-
day to bury a saint of God. If you go to her home
looking for treasure you will find none: she took
what she had with her.”

Intimately associated with Miss Bowles in her
latter days was Mrs. Frances Eger. Mrs. Eger was
born in Athlone, Ireland, in 1796, and came to this
country when about twenty-one years of age. After
a residence of several years in Philadelphia she moved
to Richmond. She was for many years one of the
most useful and influential members of Old Trinity.
As a Sunday School teacher she had few equals.

A little farther down the list is the name of Mrs.
Catharine Bethel, who is said to have been the leading
spirit of the Methodist circle in the western part of
the city in the middle of the century. Mrs. Bethel
was a Miss Hardy of Lunenburg. She was a woman
of means and of remarkable business ability, and_at
one time owned the section of the city now covered
THE MAKERS. ,* 155

by Monroe Park and the surrounding blocks. It
was in her house that Albert West organized a Sun-
day School out of which grew Sidney Chapel. To
this enterprise she gave liberally, the lot on which
the chapel was built being donated by her. Her
house, which was on Main street near what is now
Monroe Park, was for many years the preacher’s
home in that part of the city.

To the same period belongs Mrs. Elizabeth H.
Williams who occupied a position in the East End
somewhat similar to that occupied by Mrs. Bethel
in the West End. She was born February 19, 1802,
and was married to Mr. Wilson Williams February
15, 1828, by the Rev. Joseph Carson. She was a
sister of John D. Collins, one of the editors of the
“ Richmond Enquirer.” She was converted at Old
Trinity on Nineteenth street and for more than sixty
years adorned the doctrine of God. It is said that
she was never known to miss a service of any kind
at her church except when kept away by sickness.
She died November 10, 1891, at the age of eighty-
nine years.

Coming down to the generation that is just pass-
ing away we are attracted by a name of remarkable
fragrance. Mrs. Lizzie Morton was at once the
ornament and servant of her church. No life was
ever richer in good works, none shed a sweeter
influence, none was more radiant with the beauty
of holiness. She came of a family that never
owned a trumpet and she passed through the world
156 RICHMOND METHODISM.

so quietly that few besides those who felt the touch
of her helping hand were aware of her presence.
But these were a multitude. She was a veritable
magnet for people in trouble. The needy, the per-
plexed, the broken-hearted sought her instinctively
and never sought her in vain. She came as near the
ideal of utter self-abnegation as mortals ever get
in this world. Her whole strength was consumed
in the service of Christ and those for whom Christ
died.

Mrs. Morton was born September 15, 1834, and
went home July 9, 1897. Between these dates was
crowded such a wealth of love’s labor as has seldom
found place in a single life. Her work in Centenary
Church will abide forever. In spite of her retiring
disposition and horror of publicity she was pressed
into all the leading positions open to women in the
church, and she adorned them all. The beautiful
pulpit in Centenary erected to her memory by the
Ladies’ Aid Society, of which she was long the head,
faintly testifies to the regard in which she was held
by her co-workers.

Dr. Paul Whitehead, in an appreciative sketch of
Mrs. Morton published in the Richmond Christian
Advocate, says: “We have never known a woman
whose ideal of Christian character and work was
higher; whose perfection in Christ appeared to be
more complete in all humility, simplicity, and devout
elevation of soul. Through an extraordinary ex-
perience of bereavements and afflictions, hers was a
THD MAKERS. 157

spirit like gold tried in the fire, to be found unto
honor and glory and blessing at the appearance of
Jesus Christ.

“While yet able to go in and out among the
people, whose sorrow that she knew and had access
to was not cheered and brightened? Whose want
was not relieved according to her ability? Whose
need was not supplied and darkness dispersed by the
blessing she drew from the throne of Grace by her
power to prevail with God? Her unobtrusive kind-
nesses were so many; her systematic charities and
attentions to organized effort, its stimulation and
development, its practical efficiency, were so con-
stant, that one could but be surprised that she found
time for these things from a busy home life, where all
waited on her touch and her words.

“ Her life has been a benediction; her example
has been glorious and helpful; her testimony to the
power of Jesus, his love, and his fulness, has been
clear and constant; her death was peace, and her
memory is blessed.”
CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES.
 

 

 

 

WILLIAM WILLIS.

 
i

THE INFLUENCE OF METHODISM IN THE
HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN
REPUBLIC.

BY WILLIAM G. STARR, D. D.

It is there—like the veining of a mountain with
threads of gold. It is there—like God’s sunlight
interwoven with every leaf and twig and branch upon
that Tree of Life which overshadows our native land.

Not as a political factor, but as a moral force it
has shaped in part the governmental fabric around
us to-day. It did not seek to control the State by
the shrewd management of the ecclesiastical diplo-
matist. It took God’s Word in hand, and gave it to
the people, and in this way sought to lift citizenship
to the high standard of that divine idea which is em-
bodied in the truth that “righteousness exalteth a
nation.”

' Some years ago we were startled by a discovery of
the footprints of giants in the sandstone of Central
Nevada. Huge tracks were found forty feet down
in a prison quarry, and thinking men were puzzled
to know who passed that way thousands of years ago.

II [z6r]
162 RIOHMOND METHODISM.

But, without the help of a revelation to startle any-
body, I can tell you of footprints on this globe which
time will preserve even more carefully than if they
were imprinted upon rock. They are the footsteps
of earnest workers in the great kingdom of God—
true men and women who lived well and left behind
them lasting memorials of their usefulness. They
were the pioneers of Methodism in this country—
the advance-guard of a mighty army which is still
passing in splendid procession, and will continue
“marching on till Jesus comes.”

Never has the human brain been busier than now
to solve the problem of the double authorship of the
history of this world. Two theories have been ad-
vanced to explain the life and progress of humanity
on earth. One teaches that all history is the play of
chance forces. Accident rules in the place of law.
Civil commotions and religious upheavals, precipi-
tated into the arena of current events by unaccount-
able and unapproachable sources of power, are to be
classed with the apparently causeless drifting of a
thistle-down in the motionless atmosphere. The
other commands us to believe that everything hap-
pens because it must so happen. The destiny of
man is diked on both sides, and he runs in a groove
because he can not help it. This view converts
every one of us into a machine, without will or pur-
pose, and therefore without responsibility. More-
over it eliminates God from the management of a
world which he built for his own glory, and releases
CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES. 163

both man and nature from the necessity of contact
with a divine government. Both of these methods
of explaining events are to be discarded, because they
compel us to believe that the life-work of every man
is the result of either chance or fate.

There is only one solution of this problem. It is
this: Underneath all human history there is a divine
order to which the life of the world is subject. In
perfect harmony with this supernatural order, each
one of us is invested with moral freedom, will-power,
and full responsibility.

We live under a reign of law. God is ruler over
all. We can work for him or against him. A little
distance ahead of us is the judgment seat of Christ.
No man was ever tossed up to the track of duty by
the out-burst of an unseen volcano. We are what
we will to be.

Just at this point we mark the movement of a di-
vine hand. A line is drawn, and a danger-signal is
displayed. God now calls attention to the fact that
he is there—and at once every reverent spirit obeys
his sovereign will. In the language of an American
essayist: “ There is a bound beyond which even the
free will of man does not—I do not say cannot—in
any case go. The great aspirations of some con-
querors have been almost gratified, but in the almost
lies the secret of historical progress. They failed on
the eve of satisfaction. It was thus with Alexander
on the Oxus, and with Napoleon at Leipsic and Mos-
cow and Waterloo. The world came just to their
164 RIOHMOND METHODISM.

hand, and then the prize slipped away. Had the
human plan been wrought out, there would have
been retrogression for universal man. General con-
quest is not the will of a benevolent God. We are
an enigma to ourselves, unless with the torch of re-
vealed truth we throw light upon our pathway in the
past. We have permitted Draper and Buckle and
the whole materialistic school to go on with their
destructive work of showing that all human history
can be explained on the ground of laws of climate
and temperament, and the like, and we have failed
to thunder out our conviction that, as God has been
honored and his law obeyed, men have steadily im-
proved in all the elements of civilization; and that
when they have failed here they have retrograded
toward barbarism.”

Beyond all question, the rise and progress of Meth-
odism in this country is a most notable illustration
of the double authorship of history. Our fathers
sought to follow the will of God in the salvation of
the people—and all Heaven seemed to be with us in
the work. Under the inspiration and leadership of
our Lord, we are still toiling year after year to lift
the nation nearer to God; and it makes us justly
proud of our record to know that the history of the
American Republic would lack a large chapter in
the department of religious achievement if the work
of the Methodists were left out.

Before I go farther it is right that I should give
a few dates which will explain the meaning of several
of our “ Centennial ” celebrations.
OENTENNIAL ADDRESSES. 165

1. The “ Methodist Societies” were organized in
1739—hence the centenary of 1839 pointed to the
one hundredth year of Methodism as a revival move-
ment.

2. In 1766 the first Methodist preachers began
their work in America; and so, in 1866 our brethren
of the M. E. Church (North) celebrated the cente-
nary of Methodist preaching in America.

3. In 1784 Dr. Coke and Francis Asbury were
recognized as superintendents or bishops, and the
Methodist Episcopal Church was organized in the
city of Baltimore. In the year 1884, then, we cele-
brated the Centenary of organic Methodism in Amer-
ica. That was the one hundredth year of the church
life of Methodism in this country.

4. Our Richmond demonstration commemorates
the origin of our Church in this city in the year
1799—just one century ago.

One of the most brilliant writers in America has
said that “for the purposes of history, centuries are
arbitrary divisions of time, but they are convenient
when we wish to sum up results.” A great social
or religious movement may overlap them, and, at
the end of any given hundred years, may offer no
special reason for looking back to the beginning.
Still, a completed century is a good resting-place
from which to count the steps by which a nation or a
church has been slowly traveling down from the
past to the present.

Says a writer: “Unless we study the facts in
166 RICHMOND METHODISM.

detail, we, as Methodists, can scarcely appreciate
the changes in church and country since 1784.
When the ‘ Christmas Conference’ was held at the
close of this year, none save a prophet could have
foretold of Methodism such an errand of destiny.
In 1775 there were in the whole country, less than
two thousand churches and fifteen hundred minis-
ters; and among them all there were but few Metho-
dist preachers. In 1784 the Baptists had nearly five
hundred churches and as many ministers. The Con-
gregationalists had six hundred ministers, and the
Presbyterians one hundred and seventy-five. Meth-
odism had made rapid gains since 1766, and counted
one hundred and four preachers and fifteen thousand
members.”

The same writer tells us that “ President Stiles of
Yale, in an important sermon, predicted that by the
end of another century the Wesleyans would disap-
pear and be heard of no more.”

In the year 1784 measures were taken for the for-
mation of the Protestant Episcopal Church in this
country, but the plan was not carried into effect until
1790. Roman Catholicism in the United States was
as yet without an episcopate, and, of course, “no
bishop, no church”; so that the Methodist Church,
as an organized church, is older than both the Epis-
copal and the Roman Catholic Churches in this
country.

It is a striking fact that “the Roman Catholic
Church was fully organized as was ours, in the city
OENTENNIAL ADDRESSES. 167

of Baltimore, though not until 1789, with John Car-
roll, brother to one of the signers of the Declaration
of Independence, as its first Bishop.” Asbury and
Carroll, men who in religious belief were antipodal,
set out from the same city, each to become the leader
of a mighty host. “ They fixed upon Baltimore,”
said Bishop Carroll, “ because it was the oldest town
in the State which was the most numerously peopled
by the followers of the true religion in America.”
Times have changed in regard to that matter also.
“Baltimore is now distinctly a Methodist center,
and Maryland is predominantly a Methodist State.”

Perhaps I have detained you too long already with
these introductory remarks. We are here to-night
to think and speak of “ The influence of Methodism
in the history of the American Republic.”

I. First, let me say that the influence of the Meth-
odist movement was distinctly felt in the develop-
ment of the social structure from which the govern-
ment itself received shape and inspiration for its great
work among the nations of the earth.

We are called “a church of the people.” All
classes, including especially the masses, are repre-
sented in the Methodist Church. This leads us to
ask, What is the nature of the social compact which
binds together the great body of the American peo-
ple? I reply, It is a union of all hearts and all in-
terests for the promotion of the public good. Under-
neath the ballot-box is this fundamental idea. The
appeal is to the people.
168 RIOHMOND METHODISM.

The next question to be asked is this: What part
did the Methodists take in the creation of this com-
pact? I answer:

1. The social nature of the Methodist religion
made the Methodists social in deportment every-
where, and this shaped largely the sentiment of
brotherhood among the people. On the court-
green, in the public road, at home, in the company of
genial friends or traveling strangers—no matter
where, the Wesleyan salutation was cordial, and its
tendency was to melt down barriers and make all
hearts beat as one. The new religionists seemed to
demand a universal application of the Scripture text,
“As touching brotherly love, ye need not that I
write unto you, for ye yourselves. are taught of God
to love one another.” And yet there was a method
in the manifestation of this love. Around a given
center ten thousand concentric rings may whirl, but
the condition of uniform motion must be found in
the fact that every point upon the circumference of
each circle must be equi-distant from the common
center. The early Methodist kept his Saviour at the
very center of his spiritual life, and every point of his
moral being seemed to revolve in harmony around
the fraternal love of Christ for the multitude. That
gave him an impulse to meet and talk with men. He
longed to lift them to a better life and save them
forever.

It was Henry Clay who said “the fraternal spirit
exhibited by these brotherly Methodists always

*
CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES. 169

makes me feel happy and at home in their company,”
but he did not emphasize their loyalty to Christ as
the source of their loving-kindness to all men. Some-
times their uncompromising devotion to the cardinal
doctrines of the word of God invoked temporary
unpopularity, but they were never without friends
even in the ranks of their opponents. They con-
tended that social convulsions and national sins are
the result of certain conditions in the hearts of the
people, and that souls must be won to make reforms
possible and permanent. This soul-winning, they
claimed, could be assured only by loving men now
as if Christ still walked the earth.

What would they have thought of the modern doc-
trine that “the instincts of the masses” can always
be relied upon to elevate the human race? The in-
stinct of the native African is theft. Murder domi-
nates the Moslem. Deceit is the characteristic of
the Sicilian. The instinct of the French masses
is—revolution. The Methodists contended that
what a nation needs is a correct national character,
and that none save Christ could give it. In this
country Methodism wielded a wonderful influence
just at that danger-point, and saved the republic by
seeking to save the men and the mothers at home.
An English historian has said that the Wesleyan
movement rescued England from the result of the
French Revolution. An impress of like character
was wrought upon the popular mind in this country
by those who planted our Church all over this con-
tinent.
170 RICHMOND METHODISM.

This process of training the people can be easily
explained. The Methodist preacher aimed to create
the best social conditions by regenerating the indi-
vidual rather than by tampering with legislative as-
semblies. To secure this end, access to the people
was necessary, and our itinerant system supplied the
very plan by which the masses and our leaders could
be brought face to face. At the fireside in winter,
and under the shade-trees around the little cottage in
summer, the people and their teachers met.

At a public meeting, Senator William Ballard Pres-
ton once said: “I reverence the Methodist preach-
ers who wrought such miracles of power in moulding
and drilling our raw population in Virginia and all
over the land.” Commodore Matthew F. Maury
declared that the conservative forces of Methodism
were a safeguard not only of church life but of the
national life as well. Said he, “They move with
great deliberation, and the country will never be
harmed by either their conservatism or their enthu-
siasm in matters of religion.” Senator R. M. T.
Hunter said in 1861: “The white Methodists of
Virginia outnumber nearly all the other white pro-
fessors of religion in the State put together, and they
always seem to be willing to accept their share of the
burden of responsibility which comes to them on that
account.” Such has been the testimony of thou-
sands of the leading men in our country.

2. In the creation of the social compact, not only
did the Methodists teach the value of a spirit of fra-
OENTENNIAL ADDRESSES. 171

ternity among the people, but they also set an exam-
ple of submission to authority on account of their
reverence for law. This is the real source of their
conservative influence. Our method of government
is hedged in by the supremacy of law. Our plan of
ministerial supply providing a man for every place
and a place for every man, is in accordance with the
operation of an invariable statute. The limitation
of the pastoral term, together with many other fea-
tures of our ecclesiastical system, points to a law-
making power, and we submit with reverence to the
impartial administration of our own peculiar form of
Church government. Our motto seems to have
been, Personal liberty without the freedom of the
mob, and lawful restraint without ecclesiastical des-
potism. The masses have felt the force of this
through the teaching and practice of our own con-
gregations and our law-abiding pastors, and in this
way our influence has been felt in support of well-
regulated government.

James Monroe is reported to have said: “I honor
the memory of the great men who founded the Meth-
odist Church in America: they taught us how to rev-
erence the sovereignty of-law.” Chief Justice Mar-
shall said, at an early day in our history, “ The Meth-
odists are destined to shape much of the public
thought of this country.” Gen. Robert E. Lee said,
“The Methodists in this land exert a controlling
influence over the public mind. No political party
could be found that would attempt to ride over the
verdict of that church upon a distinctly moral issue.”
172 RICHMOND METHODISM.

Permit me just here to make honorable mention
of those hardy path-finders who went ‘ahead of us
a hundred years ago and blazed the way along the
line of conquest. A few intrepid men on horseback
undertook to pit their views of divine truth against
the canons and creeds of men and churches that had
resources by the million at hand to crush out all
adventurous opposition, but the mounted rangers
in hedge and highways went on singing and preach-
ing, as if they could not see the barricades that were
built to impede their victorious advance.

At the end of the first century, the Apostolic
Church had won less than five hundred thousand
adherents. At the end of the first century ot Metho-
dism we had, in 1885, more than five million of
members, having outstripped the Fathers, whom we
honor, just ten to one in the results of earnest work.

The pioneer Methodist preachers, who were the
leaders in this movement, were generally men of fine
physique—broad-shouldered, strong-armed, with
muscles of densest texture, capable of any test of phy-
sical endurance. Few among the number fell below
the standard of an art-model for the hand of Phidias.
They were like the chosen members of the general
staff of a field-marshal—always ready for the word
of command, and never so happy as when a forlorn
hope held out a challenge to spirits as daring as any
that ever followed the crest of mail-clad knight to the
levelling of battle-scarred walls in the high noon of
the age of chivalry.
CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES. 178

It requires a brave heart to undertake the work
of a reformer in the early days of a newly-settled
country, when reverence for sacred things is a rarity
rather than a rule—when the preacher must face
mobs, if he is to have a hearing at all, and submit
to caricature and insult and injury, and perhaps ride
up to the little chapel on the roadside through a
shower of stones. It requires the courage of a fear-
less man to go into the untouched forest, and cut
out the tangled undergrowth and risk the fangs of
venomous reptiles, or hew down whole acres of
timber, or drain the swamp and fight back the mon-
ster of the bear-den or the wolf-pack, in order that
canals may be dug for drainage and the new-ground
prepared for the first assault of the sub-soil plow.

Just such a life it was which was led by the early
Methodist preachers. It was the life of a rifleman
on the frontier—of a reformer among courtly men
as well as ruffans—of a lumberman in the wilderness
with no other reliance for success save the temper of
his axe and the promise of God.

Educated in the class-room these men knew how
to pray. Wise in the use of the Holy Scriptures,
they knew how to talk, and when to be silent. Pru-
dent, but persistent—modest, but brave when the
time came to act—clothed with the garment of hu-
mility, but ever ready to let the world know that God
had also given to each one the mantle of a prophet—
social, but serious—terrific in denunciation, but
tender as the pulse of a babe in winning a penitent
174 RIOHMOND METHODISM.

to Jesus—they were a brotherhood of heroes, fit to
have borne an equal share with Peter and Paul in the
sorrows and dangers of the first century of the Apos-
tolic Church. To-day we honor their memory, and
pray God that the inspiration of their holy lives may
be a benediction to the Church until the end of the
world.

II. Again. Not only was the influence of the
Methodist movement felt in the growth of public
opinion in this country, but, for more than a hundred
years it has been an important factor in the promo-
tion of industrial enterprise among the people. The
Methodists have always accepted the doctrine that

“In His furrowed fields around us

God has work for all who will;

Those who may not scatter broadcast,
Yet may plant it hill by hill.

Soon Life’s spring-time will be over,
And its autumn days will come;

Happy, then, will be those workmen
Who have sheaves to carry home.’’

The Wesleyan dictum read, “All at work, and
always at work.” Idle hands never built the palace
ofaking. Our people were taught that some honest
pursuit in the great industrial world was necessary
not only to obtain a livelihood but to meet the tithe-
gathering of our Lord. Business enterprise in this
country has been promoted by the Wesleyan faith in
three separate ways:

1. By association of ideas. The Methodist reli-
gion calls for a full day’s work, as we are taught to
CHNTENNIAL ADDRESSES. 176

live only one day at a time; and it appeals to its ad-
herents to finish their life-work before they die. A
religious career which begins with conscious salva-
tion to expel doubt, and is rounded up with the evi-
dence of Christian perfection at the close of a conse-
crated life, will naturally impress the minds of think-
ing men whether they are in the Church or outside
of it. It was so in the past. Like the swing of a
scythe in a harvest field, our conscientious convic-
tions as to the best use to be made of time and oppor-
tunity, commanded and controlled the views of all
who were inclined to sympathize with us in our work.
In this way our influence has been felt by both the
working classes and the capitalists in every decade
of the past century.

2. By the inspiration of a life-purpose to be always
in earnest, the Wesleyans have been a blessing to the
business world around them. Their idea of gospel
measure is “good measure, pressed down, and
shaken together and running over.” They believe
their Lord when he says, “I am come that they
might have life, and that they might have it more
abundantly.” This extatic consciousness of super-
natural life compels them to shout sometimes. Their
enthusiasm has made the whole country enthusiastic.

A hundred years ago there were four Wesleyan
rules in common use for the government of business
life. First. “Make all you can; save all you can;
give all you can.” Second. “ For the financial sup-
port of the work of God bring a penny a week and a
176 RICHMOND METHODISM.

shilling a quarter.” Third. “Do good, especially to
them that are of the household of faith; employing
them preferably to others, buying of one another,
helping each other in business; and so much the
more because the world will love its own, and them
only.” Fourth. “ Never borrow without a probability
of paying, or take up goods without a probability of
paying for them.” In obedience to these rules the
early Methodists usually prospered in the manage-
ment of their industrial pursuits. They made money
and used it for the glory of God. They were often
so zealous in conspicuous fields of enterprise that
Chief Justice Chase used to say: “ They can pray
harder, talk faster, fight the devil longer, and sing
louder when the game is coming in than any other
hunters on the continent:’ They were as tireless as
a circular saw, and. were never content to stop work
until all the timber had been prepared for the Master’s
use. The outside world watched and applauded our
zeal, and its effect was felt in the everyday life of all
the people.

3. Moreover we have reached the working classes
by our sympathy and practical benevolence. Many
of the neglected ones have toiled all the more in-
dustriously because they felt that they were looked
at and cared for by somebody. This conviction has
given a sense of rest to many a troubled soul, and
at times it has arrested a spirit of insubordination
which might have brought sorrow to the homes of
the poor as well as the rich. A Methodist has never
 

CORNELIUS CREW.
OENTENNIAL ADDRESSES. 177

been known to lead a labor riot in this or any other
land. Our people seem to have been so busy in the
effort to make an honest living that they had no
time to mingle with the boisterous throng.

This earnest, single-hearted, unremitting devotion
to duty has been as frequently attested by the
capitalist as by the wage-earner. Amos Lawrence,
of Boston, said: “I get more work out of a live
Methodist than out of anybody else.” Commodore
Vanderbilt, of New York, remarked in the company
of Dr. Charles F. Deems: “I can tell a Methodist
what to do, and then go away and leave him, but the
most of men have to be told and sometimes pushed
until the work is done.” The provision which the
Methodists have made for preaching the gospel to
the poor will never be rewarded until we reach the
next world.

III. Again, not only has Methodist influence been
an element of power in shaping the social and indus-
trial interests of the republic, but the educational
development of the nation has been in large measure
the result of the training of the people by Methodist
preachers who established schools wherever they were
sent to do the work of God.

We Methodists do not believe in the evolution of
the human race, but we do believe in the evolution
of the human mind. Thousands of years ago the
Chinese decided that their civilization had reached
perfection. It was decreed that any attempt to alter
or improve it should be met with the death-penalty.

I2
178 RICHMOND METHODISH.

After a time it began to die. Conditions of life
change, and the customs of a people must change
accordingly. The Wesleyans have always sought to
face the future; and it was easy to see in the outstart
of our work in this country that we must either
educate the young who were providentially com-
mitted to our care or surrender our commission to
lead those whom we were called to save. Schools
were established at oncé. The printing-press was
used to disseminate knowledge; out-of-the-way dis-
tricts of territory were visited by the clerical book-
agent; tracts and catechisms were distributed; Sab-
bath Schools were instituted for the instruction of
our children on the Lord’s day, and a general spirit
of enquiry was awakened among the masses. From
that time we have been an educating agent in the
land as well as an evangelistic Church.

It has been well said that, ‘In Methuselah’s time,
if a man committed murder, no one outside of his
own tribe ever heard of it ‘until the nineteenth
century archeologists dug up and interpreted the
tablet which recorded it.” The world moves. We
cannot afford to go back and pitch a tent in the long

ago. We planted then and left the growth to God.
' But it is also true that our past thoughts are still
at work in the souls of those we met in other days.
The mental evolution is constantly going on. Wire-
less telegraphy will one day conduct our correspon-
dence. Now it is human philanthropy to which we
are to look for the tuition of the multitude and the
CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES. 179

recasting of our own forms of thought in the lives
of those who constitute the present generation.

The Methodists saw at an early day that the
school-room, next to the pulpit, was essential in order
that a religious life might not be hindered by igno-
rance and vice. It was through their work in part
that the education of the masses became one of the
safeguards of the republic. It is a fact that the
Methodists to-day have a larger number of denomi-
national schools than any other evangelical denomi-
nation in the country. Our collegiate institutions
number three hundred. This source of power alone
has given to our church a notable place in the educa-
tional work of the nation.

It would be an act of neglect on my part if I
should fail to mention the extraordinary methods
of tuition which were adopted by the itinerant Metho-
dist preachers in the heroic days of the Church. They
went everywhere and met the people in their homes.
They carried with them a library of information
gathered from private study and personal observa-
tion. They told everything they knew. When the
Annual Conference adjourned they exchanged ap-
pointments. New pastors gave new items of infor-
mation to the settlers in each new field of labor. So
the work went on with a divine impulse, providing
a new chain of instructors and pupils in the great
university of the people. After twenty-five years of
such talking and listening the Methodist layman, as
the result of personal contact with his Methodist
180 RICHMOND METHODISMN.

pastor, found himself to be the possessor of quite a
liberal education. In many homes this wandering
prophet of God was the only teacher, and the family
circle was the only lecture-hall in which the residents
of a whole neighborhood might ever have a chance
to learn the truth. This peculiar educational process
was the natural outcome of that feature of our
ecclesiastical system which we call “the itinerant
ministry.”

Sometimes we are told that the inflexible rule
upon which it rests will become a burden to our
learned divines in the twentieth century, but we have
no fear that a lack of loyalty will ever harm our plan
of work. It was proclaimed all over the Jand between
the years 1760 and 184o°that the Methodist itinerancy
would soon perish from sheer feebleness of the ap-
pointing power to secure obedience. There were
some secessions of men and churches, but the spirit
of God held us together and sanctified the new mode
of sending pastors to congregations. And now as
we look back the system is seen to have been nothing
less than an inspiration designed of God to introduce
a new era of church work. There was a necessity for
it which never could have been met in any other way.
That necessity exists to-day, and it will continue to
exist so long as church machinery is believed to be
helpful to the work of God. I believe that when
the Angel of the resurrection comes there will be
thousands of Methodist preachers who will simply
leave their horses and their saddle-bags out there
- CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES. 1st

in the road and go straight home to greet King
Immanuel on his throne.

Let me tell you plainly that, under -the guidance
of the Holy Spirit, the itinerancy has been, through
all these long years of driving work, the right arm
of Methodism the world over. No other denomina-
tion of Christians in this country has so few vacant
pulpits; and none has such facilities for putting the
right man in the right place at the right time.
Modify it we can in whatever way we may deem the
wisest—still, the system will remain as an integral
part of our distinctive church history. Other Chris-
tian churches, whose ministers have become itinerant
in fact without the order and fitness of law like that
in the Methodist Church, might be greatly bene-
fited—I say it with all deference—by some adaptation
of this effective system for supplying every church
with a suitable pastor. Let no man dream that we
will ever surrender our “ itinerant ministers.”

In the center of the broad dome of the Pantheon
at Rome there is a circular opening more than
twenty feet in diameter. In the stormy autumn the
rain descends through it upon the pavement of stone
beneath, which is a tesselated flooring, collected by
skillful hands from many quarries widely separated
from each other. Each representative of the rock-
beds of conquered provinces shares equally with
every other cube of stone. The rain comes down
upon all alike. And then, when the winter is over
and gone and the March winds are blowing fresh
182 RICHMOND METHODISM.

and keen from the tops of Alpine ranges, it is a joy
and a comfort to the sentinel within the building to
halt where the sunshine falls and warm his chilled
fingers in the life-giving beam. So it is that the
Methodist itinerancy provides for each and all alike.
Ii times are hard and the work is rough and human
hearts are not what they ought to be, then the gentle
rain of pity descends upon each and all alike. And
when the season of dreary days and long, dark nights
has passed away, then the genial sunshine of a better
day comes with generous greeting and a touch of
warmth to every faithful sentinel whose devotion to
the church stili holds his feet to the same round of
duty, and whose brave heart still beats in loving
fellowship with those who share with him the trials
and the triumphs of a prophet’s life. God bless for-
ever the wonderful work which has been wrought by
our itinerant ministry. It has been the only teacher
of millions in the homes of the American people.
IV. Not only has the social, industrial and educa-
tional development of our country borne testimony
to the influence of Methodism in the growth of the
nation, but the religious status of the land could
not have been what it is to-day without the earnest
evangelical work of the Methodists during the past
one hundred years. Sweeping revivals of religion
have marked our advance during every decade of the
church. Our own membership has grown rapidly on
that account. It has' been estimated that nine mil-
lions of souls have been brought to Christ by Metho-
CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES. 188

dist preachers and laymen since 1840. Of that num-
ber nearly three million, or about one-third of the
number converted at our altars, have been received
into other churches. We are glad to know that
other religious denominations have been benefited
by the results of our work, and that their zeal has
been stimulated by the progressive spirit of our
people. Much of that spirituality which is essential
to the existence of Methodism has been imparted to
evangelical believers whose methods of ecclesiastical
government differ widely from our own.

The whole country has been quickened by the
missionary spirit of the Methodists. Philanthropists
were once anxious that State prisons should be im-
posing structures whose architectural finish might
reflect the public spirit of those who built them. The
genius of Methodism suggested that the soul of the
prisoner was worth more than the fine cage which
held him. Our gospel net was made for deep sea
fishing, and it has been hauled with marvelous skill.
I could give you a number of facts to illustrate these
statements, but time will not permit and I must
forbear. Suffice it to say, our record of comparative
statistics has already been published to the world.
We have in this country a membership of six
million—a million more than any other evangelical
church. We are training seven million children in
our Sunday Schools and other institutions for the
education of the young. We own more than a
hundred million dollars’ worth of church property,
184 RICHMOND METHODISM.

and not a day passes without the dedication of at
least four new churches to the service of God. We
have nearly a hundred thousand preachers, itinerant
and lay, employed in various fields of labor.

Governor Rollins of New Hampshire, in his fast-
day proclamation April 6, 1899, said: “ The decline
of the Christian religion, particularly in our rural
districts, is a marked feature of the times, and steps
should be taken to remedy it.” If that be true we
know nothing of it. Our mission is to save souls
and build up the Church of God. The Lord of the
harvest is on that side, and we expect to continue
bringing in the sheaves. This land is dotted all over
with our battle-flags floating triumphantly from the
dismantled towers of captured strongholds. Thank
God, we are ready for the campaign of the twentieth
century, and with the help of prayer and faith and the
power of the Holy Ghost we expect to make full
proof of our ministry as colaborers with Jesus in the
salvation of the world.

Sometimes it is said that during these latter days
the efficacy of prayer has been limited by a lack of
faith. If that be true, we are not witnesses to the
truth. Our people still have power with God in
prayer. Thousands of authentic instances could be
given to attest the value of this assertion. Only three
or four are needed to serve my purpose.

A Methodist engineer on one of our western rail-
roads recently made public a fact which illustrates the
possibility of an immediate answer to prayer when
OENTENNIAL ADDRESSES. 185

the petition is hoisted by faith up to the very windows
of heaven. He knelt down one afternoon and asked
God to guide him over the road and give him a safe
return to his loved ones at home. With the distinct
conviction that when danger came near it would be
pointed out and mercifully averted, he mounted the
cab and started. That night he pulled a train of ten
passenger cars and they were all well loaded. He
was behind time and was anxious to make a certain
point, and therefore he was driving his engine to the
utmost speed of which it was capable. He was on
a section of the road usually considered the best piece
of work on the line, and was endeavoring to make the
most of it, when he suddenly received a premonitory
warning that he must stop the train at once. Some-
thing seemed to tell him that this was absolutely
necessary to save life. He looked at his train. It
was all right. He strained his eyes down the track,
but could see no signal of danger. He listened to
the working of his engine. It was in the very best
running order. Nevertheless he obeyed the super-
natural conviction which had now fastened itself all
the more firmly upon his mind and resolved to halt
the train at once. So soon as this was done he took
his lamp in hand, and at the distance of only sixty
feet ahead, he saw what convinced him that God
had warned him in answer to prayer. Right before
him was a switch at a country siding, the thought of
which had never entered his mind. It had not been
used since he took work on the road and it was known
186 RICHMOND METHODISH.

to be spiked. Evidently it was now open to hurl his
train from the track.

This switch led into a stone quarry from whence
material for bridges had been taken, and the switch
was left there in case stone should be needed at any
time, but it was always kept locked and the switch-rail
was spiked. That night it was open, and but for a
divine message to the engineer, the engine would
have dashed through it, and at the end of the track—
it was only ten rods in length—the train moving at
the rate of fifty miles an hour would have struck a
solid wall of rock. Only God can tell what might
have been the result of the wreck. The warning
given to the faithful railway man that night needs
no explanation so long as our Lord continues to
answer prayer.

In the year 1874 I was invited to take part in
revival work in the county of Dare on the coast of
North Carolina. To reach the designated point in-
land it was necessary that we cross a body of water
between the sandhills along the ocean shore and the
forest-covered mainland about twenty-six miles away.
A squall struck our little skiff when we were only
half way over, and our sail was torn from the mast.
In a few moments the waves of the sound were boiling
around us and threatening to engulf us.

Just then an aged Methodist who had taken ‘pas-
sage with us to visit the home of his son in Tyrrell
County, clasped both hands in prayer and said, “O
God, spare us now and let the high sea go down
CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES. 187

and bring us safe to land.” I saw the cloud above
us melt away in less than ten minutes. There was a
great calm. The old man’s prayer was answered and
we gained the shore in safety.

In the year 1885 while I was pastor of a church
in Charlottesville, a large lumber-house with an ad-
joining factory burned down at noonday. The con-
flagration threatened the destruction of the town.
The wind was high and blowing with a sort of fiendish
fierceness toward the heart of the business quarter,
and the ruin of many merchants seemed to be a
question of only a few hours at most. Blazing
brands hurtling through the hot air had already
kindled the dry, warped shingles on the roofs of a
score of houses, and three of the principal churches
were in imminent danger.

Just then I saw an aged Methodist—a devout
woman of God—with closed eyes pleading with her
Lord as she leaned against her gate, and saying, “ O
Father, spare the homes of thy children and save us
from this terrible fate.” The wind shifted in less than
five minutes. The great tongues of flame and smoke
shot away from the edge of the town toward the
open fields adjacent, where there was nothing to con-
sume. In answer to prayer God did save the homes
of his people.

When I was pastor of the Cumberland Street
Church in Norfolk, a member of our Conference was
assisting me in the conduct of a revival service. The
meeting seemed to promise no results and our hearts
188. RICHMOND METHODISN.

were anxious about the work of the Lord. Across
the street from the church building was an humble
home in which upon the ground floor lay helpless
a poor invalid—a member of Cumberland Street
Church. I called to see her one morning and told
her how the revival work appeared to. be hindered
by the powers of darkness. Said she: “I spent all
last night in prayer to God for a blessing upon the
church. Our God has heard my prayer. Many
souls will be saved before the meeting comes to an
end.” That night God led the way, and before the
close of the revival one hundred and eighteen souls
were born of the Spirit into the kingdom of God.

The Christian Church declining? We know noth-
ing about it. The one thing we do know is that
Methodism is marching on. If any are tired of the
campaign, let them break ranks and go back—but we
go on.

Heaven is our camping-ground, and we never in-
tend to stack arms until we have finished the fight
and left the world to be forever at home with Jesus
in that land where the weary are at rest.
IT.

BUSINESS INTERESTS, AS AFFECTED BY
METHODISM.

BY COL. JOHN P. BRANCH.

The advancement of the business interests of a
country is the duty of every citizen. It begins at
home: “ He that provideth not for his own house-
hold hath denied the faith, and is worse than an
infidel.” But the same Word tells us that we are not
to look upon our own things only but also on the
things of others. “ None of us liveth to himself.”
Every man’s interests are wrapped up with others.
“Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”

It is essential that you and yours be fed, and
clothed and housed; it is also essential that your
neighbor be thus blessed. In a business sense, as well
as in a religious sense, every one is his “ brother’s
keeper,” and this relation is reciprocal. Nothing
comes to a good man but what is in a sense common
to his fellow-man. Business interests then are the
arrangements, modes and opportunities by which
what is the good of one may become the good of all.
Have you wealth? It becomes dross and “ filthy
lucre ” if hoarded in a miserly way. If lavished only
on self, it enures to pride and vanity, and is no better

[189]
190 RICHMOND METHODISM.

than the miser’s. When shared with others wisely
it will serve the purpose for which God gave it.

If God’s word teaches anything, it teaches that
every human being is a steward entrusted with one
or more talents—responsible to the Giver of them
for their use and improvement. No one can hide
his one talent in the earth, or squander his five
foolishly, or use them without regard to the interests
of the owner without condemnation.

The man who uses his means, be they little or
much, “ to make two blades of grass grow where only
one grew before,” to equip and send off ships to
carry the fruits of husbandry and toil; to make the
waterfall grind the grain; to build the iron railway
to bring distant people together and help to unify the
race—the man who does these things in the spirit of
righteousness and the fear of God, is in his sphere
“a doer of the word,” and an heir of faithful Abra-
ham, who is not on record as a preacher, but who
nevertheless so impressed himself upon the world as
to be revered in pagan as well as Christian lands.

“ Christianity in earnest ” elevates men in business
life. It forbids all that wrongs our neighbor; it is
good will in active exercise. Like its founder, it
seeks to do good to all, and at all times. It makes
a man rescue his fellow who has fallen among
thieves—whether he has been robbed of his money
or his character—and put him on his feet again, and
rejoice in seeing him walk in the strength of man-
hood.
CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES. 191

In the days of the Wesleys it went into the purlieus
of London and other cities, and transformed the
wicked and abandoned into useful men. It went to
Cornwall and after great conflicts with almost heathen
miners it left them peaceable and orderly, and so effec-
tually reformed the community that its mark remains
upon it to this day. Less than a hundred years have
passed since Wesleyan Methodism went to Australia
and New Zealand, when those countries were inhab-
ited by cannibals: now they are large producers of
wool, provisions and other necessaries of life and in-
dustry, and the Methodists there are raising money
by the hundred thousand for the twentieth century
movement.

The great truth annunciated by the inspired
writer—‘.Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin
is a reproach to any people ”’—has a thousand proofs
in both sacred and profane history.

The most methodical and industrious man of the
eighteenth century was John Wesley. His people
imitated him, and with their thrift and economy en-
riched their country.
III.
THE CONNECTIONAL IDEA AND THE
LOCAL CHURCH.

BY WILLIAM V. TUDOR, D. D.

It is a story of one of the early Methodist preachers,
that driving up with his family to a house in a region
of country which he had found to be rudely inhos-
pitable, and hailing, “ House! house!” the question
came from the opened door, “ Where are you from? ”
to which the itinerant hallooed back, “ We are from
everywhere but here, and we want to be from here
as soon as possible.” In this witty answer we may
recognize one form of putting in speech the idea of
the Methodist itinerancy. Every idea distinctive of
the economical system or management of Methodism
has grown out of the itinerancy, which has itself
grown out of the one grand, original, inspiring idea;
viz., “ Preach the word.” Wesley wrote to one of his
preachers, “If you desire to promote the work of
God you should preach abroad ”’—he meant field
preaching—“ as often as possible; ” and adds, “ Noth-
ing destroys the devil’s work like this.” “ For this
purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he
might destroy the works of the devil,” we read. The

[192]
CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES. 198

commission of the Government a year ago to Dewey
and Sampson and Schley was not to engage the
enemy, not to encounter or fight, but, in express
terms, to destroy the Spanish fleet at Manilla; to
destroy Cervera’s fleet. The evolutions were for
that. Field-preaching was one of Wesley’s evolutions
“to destroy the devil’s works,” as we have quoted
him. Not field-preaching, but preaching was the
conscious commission of Methodism to destroy the
works of the devil, to preach the work of Christ.
By means of preaching the work of Christ is pub-
lished and promoted.

The first and main business is to herald the gospel
of the grace of God to sinners; to testify the meaning
of salvation, both as to its final cause, and its im-
mediate or progressive approaches to the end. The
business is with the individual soul, or, with the
universal human soul—the soul, which in each and all
of mankind is so much the same in essence, capacity
and condition, as to be practically one. To save that
soul, in the gospel sense, is not a question principally
of organization or system or connection, but is a
matter of effort as prescribed by the great Saviour,
“Preach the gospel to every creature.” For the
purpose of this effort the soul is one—the closest
unity man can have with his fellow-man; not a tie,
but an identity, as in an accepted sense we use the
term identification—identified in interests and fate;
everywhere needing to repent for sin and to be saved
for the hope of everlasting life. The universal soul

13
194 RICHMOND METHODISM.

is the world that God loved, and gave himself to its
salvation. We want to preach to that soul, to en-
lighten it, if possible, to inform, to expound the truth
of destiny, to tell the soul certain things that concern
the human being, if he values life and well-being.
The soul is in darkness, and light alone is congenial
to life; the soul is a lost sheep, and the fold alone is
safe. We have to tell the soul glad tidings of great
joy, joy so great and tidings so good because con-
demnation and death were foredoomed if there were
no salvation. But Oh, joy! a Saviour has come into
the world. Preach; proclaim God, the Father, Son,
and Holy Ghost, the creator and preserver of all
mankind. Preach; proclaim the kingdom of God at
hand to man, with the hope of eternal life, or im-
mortality. Preach, the soul a dying sinner, redeemed
through great love; the salvation to be accepted or
else neglected; reformation by regeneration. Preach;
awake the sleeping soul, convict of sin, exhort to
repentance, invite to Christ, witness to the strange
warmth of peace and joy in justification through be-
lieving in Jesus. Preach faith, deal with the soul
sunk and dead in sin; the sinner has no conscience left
apparently; he has no moral sense, but only carnal
sense; he is immoral and does not care; he is bound
for eternal torment; he is hard and contemptuous
and unbelieving, the enemy of God; but Divine love
hovers over him; for him a Saviour was born and
crucified; infinite pity yearns toward him, grace to
him abounds, the spirit-world cares for him, all kind-
OENTENNIAL ADDRESSES. 196

ness and tenderness and mercy encourage his re-
pentance, heaven wants him and will have him for a
word of consent—it is just such a soul may know the
raptures of pure, everlasting life; the influences and
forces of love surround and press upon him. Preach;
press the gospel on him, on the soul, the world-soul,
all the world—the world is small to the forces that
with ever accelerated movement are traversing and
engirding the globe—to every creature; it was Jesus’
first and great concern; to make all men know the
riches of the glory of the mystery, Christ the Saviour
among us, a glorious hope. Preach to the soul
buried in sorrow and in sin, lying at hell’s dark door,
plunged in a gulf of dark despair, a trembling sinner.
Preach.

It was from the preaching of Wesley that Metho-
dism arose. It was the preaching and experience of
conversion or the new birth that inspired and led to
management or system, such as all endeavors and
enterprises of men associated by a common faith
or idea or purpose inevitably assume, or wisely ordain
for achievement and success. The founder of Metho-
dism, the author of the economical or governmental
system, was not Wesley the churchman, not Wesley
the priest, nor the administrator of ordinances or
sacraments, but Wesley the evangelist, the preacher.
The class-meeting, Wesley’s earliest institution, was
a means of preaching: the lay preacher, the Metho-
dist preacher arose out of it. Preaching was the
thing, as we say colloquially; it was the first and
196 RICHMOND METHODISM.

great commandment. The soul was the unit, the tie,
the necessary, inevitable connection of man with man,
social necessarily because identical, society inevitably
existing through the universal soul, one and insepa-
rable. Preach the gospel to every creature. God
will also take care of the connectional idea. He
names his incorporation of it “ kingdom ”—the king-
dom of heaven, or, of God. It was the Saviour’s only
term for the association of men with men in God, the
kingdom of heaven. In the two places only in his
reported words in which he says “ church,” the term
means synonymously the congregation of the faith-
ful. One hundred and twelve times he uses the word
“kingdom ” to denote his “ society,” God restoring
and reorganizing his kingdom of souls, saved unto
eternal life. It is in this higher, divine, and necessary
connection of the kingdom that the fundamental idea
of the Protestant era—the advanced Christian era
of the world’s reformation—has been saved; the
principle that there cannot be a more dangerous
nor a more odious encroachment on the rights of the
individual soul than when one officiously and un-
solicited interferes with the sacred intercourse that
subsists between him and his God; a principle which
asserted itself and triumphed even over Luther, its
doughty and irrepressible champion, when in the
strength of his opinions he sought rigorously and
severely to enforce them on his followers, who yet
in great numbers saved the Reformation by refusing,
having thrown off the authority of the Romish See,
OENTENNIAL ADDRESSES. 197

to submit their consciences to the control of a.monk.
John Wesley was wiser. His original and expedient
connection of members and preachers was with him-
self. That was the Wesleyan Methodist Connection
at the earliest, and so named expressly; yet Wesley
said, “ Every preacher and every member may leave
me when he pleases; but while he chooses to stay,
it is on the same terms that he joined me at first.”
At this point the idea of our connectional system
begins to develop. Connection, you cannot escape
it. All Christians, of many and familiar denomina-
tions, are connected, are bound together. The soul
is the unit, the spiritual kingdom is the ideal, the
eternal, heavenly kingdom is perfection. There is
necessary and subordinate connection, as the differ-
ent denominations have elected symbolical terms,
convention, council, presbytery, assembly, associa-
tion. In the strictest congregational church there is
connection of local government, binding on pastor
and people. As by a very eternal law of being, or
through the universal soul, connection in church has
ever become more and more intimate, and consoli-
dated, binding ministers and laymen together in
compact, administrative, and executive body. As by
force of a law of souls, the Countess of Huntingdon
undertook a connection of the followers of White-
field, which later lapsed into the congregational
polity. By various informing principles, or by provi-
dential hints, or by historical facts the connectional
ties of different denominations have been organized
‘198 RICHMOND METHODISM.

and named. Our Methodist church, or society, or
Conference (the symbolical term peculiar to us), is
connection with one man, John Wesley. Do not be
startled, as though a man were the head of the
church, or as though we were resigning the claim to
be of the church of Christ. We might indeed partly
elucidate our proposition and leave it established in
a general way by quoting, as applicable to Wesley,
(and which history and modern Methodism would
not deny), the word we read in Scripture concerning
Abel, the son of Adam: “He, being dead, yet
speaketh.” No man’s voice of teaching has more
rung through now nearly two centuries than that of
Wesley. But our particular thesis is susceptible of
yet wider demonstration or argument of support.
We understand that the Word of God very much
leaves the church free to frame its ecclesiastical con-
stitution, to form government, to order its obser-
vances of worship, out of its own self-organizing life.
One life, of one man, Christ Jesus, by infinite pre-
eminence, dominates and is reproduced in the uni-
versal church of true believers. An author has noted
that the word “church” occurs in the Acts and the
epistles, including the apocalypse, one hundred and
twelve times—exactly the same number of times as
“kingdom ” in the.gospels; while “ kingdom” ap-
pears in only twenty-nine cases; the Apostles thereby
conveniently expressing and easily emphasizing by
the Spirit the institution of the kingdom, the church.
With Paul, and in his writings, and by the same Holy
CHNTHNNIAL ADDRESSES. 199

Spirit, the personal Christ, or his life, was apparently
an advanced idea of the kingdom. He was not so
much for baptizing into the church. With him
Christ was everything. He said of himself that he
had been crucified with Christ, and that he lived in
him, and that to be a subject of the kingdom was to
be in Christ; so pervading and all-containing and
sufficient was the great, saving Christ. It looks as
though, surveying the churches, partial and segre-
gated, one of Paul, another of Apollos, and another
of Cephas, the Apostle had the idea of Principal
Fairbairn—or did not Fairbairn rather get it from
PaulP—that the drift of the Church of believers
toward the ideal unity would be, as Principal Fair-
bairn expresses it, and so he characterizes the earnest
religious life of our time, by “the return to Christ.”

This to show the place and power of a person, the
great first person of our faith and following. If
admonition were needed, and possibly it may be,
to universal Methodism to-day, admonition for any
lack of efficiency and- evangelistic power, it could
not be couched in brief phrase more fittingly and
significantly than in the words, “ Return to Wesley.”
Wesley said to the assembled Conference, and it was
not denied, “I am, under God, a centre of union to
all our travelling, as well as local preachers.” In
anticipation of his death, and for the perpetuation of
Methodism, Wesley vested all his own power in a
hundred members of the ministry. So apostolic is
his figure as that it is no unwarranted hyperbole to
200 RICHMOND METHODISMN.

say that with us now-a-days it takes a whole Generai
Conference, Bishops and members, to incarnate one
Wesley. As Wesley fixed the appointments of his
preachers by very episcopal authority, or at his sole
judgment, so now the General Conference nominates
for the pulpits through the superintendents, or
Bishops, whom it elects and sets apart for the service.
Nomination to the pulpits; preaching unto soul-sav-
ing is the thing, the grand, unifying, connecting idea.
This made it necessary that the pulpits should be-
come inalienable property, as was done by trustee-
ship for the Connection. It made necessary also that
the doctrines, spiritual laws, and the itinerancy should
be defended in a species of unalterable constitutioh,
so as to identify the church to which the ae
and property belonged, as is done in brief form in
the items of our commonly-called Restrictive Rules|

only six in number. Restriction was necessary if
Jy

order that, as Dr. Tigert well says, in his “ Constitu-
tional History of American Episcopal Methodism,”
“the church itself may be protected from that most
dangerous of all tyrannies, the tyranny of an oli-
garchy.”

The value of such connection, particularly so large
and extensive as that of Methodism has become,
must be manifest, for manifold purposes for which
the church of Christ exists on earth; purposes and
results illustrated in all the great denominations or
sects besides ourselves, although they may be called
distinctively congregational, as distinguished from
CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES. 201

connectional, in the peculiar sense applied to Metho-
dism—the property of Methodism, or as Dr. Tigert
puts it, “ The term is technical and characteristic of
the denomination.” The connection is realized in
the several denominations by official boards, for ex-
ample, for the maintenance of the ministry, for church
extension, for the work of foreign and domestic mis-
sions, for education, and for the exertion of Christian
influence upon the public, upon the nation, and upon
the world.

For our particular connectional idea, and to ap-
preciate it, we revert to the original and fundamental
proposition of this paper, viz., “ Preach the Word.”
Some years ago on entering a family of Methodists
I found them puzzling over the signature to a certi-
ficate of membership one of them had received—the
name signed, and the letters or abbreviations follow-
ing, “P. C.” What did “ P. C.” mean? “ Pastor ”
would have been all right and familiar. Through some
neglect of their education they had not learned that
the true style in Methodism is “ P. C.,” preacher in
charge. The original Methodist preacher was little
of the pastor, as the term in this day has come to
mean an endeared and intimate relation to the
families of the flock. He was more a flame of fire
catching from place to place, a torch in hand applied
from spot to spot. In the minutes of the first Con-
ference of America Methodism, held in 1773, the
appointments of the preachers read, “ New York,
Thomas Rankin; Philadelphia, George Shadford;
202 - RICHMOND METHODISM.

to exchange in four months,” four months rather
than four years, the limit of service in one place.
Again the term was six months, then a year, then
two years, the extreme down to a time easily within
the memory of people still living; the four years
possibility and limit being allowed by enactment only
since the eventful period of the war of the States.
The preacher, the herald, the torch, the flame of fire,
the minister, the servant, the itinerant was to go
everywhere, preaching the word. That was the
genius-of Methodism. There is no reason to-day,
inherent in the nature of things, why the term should
be four years rather than six months; or four years,
and not five, or eight. None whatever. Large cities,
small towns, rural districts afford at last no varying
conditions essentially to vary the one commission,
Preach the word. Culture, refinement, society af-
ford no varying conditions. Education in the
ministry should be the requirement as well for the
mountains as for the plains, for the circuits as the
stations. It was in the age of Washington, and
Jefferson and Franklin and Patrick Henry that the
early six-months’ Methodist preachers in this country
flourished. Again, the indefinite term, by appoint-
ment annually, would not be inharmonious with
Methodism, and the itinerancy would not be neces-
sarily impaired, provided the testimony of the preach-
ing should be efficiently declared. Preach to the
universal soul, wherever found. The highlands
rather than the lowlands may be preferable, essen-

¥
CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES. 208

tial for the health of the itinerant or his family.
Let him so represent, as bearing upon his appoint-
ment. His right to do so, and to be accommodated,
if possible, has never been denied, has been freely
and inherently accorded. To demand that one
should be sent them to preach the word, if a people
have not had it faithfully declared; to represent their
ability to take care of a single man only, or a small
family, and not a large; even to suggest the names
of men of whom they know as mighty in word and
doctrine, and as likely to be useful among them,
preaching the word; such privileges and applications
may not in reason be denied a congregation, circuit,
or station. But it was early laid down as fundamental
in Methodism, “ We deny not the right of any people
to choose their own pastors; but should our societies
deem it expedient so to do, they would take on them-
selves a high responsibility, for they would destroy
the itinerant system.” Destroy the itinerancy; and
what is the itinerancy? The journeying system; and
how far can men journey? From circuit to circuit,
from sea-shore to mountain, from city to city, from
State to State, from the Atlantic to the Pacific,
and back again, from Maine to Georgia. And who
journeys like the “ transfer ”’?—a term originally ap-
propriated for a soldier transferred from one com-
pany or troop, and placed in another, and later ap-
plied to an itinerant preacher transferred from one
Conference to another. Who is so typically an itin-
erant as he, the transfer? Transferred from Con-
204 RIOHMOND METHODISM.

ference to Conference, not ever, in comity, courtesy
and right, without his consent—consent often soli-
cited and urged by the appointing power, or himself
seeking transfer through force of providential cir-
cumstances that conspire and direct him to seek a
change of general location, from West to East per-
haps, by the distance of half a continent, yet the
preacher having no more right to name his charge,
city, station, or circuit, than the young man who,
having answered satisfactorily the question, “ Will
he do that part of the work advised, at the time and
place judged most for the glory of God?” is on the
spot admitted into full connection.

At this point the local church must be found loyal
as well as the itinerant man, and nothing in Metho-
dism has been more exemplary and phenomenal than
the submission and fidelity of the churches to their
appointments. One of my earliest recollections,
when I was a Sunday School small boy, is of hearing
the new appointee of the Baltimore Conference to
Fayette Street Church, Baltimore, say from the
pulpit, at his first sermon, in an independent way,
“T understand you all did not want me, and neither
did I want to come; but here I am and mean to
stay, and you will have to make the best of it.” The
union of preacher and people was cemented by the
word, and they had a grand year together. Nor does
the general loyalty of the people exceed the hospi-
tality and affection with which the preachers are
regarded and entertained. Moreover, the local
OBNTENNIAL ADDRESSES. 205

preacher, as well as the itinerant, belongs to the
connectional system, the preacher a permanent resi-
dent, a merchant, a mechanic, a lawyer, a physician,
laboring gratuitously, a valuable assistant, an ele-
ment of power. The providential force of the con-
nectional idea, as we have viewed it in this paper,
appears in this, that while there are changes and long,
rapid moves of the itinerant ministry, yet also, by the
care and labors and administration of these very
itinerants there is localization, centralization, organi-
zation, permanent holding of territory, building up
of churches; the Annual Conference being the firm-
ament in which the preachers are held to their syste-
matic revolutions. There have been wandering stars
and comets from the first, but also from the first the
local church has been established and settled by the
connectional ministry as though it had itself been
settled. I leave you to judge of the comprehensive-
ness and completeness of the connectional idea, all
under God.

But now again, and finally, we revert to our pro-
position of the return to Wesley. He, at the start,
had no notion of organizing a church pro forma, or
for form’s sake. To save the universal soul was his
high conception. Individually saved souls should be
witnesses for Jesus, “to tell to sinners round what
a dear Saviour they had found,” and by speaking
often one to another to use a means for the conser-
vation of their own spiritual life. One of their
number, having gifts, grace, and the promise of use-
206 RICHMOND METHODISM.

fulnéss, should be a preacher, to speak to souls saved
and unsaved. The Methodist Church is a society of
societies, a unit of units. The itinerant may fit-
tingly represent the angel of the Apocalypse, having
the everlasting gospel to preach, and flying. If it
be a question of adaptation, of varied culture for
varied classes of society, he flies—does not stay long
at one place. He flies and another succeeds him.
The situation is suited; he flies. Meanwhile he is
preaching the word, doing the work of an evangelist.
Return to Wesley; let all the preachers be evangelists,
all the societies class-meetings, advising among them-
selves how to flee the wrath to come, how to save
themselves and the souls of others; the annual ap-
pointment being a flying messenger; the one object
being not to build up and caress and foster in pride
of strength a local congregation, but to build up and
swell the general assembly and church of the first-
born, which are written in heaven.

The tendency in cities with each church or charge
is to be wholly occupied with its own interests and
increase. One of the leading ideas of this centennial
occasion is to promote a closer union and coopera-
tion. The motives and arguments for such associa-
tion are so abundant and familiar as to make their
presentation trite and commonplace. Moreover, all
the denominations use such united effort. The aim
of this paper has been, by a survey of the origin, his-
tory and peculiarities of our system—a field with
which our younger people are little acquainted—to
OBNTENNIAL ADDRESSES. 207

show what is the true connectional spirit of Metho-
dism, and to foster it. The purpose of the argument
will be served if the permanent organization shall be
effected which has already been contemplated in this
centennial movement. So also a new era of expan-
sion and prosperity for Methodism in our city will
begin with the dawn of the twentieth century.
Iv.
- METHODISM AND CITY EVANGELIZATION.
BY W. J. YOUNG, D. D.

_ Shelley is quoted as having said, “ Hell is a city |
much like London.” Most of us have used the well-
worn saying, “God made the country; man made
the town.” These sayings are of interest as indicating
the prevalent notion that the moral and religious
conditions of municipal life are hopeless; that we
must put up with them, saving only the few from the
general ruin.

This pessimistic conception must give way before
the confidence of the gospel that every man may be
saved, and every society or community of men be re-
deemed. Surely no one who has felt the power of the
Cross in his own heart will deny that this Cross is able
to save unto the uttermost all men. It has riot been
long since I heard a man, but recently reclaimed
from vicious habits, pleading, in a mission located
in the slums of a city, with his old companions of
both sexes to accept his Lord, offering as his chief
argument, “If He can save a wretch like me, He
can save you also.”

[208]
CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES. * 209

The second of the sayings just quoted, like most
current proverbs, has an element of falsehood in it.
It is not true that the town is altogether a human
product. The social nature of man, the use of
nature’s forces in the industrial and material progress
of the world, these surely have their origin in God,
and they have had most to do with the building of
cities. We may say then that the city is a divine
institution, and, as such may be brought, in every
way, into harmony with the moral law of God. Let
us not forget that the heaven of the glorified is spoken
of as a city, the New Jerusalem. Let us not forget
that our Master made the cities the centers of his own
work, that he wept over the great city of Jerusalem,
that it was almost within the precincts of the same
city that he died on the cross and created our redemp-
tion. Let us not forget that the apostle to the gen-
tiles did most of his preaching in the cities along his
missionary routes, established in them the first Chris-
tian churches, and to them, for the most part, ad-
dressed his famous epistles.

The rapid growth of cities in modern times presents
the chief problem for the Church of Christ. From
1880 to 1890, we are told, the city population of the
United States increased sixty-one per cent., while the
rural population increased only fourteen per cent.
From the same sources we learn that, with the same
percentage of increase, the year 1920 would witness
a city population ten millions in excess of the country
population. This would mean the control of the

14
210 RICHMOND METHODISM.

nation by the cities. The nation cannot be re-
deemed, unless the cities be first redeemed. Besides,
this more rapid growth of our American cities in
recent years is no mere accident. It would be easy to
give reasons why it isso. The cities of Europe have
had the same marvelous development. This tendency
is, therefore, probably permanent, and the obligation
is a pressing one that we save the cities of our
nation—that we save this city.

The city is the center of influence, not only socially
and industrially, but religiously as well. The city
church is fast setting the fashion in matters eccle-
siastical. The contact of the city and the country is
so close now that even the tone of piety in the
country church is thereby affected. The work in the
foreign field leans in no small measure on our city
churches and our city life. The mission boards de-
pend on the liberality of our city churches. But still
more: The world is getting very small in these latter
days, and heathen eyes are observing the examples
of so-called Christian civilization exhibited by our
great cities. Alas! what do they see? We are told
that some of the representatives of heathen religions
at the World’s Parliament of Religions made com-
parisons by no means flattering to our American
vanity, between the moral status of Chicago and that
of the great cities of the East. If we would save
heathendom, we must save the cities of America.

Here, too, in our cities crime has its headquarters.
If the citizen from the country desires to give loose
CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES. ail

rein to his appetite he finds his opportunity not at
home, but during the visit to the city. It is the city
that has its slums, its gambling-houses, its brothel.
It is the city that has developed and encouraged the
desecration of the Sabbath. Within a few minutes’
walk of the sacred desk, where I now stand, there is
evil enough to damn a hundred cities like Richmond.

Whatever may be thought of the liquor problem
as a whole, all reformers, of the better type, are agreed
that the saloon is an evil and must go. Now it is in
the city the saloon has most power. Here it draws
down its rapacious maw the youth of our country.
Here it so largely dictates who shall fill our public
offices, and how our affairs shall be conducted. Here
it makes cowards of our public leaders, even those
who belong to our churches. Here it fills the jails
and sends to the many dens of infamy its miserable
wreckage.

The city is the home of poverty. What throngs,
with hardly enough to eat, crowded into their narrow
homes, surrounded by filth and squalor! Multitudes
reduced to penury through drink, through improvi-
dence, or through that competition which leads most
of us to buy our goods in the cheapest market and to
sell in the dearest, so that such wages are often paid,
especially to women, as make it impossible for them
to eke out a livelihood.

Side by side with the poverty, and not less
dangerous, we find the vast accumulations of wealth,
and the consequent luxury and selfishness and vice
212 RICHMOND METHODISM.

of the more refined sort. In all our cities we have
the slums of high life and the slums of low life.

Many of the noblest citizens of our great country
have come from the midst of our foreign population.
But we all know that, for the most part, it is the worst
of the people abroad that comes to our shores. The
percentage of criminals among the foreign-born
population is three and one-half times as great as the
percentage among the native-born population. All
the forces that tend downward meet the foreigner
when he comes to our shores. The politician uses
him, and he becomes a voter before he can speak
our tongue or know anything about our institutions.
(Let us meet him with the Word of God.) I need
not tell you that this vast population from beyond the
seas congregates in our cities.

In the cities, too, Romanism is strongest. Against
the dogmas and the worship of the Church of Rome
I have nothing to say at this time. But that ultra-
montanism which would have our affairs directed
by a foreign potentate, even if claiming to be a
follower of the great St. Peter, is a menace to the
welfare of this republic.

The political corruption, against which all good
people are so constantly protesting, is at its worst in
our cities. Indeed, it is in the city that the throne of
that autocrat, known as a boss, is erected. This cor-
ruption works mischief to every interest of municipal
life, and, by fostering for profit so many haunts of
vice, it interferes with the redemption of the people.
CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES. 218

Let any man read the two books by Albert Shaw on
municipal life in Great Britain and on the European
Continent, and he will be convinced that the worst
governed cities within the compass of Protestant
civilization are the cities of America.

Only the careful student of the laboring classes
realizes the social unrest prevailing in our American
cities. The consciousness of the wide contrast be-
tween themselves and the capitalist in the distribution
of wealth is leading very many of our masses to accept
with eagerness socialism, communism, anarchism or
any other theory of social reorganization which
promises a short road to comfort and to fortune.

Now I desire to say, with all the emphasis of which
I am capable, that, for all these conditions prevailing
in our city life, the cure, and the only cure, is the
saving power of our Lord’s Gospel. That one simple
principle enunciated in the law of love would make
society everywhere pure, if put into practice. Not
so long ago it was discovered that air might be
liquified. Immediately it was asked, To what uses —
can it be put? The other day I read in a scientific
journal that the air in this form might be carried
below into the mines, and then let loose to drive
machinery, to furnish cool air, and for other purposes.
So our gospel—so far as it concerns our relation to
our fellow-men—is crowded into that single sentence,
“ Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” But let
it loose in the midst of the many problems of human
life, and this single rule becomes a tremendous energy
a4 RICHMOND METHODISM.

which makes tyranny tremble, creates a new con-
ception of the duties of the fortunate to the unfortu-
nate; remodels society, and brings on the millennium.
But this rule of love becomes effective, not when
announced as a mere moral precept, whether from
the sacred desk or from the platform of the secular
lecturer, but only when written by the finger of the
Holy Spirit, by the processes of the new birth, in
human hearts. “ Ye must be born again ’—~we must
proclaim it. I deeply sympathize with every moral
and social reform, with every movement looking to
the betterment of society. I know that the purest
and best Christians need to be told their private,
social and civic duties. But it is equally certain that
none of these things are effectual without the trans-
forming power of divine grace. It is the Gospel only
that may be called the power of God unto salvation.

In this work of city evangelization no church has
a larger responsibility than our own. If we fail, the
work will not be done. Our very history lays on us
this obligation. We have not only followed the popu-
lation as it has moved out to the new countries in
the west, we have done the same with the progress of
city life, whether among the rich or among the poor.
Methodism has beef not only Christianity in earnest,
but missionary Christianity given to the work of the
evangelist. When it ceases to be this, it ceases to be
at all,

The simplicity of our worship adapts us to this
special work. Fortunate was it for us that we got
CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES. 215

rid of the English liturgy. Beautiful indeed is it, and
for many persons a good means for winging their
thoughts to heaven. But not by such means is the
evangelization of the world to be accomplished.

Along with this might be mentioned the simplicity
of our theology. Elaborate systems of religious
thought have their place, but we need, in bringing
the people to Christ, to lay stress on the few fun-
damentals of Christian truth—repentance, faith, the
new birth, the witness of the Spirit. Not in Saul’s
armor, but with David’s sling and stone, will the
church lay low the Goliath of sin.

Our wonderful flexibility makes it easy for us to
bring ourselves into harmony with varying conditions,
and to meet the need of all classes of the people. No
church, for example, has lent itself more readily than
our own to that most recent religious movement
known as the “ Institutional Church.”

Besides all this, we have gone forth with a religion
of experience. We have talked of that which we did
know. For this the great crowd is clamoring; and
it is this which gives, in the heart of the missionary,
clerical or lay, the greatest impulse for the work of
soul-saving.

Let us go forth then with our message of saving
grace to all men. We must carry forth a gospel for
the poor. Sad will be the day when we put in the
place of prominence the man in fine apparel, and
relegate the poor man to the background. Surely
we shall do as well as the Scotch poet who sang:

‘© A man’s a man for a’ that.”

x
216 RICHMOND METHODISM.

We must feel as did the Duke of Wellington, who
said to the poor man kneeling restlessly by his side
at the communion table, “ Be still, here we are all
equal.” It must be a gospel to the poor, telling them
in plainest terms their duty to the church and to
society. To do this requires no little courage in
these days.

But we must proclaim a gospel for the rich. They
have their cares and their burdens. We are too prone
to think of them as so fortunate that they need no
word of sympathy such as we can bring. No home is
darker than the home of wealth when it is without
God. The gloomiest picture I have ever witnessed
was a home of this kind,'in which lay the dead body
of an only son who had died of delirium tremens.
It must be a gospel to the rich. We must tell them
their duty to society and the church. Unrighteous
modes of money-making, injustice to the poor em-
ployee, greedy self-indulgence must be condemned.
We must faithfully give to the rich man the gospel
for which he pays.

We must preach the gospel adapted to the igno-
rant. A college education is a desideratum for the
ministry; but it injures rather than helps when it
separates the preacher from the plainer folk. Let us
not forget how the most of the life of the great
Kingsley was spent among the uncultured, and how
he taught many of his parishioners how to read, how
to think, how to live. It is said of our Lord, in whom
dwelt all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,
that “the common people heard him gladly.”
CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES. 217

We must have a gospel for the scholarship of the
day. And indeed we have it. It has long seemed to
me that Methodism was raised up to meet the special
form of unbelief of this nineteenth century. That un-
belief is calling itself agnosticism; it boasts that we
cannot know God. Methodism asserts as does no
other church the witness of the Spirit. It sings,

** What we have felt and seen,
With confidence we tell;

And publish to the sons of men
The signs infallible.”

The only convincing answer to the unbelief of to-day
is to be found here. * * *

The world is ready for our message. Let me give
you two illustrations of this truth. In my first pas-
torate, I was preaching, one Sunday night, from the
text beginning, “ The Spirit and the Bride say come,”
etc., when I noticed a man, standing in the vestibule,
listening very intently to all I was saying. I soon
recognized him as a plain, unlettered Irishman I had
often seen about town. At last he came inside the
door, and then some distance down the aisle, uncon-
scious all the while of the smiles and stares of the
people in the rear of the church. When the congre-
gation was dismissed, he pressed his way to me, and,
taking my hand, he said, “ That’s the first preaching
I’ve heard for thirty-five years. But I’d like to know
something about that Jesus you talked about to-
night.”

In a great New York church one Sabbath evening,
218 RICHMOND METHODISM.

after the congregation had left the church, the choir
remained to rehearse a new piece of music, and the
pastor was the only listener. The words they were
singing were those of the familiar hymn, beginning,

‘‘T heard the voice of Jesus say,
Come unto Me and rest.”’

Two newsboys, poorly clad, entered the church on
tiptoe, and gazed, in rapture, with open mouths, at
the choir, and drank in words and music. No won-
der, when it was over, the preacher put his arm
around each boy and kissed him fondly on his cheek.

These illustrations are typical of the world’s hun-
ger, and of the Gospel’s power to satisfy. When we
shall hold up this Gospel in its sweet simplicity,
touched as little as possible by the forms of the church
and by the theology of the schools, then will be ful-
filled the words of our Lord, “ And I, if I be lifted
up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.”
V.

THE SOCIAL AND REVIVAL MEETINGS OF
METHODISM.

BY HENRY E. JOHNSON, D. D.

The social and revival meetings of Methodism mark
an era in the history of Christianity—the era of the
emancipation of the laity. Prior to the advent of
Methodism public worship was as a rule performed
solely by the minister and his clerk or other assistant.
The great body of the people had long been denied
any real participation in the worship of the sanctuary,
or in the management of the church and its affairs;
and had ceased to feel any responsibility for either
the one or the other. Religion was a thing to be
attended to by proxy, and about which the individual
conscience felt small concern. Methodism, by the
thunder peal and lightning flash of its revival preach-
ing, waked the slumbering conscience; and then,
through its class-meetings and love-feasts, furnished
opportunity for the use of individual gifts. The hum-
blest private Christian was made to feel that he had
the right to speak of the work of God in his own
soul, or to persuade his fellow-sinners to seek the

[219]
220 RIOHMOND METHODISM.

Saviour he had found, or to approach God in prayer
for his blessing on those around him. In these
meetings the early Methodists were trained as work-
men, skilled in winning souls for Christ, and con-
ducting them into his kingdom. They were not
polished, but they were powerful; they were rude in
speech, but not in knowledge concerning the vital
matters of repentance, faith and conversion.

The full import of this emancipation of the laity
from the bondage. of silence has not been appreciated
among us, even by the historians of Methodism.
One of the important subjects just now engaging
the attention of medical science, is the rediscovery of
the art of breathing. Impelled by some of the cus-
toms of modern life, we have been gasping instead
of breathing—at each inspiration filling only a small
part of the lung, leaving the remainder vacant and
idle. The result has been an enfeebled and devital-
ized body which falls an easy prey to any invading
disease. Deep breathing in a pure atmosphere is the
art of health; for it furnishes an enlarged surface on
which the vitalizing fluid can act for the enriching
of the fountain of life. So the class-meeting, the love-
feast and the revival have enlarged the surface in the
body of the church, on which the Holy Ghost can
act, thus improving its health and increasing its
power.

The class-meeting was the unit of Methodism—
that around which the whole system revolved. It
furnished to the pastor the best analysis of the con-
CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES. 221

gregation he has ever been able to obtain. Preaching
deals with the crowd; the class-meeting deals with the
individual. Just here is found the essential difference
_ between the spirit of Romanism and the spirit of
Protestantism. Romanism destroys individualism by
swallowing up the individual in the church. Metho-
dism brought to birth an individual religious con-
sciousness, which is the basis of equality and the
foundation of manliness. Romanism stretches its flat
monotony prairie-like across the human conscious-
ness, while Methodism rears its serrated crest like a
longitudinal mountain range, down the continent of
experience, while its foot-hills slope away to the
bank of the River of Life.

The class-meeting and love-feast were the culti-
vators of “ experience.” The Methodist knew that he
or she would be expected to speak in class, hence
sought in communion with God for further progress
of the work within, whereof to testify. No other
machinery yet discovered has proven so effective in
the care of converts, as the old time Methodist class-
meeting. No other interest of the church gives the
pastor so much concern, or costs him so much pain,
as the care of those just born into the Kingdom;
and surely no safer method of providing for this diffi-
cult task has yet appeared than that which our
fathers used so well.

Nor is this, as some have thought, a human inven-
tion, for it rests on a broad scriptural base. The
Word often refers to godly people as “ witnesses for
222 RICHMOND METHODISMN.

God,” and while the language may incidentally refer
to conduct, yet clearly its primary meaning is oral
testimony. Oh, what testimonies we have heard in
the class-room! The cumulative power of such tes-
timonies, sweeping the whole gamut of intellectual
ability, from that of the drayman off the streets of
Washington, to that of Hon. John McLean, justice
of the supreme bench of the nation, is the best lecture
on the Christian evidences we have ever heard. What
prayers we have heard in class and love-feast! I
recall a love-feast at old Bellamy’s Church in Glou-
cester when penitents came forward to seek the
Saviour. The presiding elder called on Brother
Betty, of Richmond, to pray. The grand old class-
leader prayed until his soul was in a flame of holy
rapture. I was afraid to open my eyes for fear I
would see God, for that man prayed as Moses prayed
when he saw God face to face. He prayed until it
was like the second Pentecost. “The place was
shaken where they were assembled together;”’ and
the stove-pipe fell with a great crash, but Brother
Betty did not stop until the shouts of happy converts
told that the answer had come.

The social and revival meetings of early Methodism
possessed no greater influence over the popular mind
than the hearty singing of the spiritual songs of that
day. Nor has Methodism suffered anywhere a greater
loss than in the substitution of the over-cooked and
dessicated productions of so-called musical science,
rendered, alas! too often, by unwashed lips, for the
CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES. 228

spontaneous, simple, heart-stirring worship of an
entire congregation. We recall a scene at the Wesley
Grove Camp-ground. It was a Sunday morning love-
feast; many had spoken of the goodness of God, and
our hearts were tender. A venerable man arose and
tremblingly leaned on his cane as he told of a long
pilgrimage and the sustaining power of grace in the
midst of sore trials and bereavements. Then with
that far-away look which marks the eye of faith he
said: “I am nearing the river; I can see the other
shore; the walls of the city are flashing with light;
the gate is open; faces of loved ones are beaming on
me; they beckon me to cross; I want you, who are
around me here to-day, to be with me there; be sure
to come.” He sank exhausted to his seat. Instantly,
that prince of song, Jeff. Magruder, started the
chorus—
We'll be there, we’ll be there.

A thousand voices leaped to the refrain; and in a
moment the camp was in a holy commotion; while
shouts of praise drowned the voices of the singers.
e + s

There remains for this review, one unique depart-
ment of Methodist revival work; that is, the camp-
meeting. Not one of our modern religious picnics
at a pleasure resort. Not a promenade ground where
the belles and beaux might disport their finery in
the clouds of dust; not a place for social reunions
and neighborhood gossip. No, no! The old-time
224 RICHMOND METHODISM.

camp-meeting was a challenge to the powers of dark-
ness; it was a charge of the Light Brigade on the
entrenchments of the black-bannered hosts of hell.
My first camp-meeting was during the first year of
my ministry. It was held at Salem, on Gloucester
circuit. Three thousand people assembled under the
great brush arbor covering nearly an acre of ground.
It was there, on Tuesday morning, that David S. Dog-
gett, then presiding elder of the District, preached
the greatest sermon of his life. His theme was, “ The
Freedom of the Will;” his text: “Choose you this
day whom ye will serve.” At one point in the dis-
course the mighty rush of emotion overcame the
normal self-poise of the great preacher. He stood
for two minutes quivering, silent, speechless. Then
with a mighty burst of eloquence he swayed the great
assembly as a forest is swayed by a tornado. Fifty-
four persons rushed forward and fell on their knees
with cries and groans for mercy, and nearly one
hundred were converted that day.

Nore.—Brief addresses by the Rev. W. B. Beauchamp and
others were put in type for this volume, but were crowded out
by an unexpected addition to the historical material, which,
under the rule, had the right of way.
 

 

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