Ohio History Journal

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The following is an abstract of the discourse delivered to

the Methodists of Gallipolis by the Rev. David H. Moore, D. D.,

of Cincinnati, Editor of the Western Christian Advocate.

 

THEME -PHILOSOPHY OF METHODIST SUCCESS; WITH SPECIAL,

REFERENCE TO THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY.

Thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God hath led

thee.-Deut. viii. 2.

It is worthy of note that the successful peopling of North

America was providentially delayed until the Pilgrim Fathers

were ready to plant Christianity in the colonies settling the new

world. But the Pilgrim Fathers were only one remove from

bitter persecutions, and schooled in enforced obedience naturally

became themselves dogmatic and arbitrary. A freer polity and a

more genial faith were needed for the expanding populations of

the colonies; one whose reactions upon the various forms

of Puritanism should be liberalizing and quickening. This new

religious factor--coeval with the political birth of the United

States and ordained to far reaching influence upon its develop-

ment and destiny--was that form of belief and life known as

Methodism. It was unique in its absolute separation from the

arm of flesh, its constant dependence upon the Holy Spirit, and

its single aim of spreading Scriptural holiness throughout the

lands. It was little thoughtful of numbers, no stickler for form;

it feared God, honored the King, and believed in the equal par-

ticipation of all men in the benefits of the atonement through

Christ. It was conceived in Epworth rectory, born in Oxford

University, and reached the strength and beauty of maturity in

free America.

We who sometimes despair of the cause of God amid the

Sabbath-breaking, drunkenness, sensuality, worldliness and in-

fidelity of the day, need only look at the origin of Methodism

to be assured that our fears are idle. The reign of George II

seems to have had swept down into it from the corrupt court of

Charles the accumulated frivolity, coarseness, libertinism, and

unbelief of all the past. True, some lights were unquenched,

but they were rush-lights disputing with midnight gloom. Over-

whelming wickedness rolled over the land.

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Philosophy of Methodist Success.       197

 

Says Tyerman: "Never has a century risen on Christian

England so void of soul and faith as that which opened with

Queen Anne, and which reached its misty noon beneath the

second George-a dewless night, succeeded by a sunless dawn.

There was no freshness in the past and no promise in the future.

The Puritans were buried and the Methodists were not born.

The philosopher of the age was Bolingbroke; the moralist was

Addison; the minstrel was Pope; and the preacher was Atter-

bury. The world had the idle, discontented look of the morn-

ing after some mad holiday, and, like rocket-sticks and the

singed paper from last night's squibs, the spent jokes of Charles

and Rochester lay all about, and people yawned to look at them.

The reign of buffoonery was past, but the reign of faith and

earnestness had not commenced."

In 1756, every sixth house in London was a licensed grog-

shop; and sign-boards advertised to make a man drunk and

furnish him straw to lie on to sleep off his drunken stupor -- for

a penny. High and low were corrupt. Dissenters lamented the

worldliness of their ministers, and of the candidates for orders

in the established church, Bishop Burnet--1713 said: "The

much greater part are ignorant to a degree not to be apprehended

by those who are not obliged to know it."

Toplady declares that "a converted minister was as great a

wonder as a comet." Even in the University, such was the

prevalence of aggressive infidelity that the Vice Chancellor was

constrained to issue an edict pointing out this deplorable condi-

tion, and directing the tutors to use diligence in counteracting it.

But the Dean of Christ College, where Wesley was preparing for

his mission, was so maddened by infidelity that-he forbade the

posting of the edict in his hall.

Existing forces were inadequate. The crisis was extreme.

It was indeed man's extremity become God's opportunity; and

He led Charles and John Wesley, Robert Kirkham and Wm.

Morgan, to form the "Holy Club" and lay the foundation of

world-wide Methodism.

The persecution they suffered, the self-denial they prac-

ticed, the emergencies they met, the experiences they gained,

were providential preparations for the perils in the wilderness of

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the New World. Mind you, Wesley and his co-laborers were

not adventurers, seeking cheap notoriety in this enterprise be-

cause excluded by their inferior genius from the more attractive

fields open to talent and learning. Lord Macaulay thus estimates

Wesley's ability: " He was a man whose eloquence and logical

acuteness might have rendered him eminent in literature; whose

genius for government was not inferior to that of Richelieu; and

who devoted all his powers in defiance of obloquy and derision,

to what he sincerely considered the highest good of his species."

Yet their name was cast out as evil. All manner of con-

tempt was heaped upon them. Fogg's Journal, one of the most

literary and respectable papers, held them up to scorn. "Among

their own party," says the writer, "they pass for religious per-

sons and men of extraordinary parts; but they have the misfor-

tune to be taken by all who have ever been in their company for

madmen and fools." They were forbidden the churches and

prosecuted for preaching in the open air. They were dragged

before magistrates, hooted by mobs, pelted with filth and bruised

with stones, tumbled into lime-pits and then into water. But in

the midst of this burning furnace of trial, the Spirit taught

Wesley to sing:

 

" Ye mountains and vales, in praises abound;

Ye hills and ye dales, continue the sound;

Break forth into singing, ye trees of the wood,

For Jesus is bringing lost sinners to God!"

 

Every moment was precious, for some perishing soul might

be saved. So he calculated for every minute. Lying awake in

the middle of the night, he set his alarm for seven, but his wake-

fulness continued; then for six, with the same result; then for

five, and no change; then for four, and there was no more wake-

fulness; and thereafter he arose at that early hour.

So of money. God needed it for His poor and for His work.

And so Wesley practiced and preached that it was the duty of

each one to give away every year all he had after providing for

his own necessities.  Thus when he received £30 a year, he

lived on £28 and gave away 40 shillings; when he received £60,

he lived on £28 and gave away £32; £90, still £28 sufficient for

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Philosophy of Methodist Success.       199

 

his living, and he gave away £62; when he received £120, he

still lived on £28 and gave away all the rest.

Consider the character of his preaching. Like the great

French evangelist he knew but three things - a ruined world, a

mighty Savior, brought together by an earnest ministry. Every

sermon brings out-man's damning guilt, his almighty Savior,

and a witnessed salvation.

And with this thrilling Gospel he went where sinners most

abounded. A prelate of the Established Church sneeringly

called the first Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster

"Archbishop of the slums." "Exactly," was the noble reply,

"that is just what I am. I am an archbishop of the slums;

that is my business; that is what I desire to be. My ministry is

among the hordes and the garrets and the slums; yours, I admit,

is something very different."

Such was Wesley's spirit. This high-bred gentleman, this

profound scholar, this man "whose eloquence and logical acute-

ness might have rendered him eminent in literature; whose

genius for government was not inferior to that of Richelieu;"

whose earlier devotion to the establishment was such that he

would have thought the saving of a soul "a sin almost if it had

not been done in a church"-turned from all his past and from

all his churchly future, with quenchless zeal for souls, counting

all things loss that stood between him and their salvation through

his instrumentality.

"His frame of adamant and soul of fire" were taxed to the

utmost. Says a biographer: "He exposed himself with the

utmost indifference to every change of season and inclemency of

weather; snow and hail, storm and tempest, had no effect on his

iron body. He frequently lay down on the ground and slept all

night with his hair frozen to the earth; he would swim over

rivers with his clothes on and travel till they were dry, and all

this without any apparent injury to his health."

Even a Catholic historian is constrained to say of him and

his co-laborers: "They taught moral doctrines which we all

accept in common, but they did not teach them after the old and

barren way of the plodding, mechanical instructor. They thun-

dered them into the opening ears of thousands who had never

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been roused to moral sentiment before. They inspired the souls

of poor and common-place creatures with all the zealot's fire and

all the martyr's endurance. They brought tears to penitent eyes

which had never been moistened before by any but the selfish

sense of personal pain or grief. They pierced through the dull,

vulgar, contaminated hideousness of low and vicious life, and

sent streaming in upon it the light of a higher world and a

better law."

Wesley had but one aim-to save men-and counted every

man called of God to do what he could to this end. Hence,

pressed by the teeming work and sadly needing workmen, he

called into service lay preachers, applying only the simple test

of "gifts, grace and usefulness." Thus he advanced with every

arm of the gospel service against the foe; and his line of battle

resting its right on the schools and its left on "the slums," with

Christ in the center, leaped forward unto victory.

Beloved, little need were there to rehearse things you know

so well, if history were all we sought. It is not history, but the

philosophy of history we seek-the philosophy of our wonder-

ful Methodist history. I seek to show you in these things why

Methodism has triumphed so gloriously. Sprung from Wesley's

loins it could not be otherwise. He projected himself upon

America. His ministers here caught his courage, zeal, enerey,

self-denial. He multiplied himself by every preacher who bore

the double standard of Christ and Methodism over the moun-

tains, through the savannahs and into the forests of North

America.

So, I repeat, Wesley was God's providence for America.

For consider -here were wildernesses, infested by savages, and

thinly settled by desperate men; here was a new world, with

men's thoughts absorbed in its conquest; here were colonies,

drunk with the first long draught of civil liberty, the plains yet

soaking with the blood of the Revolution. Here were no funds

to be drawn upon for church extension or domestic missions; no

meeting houses; no salaries; nothing in sight but trials, losses,

dangers, suffering, death. Only men of the most heroic mould

could be equal to tasks like these. Such men were the product

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Philosophy of Methodist Success.         201

 

of the great Wesleyan movement, this the second Reformation

that sprang from Luther's first. Time will not allow us many

examples to show that the Wesley spirit is the secret of our suc-

cess. One suffices: Asbury was the American Wesley, and his

signature attested the appointment of the noble men who first

broke the solitude of the Northwestern Territory with the songs

and words of life.

Asbury ! name heroic and inspiring,

 

"He would not flatter Neptune for his trident,

Or Jove for his power to thunder."

Facing maddened mobs, traveling trackless forests, braving

hostile savages, enduring want and weariness and poverty ex-

treme, he reflected at once the strength and gentleness of Christ.

His salary was $30 a year! Yet he murmured not. "What

matters it where I go or what comes upon me if God is with

me," he writes in his Journal, "or where I live or where I die,

if holy and ready."

Again he writes: "My present mode of conduct is as fol-

lows: to read about one hundred pages a day; usually to pray

in public five times a day; to preach in the open air every other

day, and to lecture in prayer meeting every evening. And if it

were in my power, I would do a thousand times as much for

such a gracious and blessed Master. But in the midst of all my

little employments, I feel myself as nothing and Christ to me is

all in all."

This was our FRANCIS ASBURY, who spent forty-five years

in the American ministry, traveled 270,000 miles-6,00 a year;

preached 16,500 sermons, at least one a day; presided at not

less than 224 annual conferences and ordained more than 4,000

preachers.

Bascom, and Finley, and Cartwright, and Young, and Mor-

ris, followed by Trimble, and Moody, and Ferree, and Dillon,

and Brown, and they by those now in our midst; these consti-

tute our unbroken apostolic succession. Gallipolis traces its

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descent from pastor Baker back through this magnificent ances-

try to Asbury and Wesley.*

So does every other church in Methodism. And only the

reflection which these centennial occasions promote is needed to

make us give thanks that the lines have fallen to us in such

pleasant places and that ours is so goodly a heritage.

You ask me to glance at the development of our church in

the Northwest Territory, and a glance is all my time will admit.

More than fifty volumes, chiefly biographical, have been

written upon it. The same adventurous spirit that led our

fathers into Kentucky and into the Ohio wilderness, led them

also into Indiana and Illinois, into Michigan and Wisconsin; and

substantially the same hardships and dangers were encountered

and the same prejudices met and overcome. Each conference

has its heroes; and no legacy is so precious as the memory of its

pioneers. Such hero worship is inspiring and ennobling.

Says Carlyle: "We cannot look, however imperfectly, upon

a great man without gaining something by him. He is the living

light-fountain, which it is good and pleasant to be near; the light

which enlightens, which has enlighted, the darkness of the

world; and this not as a kindled lamp only, but rather as a

natural luminary shining by the gift of Heaven, a flowing light-

fountain, as I say, of native original insight, of manhood and

heroic nobleness, in whose radiance all souls feel that it is well

with them."

An unpublished Mss. by Prof. S. W. Williams, book editor

of the Western Methodist Book Concern, and probably unsur-

passed in Methodist antiquities, gives valuable facts concerning

"the introduction of Methodism into Southwestern Ohio."

[Copious extracts were read, which are necessarily omitted here.]

Up to the organization of the Northwestern Territory in 1787,

the only white residents on this side of the Ohio were a few

transient traders, perhaps a half-dozen Moravian missionaries,

and a score or two of straggling squatters.

When this was opened to settlement the emigrants began to

*The history of Gallipolis M. E. Church, prepared by Rev. P. A.

Baker, is appended, as an essential part of this Centennial Record.-

D. H. M.

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Philosophy of Methodist Success.       203

 

push in, braving the hostility of the cruel and treacherous red

men. In 1788-89 they settled at Marietta, at the mouth of the

Little Miami, and where Cincinnati now stands, and when

Wayne's victorious campaign in 1794 brought peace the settlers

crowded into the interior and founded Hamilton, Franklin, Day-

ton and Chillicothe. Before 1800 there was a chain of settle-

ments in Southern Ohio up the Miami valleys as far north as

Dayton and Xenia and up the Scioto to Franklinton.

As nearly as I can determine, the first Methodist preacher

who visited this section of Ohio was Wm. Burke, a remarkable

man of the Asbury-Wesley stamp. He was appointed by Bishop

Asbury, October 2, 1803, to cross the Ohio and form a new dis-

trict in the wilderness. He says; "I entered upon my work

about the last of October, 1803. * * The Miami circuit in-

cluded all the settlements between the Miamis and as far north,

including the settlements of Mad river, as high up as the neigh-

borhood where Urbana now stands, and east of the Little Miami

as high up as the settlements on Bullskin, and all the settlements

on the East Fork of the Little Miami and a few settlements in

Campbell county, Ky." This was a six weeks' circuit. "The

most easterly appointment was at Brother Boggs's, on the Little

Miami, a few miles from the Yellow Springs. From that point

we generally started at daylight for the settlements on the Scioto,

having between 40 and 50 miles, without a house, to the first

inhabitants at old Chillicothe.

"Scioto circuit included all that tract of country inhabited

on Paint creek out to New Market, Brush creek, Eagle creek,

and Ohio Brush creek, and up the Ohio to the mouth of the

Scioto, and then up the Scioto to the Pickaway Plains, including

Chillicothe and the settlements on White's creek, a four weeks'

circuit.

"From thence one day's ride to the settlements in the Hock-

ing Valley, which was called Hocking circuit, which laid princi-

pally on that river and its tributaries, and a few settlements on

Walnut creek. From Lancaster we generally took two days and

a half to reach the bounds of West Wheeling circuit, near where

St. Clairsville is now located. This was a four weeks' circuit,

including the settlements on the Ohio river and extending back

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to the frontier settlements on the West Wheeling and Short

creeks, etc.

"From this point we returned by the same route to New

Lancaster, and then down the Hocking to Sunday creek and

Monday creek, and then over to Marietta circuit.

"This circuit was up and down the Ohio from Marietta, as

low down as the settlements were formed, and up the Muskingum

as far as Clover Bottom and Wolf Creek, and so down to the

neighborhood of Marietta, and over to Virginia on the waters of

Little Kanawha. This was called the Muskingum and Little

Kanawha circuits. It was but a three weeks' circuit and had

one preacher.

"From the neighborhood of Marietta we started down the

Ohio, by way of Graham's Station, to the mouth of the Great

Kanawha and down to Green Bottom--Brother Spurdock's -

which was the first appointment on Guyandotte circuit.

" This circuit contained all the territory south and west of

the Great Kanawha, and down to the mouth of Big Sandy and

the settlements back from the Ohio river. This field required

about eleven weeks and many privations. The Methodists were,

in those days, like angels' visits, few and far between, and we

were half our time obliged to put up at taverns and places of

entertainment, subject to the disorder and abuse of the un-

principled and half-civilized inmates, suffering with hunger and

cold, and sleeping in open cabins on the floor sometimes without

bed or covering, and but little prospect of any support from the

people among whom we labored, and none from any other

source; for there was no provision in those days for mission-

aries. But, notwithstanding all the privations and sufferings

that we endured, we had the consolation that our labor was not

in vain in the Lord. We were gratified in having souls for our

hire, and rejoiced to see the wilderness blossom as the rose.

New societies sprang up, circuits were enlarged, immigration in-

creased, the forest was subdued, and comforts multiplied."

-Finley's Sketches of Western Methodism.

In 1798, John Kobler was the only Methodist preacher in

the Northwest Territory and the total membership numbered

ninety-nine. Now there are in

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Philosophy of Methodist Success.         205

 

Con-                                                                           S. S.                             Church

ferences Preachers Members    Scholars                 Property.

Ohio  .............             5             1,063       231,492         214,889           $8,865,481

Indiana..........               4                             659                148,904           124,725 4,014,318

Illinois ...........             4                             991                146,344           143,868 8,010,891

Michigan.........            2             670          79,553           94,418             3,756,245

Wisconsin ........ 2        337         32,599     28,849           1,794,829

N. W. Territory... 17   3,120      638,892   606,749         $26,441,764

In 1790, John Dickins, on $600 borrowed capital, was be-

ginning the Methodist Book Concern, the secret of our marvel-

ous doctrinal unity; a concern that in its New York and Cincin-

nati branches represents a net capital above all liabilities of $2,-

957,331.47; has published 3000 various books and 1300 different

tracts and Sunday-school requisites; and has a yearly circulation

of 3,133,666 periodicals. The Cincinnati house, the Western

Methodist Book Concern, beginning in 1820, in a room 15x²⁰,

corner Fifth and Elm, has now a net capital of $1,020,515.52,

spacious buildings in Cincinnati, Chicago, and St. Louis, with

every appliance for a great publishing house. In the Northwest

Territory it publishes four great newspapers, the Western Chris-

tian Advocate, the Christian Apologist, the Northwestern Chris-

tian Advocate, and the Central Christian Advocate. "From the

three centers, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis (the two last as

depositories), trains loaded with solid Methodist literature are

sent forth every week into every part of the West and North-

west."

The Ohio Wesleyan University, the DePauw University,

the Northwestern University, the Garrett Biblical Institute, and

a score of other institutions in the same boundaries illustrate

Methodism's devotion to higher learning.

What it is in the Northwest Territory it is throughout the

United States and Canada.

And no marvel; for its inception in England and its expan-

sion in newest America has proven its adaptation alike to the

ripest and to the crudest civilization; that is to say, to all con-

ditions and to all times. Other denominations have caught its

spirit and adopted its methods. Hoary creeds have been modi-

fied so as to conform more nearly to its standards; and the pul-

pits of Christendom have kindled with its evangelical fervor.

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But still its mission is to the regions beyond; its position in the

advancing columns is on the front line. Its business is to find

and drive the enemy, leaving to the slower-moving forces the

work of fortifying and garrisoning the conquered provinces.

Its muster roll begins with those of Caesar's household and ends

not until it includes the faithful Onesimus. Quenchless zeal for

souls is and must forever be its characteristic; a simple and full

salvation its message; and its reward not human applause, but

the well-done of its Lord.

 

 

 

METHODISM IN GALLIPOLIS.

The Rev. Henry Baker preached the first Methodist sermon

in Gallipolis sometime during the year 1817, at the residence of

Ahaz S. Morehouse, a log house located at the mouth of Mill

creek. The Methodist itinerant was not then received with as

cordial a welcome as others have been since. "The rowdies

were so troublesome," the minister stated, "that Mr. More-

house could not have services there any longer, and unless some-

one else would open a house he would not come again." Calvin

Shepard, who may justly be entitled the "father of Gallipolis

Methodism," was present, though not then a member, and

cheerfully offered his house as a place of worship, and from that

time they continued to hold regular services. Shortly afterward,

Brother Shepard, while on a visit to some friends near Cincin-

nati, sought and found the Savior. A class was then formed

consisting of the following persons: Calvin Shepard, Mahala

Shepard, his wife, John Knapp and wife, Christopher Randall

and wife, Stephen Sisson, Mary Varian and her two daughters,

Abigail and Matilda. The society was soon strengthened by the

addition of James Hanson, Sarah Dranillard and David Smithers,

and many others. In 1820, under the labors of John P. and

William Kent, there was a very successful revival in which

about thirty more were added to the society. About this time,

says the Rev. T. J. N. Simmons, in Calvin Shepard's obituary,

written October 10th, 1856, "They met with much opposition,

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