now itinerated about four years. He was a man of deep piety, of good insight, and much courage, of a dignified presence and ready discourse.

Whitefield saluted them gladly in America and bade them Godspeed. He had prepared the way for them by awakening a religious interest throughout the colonies. He had made his thirteenth passage of the Atlantic, and the next year after their arrival he died at Newburyport, Mass. He had finished his extraordinary career, and left the field white for the harvest. The Methodist itinerants were now to reap it. Boardman and Pilmoor continued to labor in the country about four years, from Boston to Savannah.

In 1770 "America" is recorded for the first time in Wesley's printed "Minutes of Conference," with four preachers, Boardman, Pilmoor, Williams, and King. In the following year it is recorded with three hundred and sixteen Church members. In the conference of 1771 Wesley again called for volunteers for the new field. "Our brethren in America," he said, "call aloud for help; who will go?" Five responded, and two were sent: Francis Asbury (afterward bishop) and Richard Wright. Of the latter we know but little. He had traveled but one year in the ministry before he came to America ; labored, with more or less success, from New York to Norfolk for three or four years, and then returned

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to England. But Francis Asbury was destined to be the most historical, the representative character of American Methodism. He was now a young man about twenty-six years of age. He had been in the traveling ministry only about five years, and but four years on the catalogue of regular appointments, but had seen hard service on Bedfordshire, Colchester, and Wiltshire circuits. He was studious, somewhat introspective, with a thoughtfulness which was tinged at times with melancholy. His was one of those minds which can find rest only in labor; designed for great work, and therefore endowed with a restless instinct for it. He was an incessant preacher, of singular practical directness; was ever in motion, on foot or on horseback, over his long circuits; a rigorous disciplinarian, disposed to do everything by method; a man of few words, and those always to the point; of quick and accurate insight into character; of a sobriety, not to say severity, of temperament, which might have been repulsive had it not been softened by a profound religious humility, for his soul, ever aspiring to the highest virtue, was ever complaining within itself over its shortcomings. His mind had eminently a military cast. He never lost his self-possession, and could therefore seldom be surprised. He seemed not to know fear, and never yielded to discouragement in a course sanctioned by his faith or con

science. He could plan sagaciously, seldom pausing to consider theories of wisdom or policy, but as seldom failing in practical prudence. The rigor which his disciplinary predilections imposed upon others was so exemplified by himself, that his associates or subordinates, instead of revolting from it, accepted it as a challenge of heroic emulation. Discerning men could not come into his presence without perceiving that his soul was essentially heroic, and that nothing committed to his agency could fail, if it depended upon conscientiousness, prudence, courage, labor, and persistence. "Who," says one who knew him intimately, "who of us could be in his company without feeling impressed with a reverential awe and profound respect? It was almost impossible to approach him without feeling the strong influence of his spirit and presence. There was something in this remarkable fact almost inexplicable and indescribable. Was it owing to the strength and elevation of his spirit, the sublime conceptions of his mind, the dignity and majesty of his soul, or the sacred profession with which he was clothed, as an embassador of God, invested with divine authority? But so it was; it appeared as though the very atmosphere in which he moved gave unusual sensations of diffidence and humble restraint to the boldest confidence of man." Withal, his appearance was in his favor. In his most familiar portrait he has

the war-worn aspect of a military veteran; but in earlier life his frame was robust, his countenance full, fresh, and expressive of generous, if not refined, feelings. He was attentive to his apparel, and always maintained an easy dignity of manners, which commanded the respect, if not the affection, of his associates. The appeals from the American Methodists had reached him in his rural circuits, for he had never left his ministerial work to attend the Annual Conference. Two months before the session of 1771 his mind had been impressed with the thought that America was his destined field of labor. He saw in the new world a befitting sphere for his apostolic aspirations. The great qualities, manifested in his subsequent career were inherent in the man, and Wesley could not fail to perceive them. He not only accepted him for America, but, notwithstanding his youth, appointed him, at the ensuing conference, at the head of the American ministerial itinerancy.

His labors in the New World were, if possible, greater than those of Wesley in the old; he traveled more miles a year and preached as often. On becoming bishop of the Church, he seemed to become ubiquitous throughout the republic. The history of Christianity, since the apostolic age, affords not a more perfect example of ministerial and episcopal devotion than was presented in this

great man's life. He preached almost daily for more than half a century. During most of this time he traveled over the continent, with hardly an intermission, from north to south and east to west, directing the growing hosts of his denomination with the skill and authority of a great captain. He was ordained bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church when thirty-nine years old, at its organization in 1784, when it comprised less than fifteen thousand members and but about eighty preachers; and he fell in 1816, in his seventy-first year, at the head of an army of more than two hundred and eleven thousand members, and more than seven hundred itinerant preachers. It has been estimated that in the forty-five years of his American ministry he preached about sixteen thousand five hundred sermons, or at least one a day, and traveled about two hundred and seventy thousand miles, or six thousand a year; that he presided in no less than two hundred and twenty-four annual conferences, and ordained more than four thousand preachers. He was, in fine, one of those men of anomalous greatness, in estimating whom the historian is compelled to use terms which would be irrelevant, as hyperbole, to most men with which he has to deal. His discrimination of character was marvelous; his administrative talents would have placed him, in civil government or in war, by the