Page images
PDF
EPUB
[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed]

OF

WESTERN METHODISM:

Biographical, Historical, and Miscellaneous.

ILLUSTRATIVE OF PIONEER LIFE.

BY

REV. JAMES B. FINLEY.

EDITED BY

W. P. STRICKLAND, D. D.

Cincinnati:

PRINTED AT THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN,
FOR THE AUTHOR.

R. P. THOMPSON, PRINTER.

1855.

72

[merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854,

BY JAMES B. FINLEY,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the District of Ohio.

PREFACE.

OUR book explains itself, so far as the object we had in view in getting it up is concerned. To supply a desideratum in the history of western Methodism, at least, so far as taking the incipient steps in that work is concerned, has prompted our endeavors. We have been at a great deal of labor in furnishing our readers with memorials of the past, connected with the lives of our early itinerant preachers, and collateral incidents in the history of the west, and we hope our labor has not been in vain.

Our readers will here find, as they turn over these pages, much, we trust, that is interesting and valuable in reference to olden time; and while they shall trace the life and labors of the pioneer Methodist preachers, in planting the standard of the cross in these western wilds before many of them were born, we hope they may be induced to engage with like zeal and devotion, to sustain the interests of the Church, and hand down to posterity, unimpaired and unadulterated, what our fathers have so nobly contended for in the well-fought field of itinerant life.

The noble examples furnished in these sketches, of untiring labor and self-sacrificing devotion of those who cheerfully gave up all for Christ and the advancement of his cause, should stir up every impulse of our nature to emulate their virtues and strive to imitate their truly-heroic deeds. We

would that our materials had been more ample for the work we had undertaken, that the sketches we have given of the pioneers might have been more satisfactory. Much had already perished, and the waves of oblivion were rapidly washing out the few traces that remained; but we have gathered up what we could, and have presented them in a form, not only sufficiently reliable for all purposes of reference for the future historian, but, we flatter ourselves, sufficiently attractive to render the book one of interest to all.

Should our life be spared, we intend to prosecute this work still further; and as the materials will prove more abundant as we advance to the preachers of the present day, we hope to give increasing interest to our memorials of western Methodism. We have already promises from brethren in various conferences, spread over what was, in the days of our fathers, the Western conference, to warrant the expectation that a full and reliable history of our Church, and the many interesting incidents connected with its rise and progress in the great valley of the west, can be gathered up, that will prove a source of instruction and deep, powerful interest in rousing to higher activity, in promoting the advancement of the Redeemer's king dom. J. B. FINLEY.

Cincinnati, May 1, 1854.

« PreviousContinue »