preachers in advocating their right to elder's orders, which was finally successful. In 1807 there was a meeting of the local deacons at my house, at which Bishop Asbury was present, and favored the plan. The agitation after this meeting settled down quietly, and my opponents remained quiet.

I was next appointed to the Salt River district, where I remained two years, during which time another difficulty arose. A traveling elder was accused of immorality; and among the charges and specifications were some of improper words. I examined the charges, and for improper words I, as his presiding elder, acted upon them officially, and did not submit them to the committee, for which they charged me at conference with maladministration; but the conference sustained me. We had in general very good times throughout the district; but the field was a large one, including a very extensive territory; consequently, at the end of two years I was willing to have some better situation, and received my appointment to the Cincinnati circuit. Here I had for my helper John Strange. We passed an agreeable year; and at the conference held at Chilicothe, in the fall of 1811, I was appointed to Cincinnati station, it being the first station in the state of Ohio. I organized the station, and many of the rules and regulations that I established are still in use. We had but one church in the city, and it went under the name of the Stone Church. I preached three times every Sunday, and on Wednesday night; and while stationed in that house my voice failed me. The Methodists being too poor to buy a stove to warm the house in winter, and on Sunday morning it being generally crowded, their breath would condense on the walls, and the water would run down and across the floor. The next conference I did not attend, but was appointed supernumerary on the Cincinnati circuit. I was

not able to do much, but to give advice in certain cases. This year I closed my itinerancy, and sold my horse, bridle, saddle-bags, and saddle, and gathered up the fragments, and the fortune that I had made from twentysix years' labor amounted to three hundred dollars. From the 9th of January, 1796, I traveled as a married man, no allowance being made for the wife. Part of the time sixty-four dollars was allowed a traveling preacher, and he must find his own horse and fixins, his own wardrobe and that of his wife, together with her board; and the other part of the time it was eighty dollars, still nothing for wife. I was the first married preacher in the west who traveled after marrying. I met with every discouragement that could be thrown in my way. Preachers and people said, "You had better locate." I shared equally with the single men when they were on the circuit with me, in order to keep peace. I bore all the murmurings and complainings from every quarter, and appeared at conference every year ready for work. One winter I had to use a borrowed blanket instead of a cloak or overcoat. That year my wife was among her relations, and well taken care of. Now a man is no preacher except he has a wife and family, whose allowance is one hundred dollars, and wife the same, and children provided for; house rent, fuel, and table expenses; the bishops" salaries to the full secured, and for presiding elders so much is apportioned among the circuits and stations. The allowance to many of the preachers of the present day varies from eight hundred to fifteen hundred dollars per year, while the poor superannuate must find his own house, pay his rent, furnish his own table, etc., and receive from the conference steward sometimes fourteen and twenty dollars, and sometimes as high as forty dollars; and how can a superannuate keep soul and body together on that dividend? I am superannuate in the

Southern division, and know not how I shall make out to live. My labors and sufferings to cultivate and prepare the way for my brethren in the Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio conferences, are all known to God and the Church, and my testimony is in heaven. None seem to care for my circumstances now. I am at present in my eighty-fifth year, and can not stay much longer in the tabernacle; but, through riches of grace in Christ Jesus, I have for me prepared "a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."

CHAPTER IV.

MICHAEL ELLIS.

IN sketching the life of this great and good man-we say great, because all true greatness must have goodness for its basis, and this he possessed in an eminent degreewe regret that history furnishes us no record of the date and place of his birth, except that he was born in the state of Maryland. He was among the first that embraced religion in that state through the instrumentality of Wesley's missionaries. The field was then white unto harvest, and laborers were much needed to gather that harvest; hence, they were thrust out in the order of God's providence, in a way that the wisdom of the men of the present day would hardly allow to be proper. But God's ways are not our ways, neither are God's thoughts our thoughts. He who with "a worm can thrash the mountains," can make the feeblest instrumentality and agency accomplish the mightiest results. Thus, in the early days of Methodism, men were called to preach the Gospel, and thrust out into the field, that even the Methodist Church at the present day would object to as not possessing the necessary qualifications for such a work. Young Ellis was thus called; and feeling that woe was him if he did not preach the Gospel, he commenced soon after his conversion to call sinners to repentance. In the year 1784 he was admitted on trial as a traveling preacher; and the first appointment which appears on the Minutes was the city of Baltimore. He may have been traveling under the elder some time previous to the

above date, as that was the time of his appointment to Baltimore, but of this we have no information. At the same conference where Bishop Asbury was ordained to the episcopal office, he was ordained a deacon. This was in the year 1785, and the presumption is, that he was admitted in the year 1783.

The next year, which was 1786, he was appointed to Frederick circuit, and the following year to Fairfax, in the state of Virginia, where he was instrumental, under God, of accomplishing much good in the enlargement of the Redeemer's kingdom. In the year 1788, for want of that support for his family which the Church could not or would not give, he was obliged either, according to apostolic instruction, to "deny the faith and become worse than an infidel in not providing for his own," or to leave the ministry and serve tables to keep his family from starvation. One duty can never crowd out another; and his first duty being to feed and clothe his wife and children, he could not have been either called of God to preach and travel to their neglect, nor would God have blessed his ministrations while thus engaged. A great many zealous and efficient ministers of the Gospel have been compelled to close their mission on this account, throwing the responsibility upon the Church, where it properly belongs. If they that preach the Gospel shall live of the Gospel, according to the ordination of heaven, that Church which will muzzle the ox, or, in other words, withhold its support from the minister, will be held accountable in the day of eternity, if not in time, for its gross neglect and dereliction. In the providence of God, however, such Churches are usually visited in time like those of Asia, as Churches like nations are judged in time. Does it not meet the observation of every one, that those individual Churches who supply most liberally the wants of their pastors, and engage most heartily in