November 7, 1806 — to Thornton Fleming
CHARLESTON, S.C.
ASB_VOL3.PDF, PDF page 448
Again Asbury is concerned over the camp meetings and is reporting them to Thornton Fleming. He is still sending around the news of the death of Whatcoat. It evidently took months to get news to the preachers. He reports especially on New York and the Western Conference.
CHARLESTON, S.C.
November 7, 1806
[TO THORNTON FLEMING]1
My dear Son:
Great grace and peace be multiplied to thee and thine. The year 18062 has produced great changes in the natural and political world—but in America it is in the spiritual world! Stith Mead,3 from the Richmond District, from March to August, 400 converted and a number sanctified. Shands4 built houses or huts for camp meetings, and lived nearly 100 days and nights in the woods till November. Brother Chandler,5 150 days and nights in the woods, from May 3 to November, 1806. From May to August 29, converted 5368, sanctified, 2805, in the Delaware District. Somerset camp meeting, converted, 1165, sanctified, 606. Dover campmeeting, converted, 123; sanctified, 919.
Oh, my brother, when all our quarterly meetings become campmeetings,6 and 1000 souls should be converted, our American millennium will begin. And when the people in our towns and country assemble by thousands, and are converted by hundreds, night after night, what times! Lord, increase our faith. Nothing is too hard for him who made and redeemed a world. I was gladdened in the Western Conference increase, 1400; increase of preachers, 12. Our missionaries healthy and successful in the new purchase,7 When those new lands, discovered by Col. Lewis,8 shall be peopled, we shall send out to the Pacific Ocean. The universal harmony of the connexion foretells a period at hand for the organization of the Superintendence, so as not to rest it with such weight upon shoulders burdened with the weight of threescore years, and deeply read in cares. There is a blessed work breaking out in the city and State of New York, which, we hope, will not only spread through the Lake country, but for God and his cause. The time may come when I must try the Redstone9 settlement once more. Our Western Conference is at Chillicothe, September 14, 1807. I hope, if there is anything special on the District, you will write a complete narrative of the work to put into my hands at Baltimore Conference, should we live.
Dear Father Whatcoat, after thirteen weeks illness,—gravel, stone, and dysentery combined—died, a martyr to pain, in all his patience and resignation to the will of God. May we, like him, if we live long, live well, and die like him.
As ever thine,
FRANCIS ASBURY
The Pittsburgh Conference Journal, March 8, 1834.
Transcribed by W.G. Smeltzer
Notes (9)
- Presiding elder on the Monongahela District. (See other letter to Fleming, July 28, 1805.) ↩
- The Methodist gain in 1806 was 10,625 (9 per cent.). (Minutes.) ↩
- Presiding elder, Richmond District, Virginia. ↩
- It seems that the reference is to W. Shands on the Bedford Circuit of Stith Mead’s Richmond District. ↩
- Chandler was presiding elder on the Delaware District. ↩
- This is a reference to the rapidly growing Methodist practice in the first decade of the nineteenth century of making the summer quarterly meetings of the circuits camp meetings, at which great spiritual victories were won. This shows that Asbury urged this procedure upon the presiding elders. (W.G. Smeltzer.) ↩
- This refers to the Methodist invasion of the Louisiana Purchase. Asbury sent E.W. Bowman into Louisiana in 1805. (Matthew Simpson, Cyclopedia of Methodism, 547.) (W.G. Smeltzer.) ↩
- Refers to the Lewis and Clark expedition to the Pacific. It shows Asbury’s far-ranging vision of fields for evangelistic conquest. (See notes on Meriweather Lewis, September 7, 1803, in the Journal.) ↩
- Asbury had omitted his western trip of 1806. That year he had made an extensive tour in New England. In order to reach the seat of the Western Conference, held at Ebenezer, Nolichucky, Tennessee, in the Holston country on September 15, 1806, he omitted his annual swing through western Pennsylvania and Ohio, and reached the seat of the conference by going up the Shenandoah Valley. (Journal, August 6- September 15, 1806. Minutes, 1806.) (W.G. Smeltzer.) ↩