April 30, 1815 — to Alexander M’caine
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
ASB_VOL3.PDF, PDF page 637
M’Caine had been retired since 1806, having gone into teaching. Colhouer in Sketches of the Founders of the Methodist Protestant Church gives the background of Asbury’s request for “The Focus.”
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
April 30, 1815
[TO ALEXANDER M’CAINE]1
Dear M’Caine:
This following I write is highly momentous, “The Focus”2 upon the great book. Have you begun? Keep your book always by you. Begin book after book; general history and contents: mind, mind, mind. I stir up your pure mind; make the best of every moment. A small introduction, of a few pages, will tell what stations the author hath filled. It hath been upon my mind for years; but who I should fix upon, it is Alexander M’Caine. I must as your Bishop, father and brother, bind it upon you. As formerly and as ever, thine,
FRANCIS ASBURY
T.H. Colhouer,
Sketches of the Founders of the Methodist Protestant Church, 95
Notes (2)
- M’Caine retired to become principal of a boys’ school. He later with Nicholas Snethen helped to organize the Methodist Protestant Church. ↩
- Says M’Caine: “In order that all may understand the import of the following request, it may be proper to inform them that for several years before Mr. Asbury’s death he had frequent conversations with me about undertaking the completion of a work to be extracted from the writings of the most pious and practical commentators of the Holy scriptures. This work he frequently urged me to undertake; and in this peculiarly sententious and emphatic manner of expressing himself, he used to call it a ‘focus.’” (Colhouer, pp. 94-95.) Asbury called it “The Focus.” ↩