Sixty-one Years Of Itinerant Christian Life In Church And State

DEDICATION. To my dear daughter, VIRGINIA WgOMlflG PEARflE, CbCs Totumc Is affectionately dedicated. THOMAS HALL PREFACE. HpHIS volume Is due to the partiality of my brethren of the Cincinnati Conference, who, by a resolution passed at their session in 1896, requested that it be pieparcd. It was thought by them that a record of my experiences and obser vations, extending through a ministry of over sixty years, would be of interest and value to the Church, and contain suggestions that might lead its readers to a more active and better spiritual life. Iu ac cordance with tins resolution the woik was under taken, and the present book is the result The author has not written these pages in the form of a diary, nor has he given a detailed nar rative of his life. lie has attempted rather to present the more striking events with which he has been connected, and to depict some of the great incidents of our ecclesiastical and civil his tory which came tinder his notice, together with occasional sketches of the prominent actors with who til he has been more or less associated from his younger years ire has endeavored to be a faithful chronicler, and to describe persons and scenes as they were, or, at least, as they appeared 5 6 PREFACE. to him. Most of what is given lias been written from recollection. The events of my earlier life still seem fresh and vivid. If I have lost some what of the buoyant spirit of childhood, I trust that the high hopes then conceived have in a measure been fulfilled through my ministry, and that I have not labored in vain in the Lord. For whatever success I may have had in preaching the Word and in cultivating the field given me by the great Head of the Church, to himbe the glory. T. EL P. O, AUGUST, 1898, PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION. favor which the public has shown to this 1 book, exhausted the first edition within about six. or eight months after it was issued. The second edition, it is believed, will be even more sought than the first. Besides a few minor corrections, it contains an appendix of some fourteen or fifteen pages, making a volume of 506 pages. The topic treated is current in reading circles. Its treatment, it is believed, will well repay those who may purchase the volume. It is hopefully commended to the public. T. H. P. HH SBORO, 0., APRJX, 1899. INTRODUCTION. THE influence of Methodism upon the marvelous growth of what was once called the Great West, upon its educational and its religious life, will never, probably, be accurately measured nor fully acknowl edged. A distinguished jurist, judge of the Supreme Court in one of the Western States a professed Deist is reported to have said, on one occasion But for the Methodist Church and the Methodist min istry, this country would have sunk into barbarism. This may be an extravagant statement but the early Methodist itinerants were, undoubtedly, a remarkable class of men. It is said occasionally, in a half apolo getic tone, that these hardy and adventurous pio neer preachers were men for their times and so indeed they were, and nobly did they fulfill their mission, Some of these sturdy heroes were the vanguard of our early frontiersmen, who, advancing westward from the Atlantic seaboard, over the Alleghanies and across the Mississippi Valley, swept onward over the Rockies to the Pacific Ocean, thus spanning the conti nent with a splendid type of Christian civilization. It is certainlywithin bounds to say that Meth odism has been second to no other human agency in promoting the remarkable growth of the West and it so, the publication of the many biographies of the pioneers of this pioneer Church, which have been is sued in recent years, is amply vindicated for these books are an important part of the history of the country. 7 3 INTRODUCTION...