GENERAL CONFERENCE—ASBURY’S FUNERAL, ETC.
The conference which was held in Philadelphia April 18, 1816, was a
gloomy one. There was no bishop to preside, Asbury being dead, and
M’Kendree sick. During this conference Ezekiel Cooper preached a sermon
on the life and character of Bishop Asbury, that afterward made a book
called “Cooper on Asbury.”
Rev. R. R. Roberts was elected president. He filled the office with ease
and dignity, and we passed harmoniously through the business of the
session. Several delegates from the eastern conferences, who were on
their way to attend the General Conference at Baltimore, were present,
and admired the manner in which Brother Roberts conducted the business of
the conference, and this led to his nomination and election as bishop.
No ordination took place at this conference in consequence of the absence
of the bishop. The delegates elected to the General Conference were R.
R. Roberts, L. M’Combs, S. Sharp, J. Totten, J. Walker, S. Hill, S.
Martindale, A. Smith, H. Boehm, J. Emory, W. Bishop, and J. Sharpley. I
was reappointed presiding elder of Chesapeake District.
The second delegated General Conference met in the Light-street Church,
Baltimore, May 1, 1816. There was a feeling of sadness caused by the
absence of Bishop Asbury. Bishop M’Kendree was present, but very feeble.
After the organization, on the first day an address was presented from
the male members of the Church in Baltimore asking the privilege of
removing the remains of Bishop Asbury from the place where they had been
buried to Baltimore. Their request was granted, and Rev. John W. Bond
was desired to superintend their removal. Five members of the General
Conference were appointed to act in concert with the Baltimore brethren:
Philip Bruce, Nelson Reed, Freeborn Garrettson, Lewis Myers, and George
Pickering.
The conference passed a vote of thanks to George Arnold of Spottsylvania,
at whose house the bishop died, for his attention to our venerable father
during his illness, and requesting permission to have the bishop’s
remains removed from his family burying-ground to Baltimore. Mr. Arnold
granted the request, and on the 9th of May the body arrived, and was
placed at the house of William Hawkins. The fact being announced to the
conference by Stephen G. Roszel, they resolved to attend his funeral the
next morning, and appointed Henry Stead, William Case, Seth Mattison, and
myself to sit up with the corpse during the night. Never shall I forget
that night; thought was busy in reviewing the past; the whole life of
Bishop Asbury, particularly the five years I was with him, passed before
me in review like a panorama. Five times that night, in imagination, I
went with the bishop around his large diocese, over the mountains and
valleys. I thought of his self-denial, his deadness to the world; of his
intense labors, his enlarged benevolence, his sympathy for the suffering,
of the hundreds of sermons I had heard him preach, the prayers I had
heard him offer; the many times I had slept with him; how often I had
carried him in my arms. Where are the great and good men that watched
with me that night? Long ago they have met the bishop “where they can die
no more, but are equal to the angels of God.”
At ten o’clock next morning the funeral services took place. There was an
immense gathering at Light-street, where the bishop’s remains had been
placed. They were removed in solemn procession to the Eutaw Church. At
the head of this procession were Bishop M’Kendree and William Black of
Nova Scotia. Bishop Asbury having no relatives in this country, John W.
Bond and myself, his surviving traveling companions, were selected to
follow his remains as chief mourners. Indeed we both felt to exclaim,
“My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof.”
The members of the conference followed, with several ministers of other
denominations and a vast throng of citizens.
Bishop M’Kendree pronounced a funeral oration full of melting pathos,
and the remains of the deceased, embalmed by the tears of multitudes,
were deposited in a vault under the recess of the pulpit of the
Eutaw-street Church. Upon beautiful marble was inscribed an appropriate
epitaph, to tell the stranger where the dust of the noble Asbury sleeps.
On the Sunday following the obsequies of Bishop Asbury, funeral sermons
were preached in all our churches in Baltimore. I was appointed to preach
in the late Father Otterbein’s church. My text was Rev. xiv, 13. I gave
a sketch of the bishop’s life, character, labors, and success, and his
peaceful end; of the relation that subsisted between their late venerated
pastor, William Otterbein, Bishop Asbury, and Martin Boehm, and how they
were reunited in the bright world above.
Bishop Asbury, at the request of Bishop M’Kendree and the Genesee
Conference, wrote a valedictory to be read after he was gone. This
he left among his papers. That important document was written at my
mother’s, on my father’s old desk, the first week in August, 1813. I was
present when he wrote it, and he talked with me on various points.
On the second day of May this valedictory address was read to the General
Conference after some introductory remarks by Bishop M’Kendree. It was
the last message of the lamented Asbury, the final counsel of a father
to his children, and it was listened to with breathless attention. It
was replete with wise sayings and appropriate suggestions. It advocated
a divine call to the ministry and opposed men-made ministers; cautioned
against the tendency to locality, and dwelt upon the importance of the
itinerancy; directed them to guard against two orders of ministers, one
for the country the other for cities. Among other counsels was this,
worthy to be written in letters of gold, “Preserve a noble independence
on all occasions; be the willing servants of slaves, but slaves to none.”
Two months after I left Mr. Asbury as his traveling companion he made his
will in Winchester, New Hampshire, as the following record in his journal
will show: “June 6, 1813. Knowing the uncertainty of the tenure of life
I have made my will, appointing Bishop M’Kendree, Daniel Hitt, and Henry
Boehm my executors. If I do not in the mean time spend it, I shall leave
when I die an estate of two thousand dollars, I believe. I give it all to
the Book Room. This money, and somewhat more, I have inherited from dear
departed Methodist friends in the state of Maryland, who died childless;
besides some legacies I have never taken. Let all return and continue to
aid the cause of piety.”
The bishop’s will was recorded in Baltimore; and during the General
Conference in 1816, Bishop M’Kendree, Daniel Hitt, and I went to the
proper authorities and were qualified to act as executors.
In regard to the money, a lady in Baltimore had given him near two
thousand dollars, and I advised him to put it out upon interest. He did
so, or he would have got rid of it. He was very uneasy when he had money
until it was gone. It seemed to burn in his pocket until he was relieved.
He left a Bible to every child that had been named after him. He left
eighty dollars a year to Mrs. Elizabeth Dickins, widow of our first book
agent. Her name was Yancey, and she was from North Carolina. She was a
charming woman, worthy to have been the wife of that great and good man,
John Dickins. She continued to receive this annuity till her death in
1835.
Most of the business of distributing the Bibles fell on me, and I gave
more than four hundred to children that had been named Francis Asbury.
There were probably a thousand children named after him at the time, but
many of the parents would know nothing of the will, for we had then no
Methodist papers to give the information. His will gave a Bible to all
the children who had been named after him up to his death.[43] I made a
final settlement with Rev. John Emory when he was book agent. Daniel Hitt
died in 1825, Bishop M’Kendree in 1835. I have survived Daniel Hitt forty
years, Bishop M’Kendree thirty years, and Bishop Asbury forty-nine years.
There was a vast amount of business done at the General Conference of
1816, and it was more methodical than formerly. John Emory, for the
first time, was a member of the General Conference, and he distinguished
himself at once by his clear head and capacity for business.
I was placed on two important committees, “Temporal Economy” and
“Slavery.” The other members of that on slavery were William Phœbus,
Charles Virgin, Abner Chase, Charles Holliday, Samuel Sellers, Daniel
Asbury, C. H. Hines, and Beverly Waugh. We were directed “to examine into
the subject of slavery and report.” On this question, which has vexed
ecclesiastical and national councils from the beginning, the committee
brought in a report, of which the following is a part: “After mature
deliberation, they are of the opinion that, under the present existing
circumstances in relation to slavery little can be done to abolish a
practice so contrary to the principles of moral justice. They are sorry
to say that the evil appears to be past remedy, and they are led to
deplore the destructive consequences which have already accrued and are
yet likely to result therefrom.” They recommended the insertion of the
following clause in the Discipline: “Therefore no slaveholder shall be
eligible to any official station in our Church hereafter where the laws
of the state in which he lives will admit of emancipation, and permit
the liberated slave to enjoy freedom.” The report was adopted by the
conference.
On Tuesday, the 14th, the conferences elected two bishops, Enoch George
and Robert R. Roberts, the former having fifty-seven and the latter
fifty-five votes out of one hundred and six that were cast.
On Friday they were ordained, after Bishop M’Kendree had preached an
admirable sermon on “The great commission,” from Mark xvi, 15, 16. In the
ordination he was assisted by Philip Bruce of Virginia, Dr. Phœbus of New
York, and Nelson Reed of Baltimore, they being the three oldest elders
present.
I was present at the ordination of Bishops Whatcoat, Coke, and Asbury,
in 1800; at the ordination of M’Kendree in 1808, and that of George and
Roberts in 1816. I had the honor of voting for the last three, and never
had cause to regret it. These ordinations were all held in the same
church, namely, Light-street, Baltimore. After the adjournment of the
conference I returned to my district, and was diligent in cultivating
Immanuel’s land.