enrolled its first converts and formed its first societies in this western country. Very little money was then in circulation, and but small sums could be collected for the support of the ministry. For this reason the prejudices of the Church against married preachers were exceedingly great. The laity looked upon the wife of an itinerant as an actual incumbrance to him and a burden to them. Nor is it much to be wondered at, that, when the total allowance for a preacher was scarcely a hundred dollars, and a deficiency amounting to more than one half was no unusual thing, the additional expense of a preacher's wife was a matter of complaint. If, in the face of all these discouragements, a preacher followed the leadings of Providence and the demands of nature, and married a wife, the people threw many obstacles in his way for a successful ministration. They said, You ought to locate; we cannot support you; and as a man's first social duty is to provide for his own, many preachers were compelled to relinquish the ministry for secular employments. Hence so many names were annually reported at Conference in answer to the question, "Who are under a location through family concerns?" But the scarcity of money, and the consequent penuriousness of the pioneer Methodists, did not detract from their piety. They were strict observers of the Sabbath, and refrained with diligence from many customs which have since crept into vogue. Shaving, brushing clothes, polishing boots and shoes, and laying out the garments to be worn the next day, were all attended to on Saturday evening. Very little cooking was done: in many families none further than the making of coffee for breakfast, and of tea, where milk was not used instead, for supper. No meal was eaten without the asking of a blessing or the returning of thanks. If the head of the household was absent, his wife took his place. The family always stood on their feet surrounding the table until this was done. Instead of a grace offered at the commencement of a meal a stanza was occasionally sung, and thanks given at the conclusion. Bishop Asbury thus used this verse: Be present at our table, Lord; These creatures bless, and grant that we If any other minister was present the Bishop would call upon him to return thanks when all had finished eating. Family devotions were attended to night and morning. The entire household, including servants, were expected to be present and join in the services, which consisted of reading the Scriptures, singing a hymn, and offering prayer. Private devotion was rarely neglected. On entering the place of preaching a silent prayer was uttered, the head bowed down and the face covered-a form still often witnessed. The Psalmist's rule was strictly followed: "Evening, and morning, and at noon will I pray;" and the early Methodist memoris are full of the accounts of conversions at private prayer in the woods, in the fields, at the barn, or in the bedchamber. The case of Dr. Thomas Hinde, of Kentucky, was by no means peculiar. Says Bishop Kavanaugh : On the place which he cultivated you might often see little houses built of sticks of wood, and covered most usually with bark, with a door for entrance. His grandchildren, myself among the number, who were accustomed to joyous gambols over his grounds, were rather perplexed as to the use of these singular structures. At length the old doctor was overheard at his private prayers in one of these houses. After that we all called them "Grandpa's prayer-houses." He aimed to conceal his person, but did not pray very silently he could often be heard a considerable distance.* The deprivations suffered by the pioneer settlers were shared to the full by the pioneer preachers. Their salary (over and above house rent and table and incidental expenses) was fixed at $64 a year, afterward increased to $80, and finally to $100, at which rate it remained until the General Conference of 1856, when all reference to a fixed allowance was stricken from our Discipline. Surely, not from love of gain or emolument have our preachers entered the ministry. At no time within the history of our Church could the worldly advantage have been any temptation; and nothing but the impulsive power of the Holy Ghost could have ever induced the preacher of the Gospel to undergo the toils and the privations of an itinerant life. A paper in the handwriting of Bishop M'Kendree, now in the possession of the writer, shows the following account of receipts and expenditures in the year 1808: from seven Conferences *Redford's "History of Methodism in Kentucky," vol. i, p. 378. the receipts were $175; salary, $80; traveling and other expenses, $61 63; leaving $33 27, which the good Bishop is particular in noting to be yet due to the Conference. Think of a yearly salary of $80 a year for a Bishop, and less than $62 for his table expenses, traveling, and cost of keeping a horse! Almost at the beginning of our Church the Conference raised a fund for the support of its superannuated members, and to make up deficiencies in the salary of those in the regular work; but even this small pittance was charily bestowed, and only upon the extremely necessitous cases. In the Minutes of the old Western Conference for 1803 is this entry: Benjamin Lakin's Account, [of deficiency in his salary,] $28 95. But it appears that the circuit maintained Brother Lakin's wife and her beast gratis; it is therefore our opinion that it is ungenerous in him to bring a demand on Conference; and seeing that there are others more needy, it is our judgment that he ought not to have any thing. Jesse Walker's Account, $165 37. But it appears that $76 of this is for children. It is our judgment that the demand for children be deducted, and then he is deficient $89 37. When David wrote "Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them," his prophetic soul surely saw not these days. Few of us know from experience the deprivations of that heroic age. Our preachers have always been, as the late President Harrison characterized them, A body of men who, for zeal and fidelity in the discharge of the duties they undertake, are not exceeded by any others in the whole world. I have been a witness of their conduct in the Western country for nearly forty years. They are men whom no labor tires, no scenes disgust, no danger frightens in the discharge of their duty. To gain recruits for the Master's service they sedulously seek out the victims of vice in the abodes of misery and wretchedness. Their stipulated pay is barely sufficient to perform the service assigned them. If, within the period I have named, a traveler on the Western frontiers had met a stranger in some obscure way, or assiduously urging his course through the intricacies of a tangled forest, his appearance staid and sober, and his countenance indicating that he was in search of some object in which his feelings were deeply interested-his apparel plain but entirely neat, and his little baggage adjusted with peculiar compactness he might be almost certain that stranger was a Methodist preacher hurrying on to perform his daily task of preaching to separate and distinct congregations: and should the same traveler upon approaching some solitary, unfurnished, and scarcely habit able cabin hear the praises of God chanted with peculiar melody, or the doctrines of the Saviour urged upon the attention of some six or eight individuals with the same energy and zeal that he had seen displayed in addresses to a crowded audience of a populous city, he might be certain, without inquiry, that it was the voice of a Methodist preacher. Nor did our pioneer fathers in the ministry shun exposure or hardships when they lay in the path of duty. They were forced to ride to their appointments in all kinds of weather: in heat and cold, in drought and wet, in snow and sleet; to swim rivers and creeks swollen with rain or filled with floating ice, no house or fire at hand where to change or dry their wet and freezing garments; laboring often under a burning fever or shaking with the tertian ague; sometimes so feeble that they could scarcely sit upon their beasts or stand on their feet during the time of their preaching; and yet, cold, hungry, and wet, they would often ride fifteen or twenty miles to an appointment, and in that condition preach, then without rest or refreshment proceed several miles farther and preach again, and, to crown all, perhaps be compelled to sleep in a dirty cabin or a damp bed. Brave men! Abundant in labors, inured to poverty and toil, suffering from the inclemencies of the seasons, daring hardships that few for love of gain would ever attempt, the story of their lives reads like a romance, and even fiction cannot surpass it. Deep and broad they laid the foundations. They wrought well, and we have entered into their labors. All honor be to their names! It is a mistake to suppose that our preachers, as a class, have been ignorant men. That they were unlettered men, without the advantages of scholastic training, and but little read in general literature, is readily admitted; but that they have not kept abreast, or rather in advance, of the times is denied. The pioneers of the Church had few books and but little time for study; but what they had they knew by heart. The Bible, the Methodist Hymn-book, and the Church Discipline, constituted of many the entire library; out of these they learned their theology, and they learned it well. Many of these unlettered preachers were able to confound doctors of divinity; in the art of reasoning they were masters; from Mr. Wesley, the acutest logician of his times, they acquired the art of compressing a battery-discharge into a single argument; and in effective oratory they surpassed, if possible, even John the Baptist. Yet among these apparently uncultured preachers were many good scholars-men who read the Scriptures in their original tongues, and whose acquaintance with the world's best thoughts was not meager. The results of their labors cannot be computed in numbers. By them public opinion has been powerfully influenced; the spiritual life of members in every branch of the Church has been quickened; by their peculiar style of preaching the intelligence of the masses has been greatly increased; and thousands have been reclaimed to a new and better life through their efforts. Nor is it too much to say that our well-braced form of society, the wonderful progress of the world's intellect, the rapid advance of the laboring classes toward independence, the stirring activities of Christian benevolence, and the ripening Christian graces of every evangelical sect, are in no small degree due to Methodist preaching and Methodist theology. But what of the future? Under God's blessing, "to-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant.” ART. IV.-VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. ALL other questions of theology sink out of sight in comparison with the doctrine of the person and work of Christ. While, however, we see in this age concessions of the most grateful kind made to the person of Jesus, we cannot but view with some alarm the growing tendency to mistake and to undervalue his work. It is assumed that the incarnation of the Son of God is the highest point, the most important fact, of his history, and that his death is but the natural and consistent close of his earthly career; whereas, important as is the fact of his incarnation, it is to be regarded as deriving its significance from his death as its great end, as the wondrous consummation toward which it pointed for the accomplishment of the purpose for which the Son of God was made flesh. (Heb. ii, 14; John xii, 23-33; xviii, 37.) Not till as he was dying did Jesus say, "It is finished." Consequently, the correct understanding of the work of Jesus, as completed and accom |