CHAPTER XXXVIII. 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.