PREFACE. FIFTY-FIVE years ago, when the subject of our present memoir entered the field of Christian warfare, Methodism was in a transition state,-struggling from the poverty and persecution of its primeval exigency, into a more peaceful, extended, and extending sphere of operation and usefulness. It was in Methodism a “mediæval age." The first geniuses that roused the slumbering energies of the Church, then lamentably defective in morals and spirituality, had passed to the tomb, leaving behind them to conduct the system, men of thorough evangelical principles,-genuine piety,active and energetic zeal, and highly capable of maintaining the position already assumed; but Methodism was not designed to rest in its mediæval state, but to assume the aggressive wherever the kingdom of Satan could be assailed. To create a new element in Methodism required a new material to give a new phase to its existence; and suitable men for the accomplishment of special purposes are always raised up by Him who |