Choice Specimens of American Literature, and Literary Reader · Chapter 127=144.= the Early Methodist Clergy in America
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They composed a class which, perhaps, will never be seen again. They were distinguished by native mental vigor, shrewdness, extraordinary knowledge of human nature, many of them by overwhelming natural eloquence, the effects of which on popular assemblies are scarcely paralleled in the history of ancient or modern oratory, and not a few by powers of satire and wit which made the gainsayer cower before them. To these intellectual attributes they added great excellences of the heart, a zeal which only burned more fervently where that of ordinary men would have grown faint, a courage that exulted in perils, a generosity which knew no bounds, and left most of them in want in their latter days, a forbearance and co-operation with each other which are seldom found in large bodies, an entire devotion to one work, and, withal, a simplicity of character which extended even to their manners and their apparel. They were likewise characterized by rare physical abilities. They were mostly robust. The feats of labor and endurance which they performed, in incessantly preaching in villages and cities, among slave huts and Indian wigwams, in journeyings seldom interrupted by stress of weather, in fording creeks, swimming rivers, sleeping in forests,—these, with the novel circumstances with which such a career frequently brought them into contact, afford examples of life and character which, in the hands of genius, might be the materials for a new department of romantic literature. They were men who labored as if the judgment fires were about to break out on the world, and time to end with their day. They were precisely the men whom the moral wants of the new world at the time demanded.
[Footnote 43: A prominent clergyman of the Methodist church. His History of Methodism is a work of great research and value. A native of Pennsylvania.]
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=Francis Parkman, 1823-.= (Manual, pp. 496, 505.)
From "The Conspiracy of Pontiac."