ence to his preaching in the correspondence of the "Nashville Advocate:" "At ten o'clock A.M. Bishop Janes filled the pulpit. He preached to a crowded and highly interested audience. His sermon was plain, neat, chaste, breathing an ardent spirit of piety, and attended with a peculiar unction."

It is probable that he went as far as Texas, presiding over all the South-western Conferences, accomplishing a tour in this, the first year of his Episcopal service, remarkable not only for the extent of traveling compassed, but for the hardships of travel, caused by the rough roads and swollen. streams, and the mental strain which the crisis in the Church imposed. Here is a specimen of his adventures. Rev. E. Osborn says:

Soon after he was elected Bishop, in 1844, he was appointed to attend some of the South-western Conferences. While on this tour he was solicited to make an appointment to preach at a place about forty miles, I think, to one side of his direct route from one Conference to another. He rode all that distance on horseback, without seeing a house. About 3 P. M. he saw an Indian roasting some venison, and being quite hungry, he took out a silver piece, showed it to the hunter, then pointed to the roasting meat, thus indicating to the man, who understood no English, that he wanted to buy a piece. A slice was soon cut off, rolled in white ashes as a substitute for salt, and the Bishop said that hunger made it taste very good. Going on, he at length reached the old brother's house, where he was to stop. The log meeting-house was about two miles distant, and several rode on horseback to the place. The windows were simply openings in the sides of the building, and one of them was directly behind him.

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The wind being very strong, he fastened his cloak up behind the pulpit, as a partial protection. Soon after the sermon was commenced a heavy gust, passing through the house, blew out all the lights, which were pine-knots fastened to the sides of the building. He then said to the people, "The Gospel is a light shining in a dark place, and if you will remain I will go on with my sermon." They assented to this, he continued his discourse, and he said they had a good time. But when they went out to find and mount the horses on which they rode, such was the darkness (accompanied with rain, 1 think) that they had no small difficulty in getting on their way, for the Bishop said it seemed to him to be the darkest place he was ever in. When they had finally succeeded in getting mounted, his host told them that his horse knew the road and he would lead the way while the others followed.

It was, I think, on this same tour the Bishop had occasion to cross the Cumberland Mountains. On the route he had to leave the ordinary stage-coach and take a wagon without springs. At a certain. point the wagon must cross a bridge over a torrent which the swollen waters had rendered dangerous, and he was warned, when he had reached it, to get out of the wagon and walk across on a footbridge. He accordingly said to the driver as he got into the wagon-it was about nightfall-to let him know when they got to the stream: if he was asleep to wake him up, not to fail. Away went the wagon, on and on, over one of the roughest mountain passes in the land. The Bishop, exhausted by his travels and loss of rest, soon fell asleep. He knew nothing more until the driver reined up at his destination and hallooed to him to get out.

His episcopal dignity was down among the straw on the floor of the wagon, the treacherous bridge had been crossed, the journey ended, while he had been oblivious to all toils and dangers.

In March of the following spring (1845) he was present at the session of the Baltimore Conference, which was held in the Caroline-street Church, Baltimore. Dr. Sargent, alluding to his presence, says: "He came to Baltimore from his first episcopal tour, in 1845, (March,) and in Bishop Soule's room he recounted to us some of his painful and pleasant experiences, especially in Mississippi."

The event of the spring of 1845 was the holding of a convention at Louisville, Ky., composed of delegates (one to eleven) from the ministers of the Conferences lying wholly in slave-holding States. Bishops Soule and Andrew attended upon the convention. All the Bishops were invited to preside over its deliberations, but they alone accepted the invitation. And when this body formally organized the Conferences which it represented into the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, they gave in their adhesion, and became officially identified with it. The course of the convention and of these Bishops was regarded by the Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church as a withdrawal from the body. They accordingly, at a meeting held in New York, July 3, 1845, after rehearsing substantially

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the action of the convention, passed the following resolution:*

Resolved, That acting as we do, under the authority of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and amenable to said General Conference, we should not consider ourselves justified in presiding in said Conferences, conformably to the plan of visitation agreed upon at the close of the late General Conference, and published in the journals of the Church.

This resolution recognized "separation" as an accomplished fact. Whether the Bishops changed their plan of visitation, in declining to preside over the Southern Conferences, out of respect to the legality of the so-called Plan of Separation, or as a measure tending to peace, does not appear. They may have had both considerations in mind. In the interim of the General Conference they could not have done otherwise. If, as some at the North maintained, they ought to have gone forward and held, or attempted to hold, the Southern Conferences all the same, and thus if rejected by all except the barest minorities of the ministers, kept up the organization of the Methodist Episcopal Church, even in the very heart of the South, such persons ought to remember that the report of the Committee on Pacification, while it may not have been meant as an encouragement to division, certainly held out the possibility of it under given conditions, of which conditions the Southern min

Great Secession," by Charles Elliott, D.D., pp. 492, 493.

isters were to be the sole judges. And the probability is, that but for the bitter strifes engendered and aggravated by the "Border War" along the line where the division was most keenly felt, and also the growing bitterness of the slavery controversy in both sections of the country, the plan would have been quietly accepted, and the vested properties of the Church amicably distributed. Then, let those who may now say what the Bishops. ought to have done, remember that in the state of the country at the time, with the ministers and people-all citizens in common-solidly with the action of the Louisville Convention, it would have been well nigh physically impossible for them to do otherwise than to pursue a policy of abstention. Mob law would have summarily visited them, civil war would have been precipitated, and the war, instead of freeing the slaves, would have tightened their chains. The antislavery sentiment of the country was not yet strong enough for a successful conflict with the slave power. God's time, which events were hastening on, was not come. The Bishops, controlled by the highest wisdom of the hour, could go no faster than that wisdom allowed.

Bishops Morris and Janes, who had been assigned to some of the Southern Conferences, in harmony with the resolution of the Bishops, withdrew their appointments. Bishop Soule wrote to Bishop Morris, requesting him to take charge of the Illinois,