And then they mounted their horses and rode away, some to the north and some to the south.

Never since the day when Jesus spread his pierced hands over the heads of his disciples at the Mount of Olives and sent them out to preach the Gospel has there been witnessed a sublimer sight than that little band going out to preach the Gospel to the people, literally not knowing whither they went.

They were men of great ability. Francis Asbury would have graced the Senate of the United States, he would have graced the supreme bench of this country or of England, but these men went forth on a salary that rarely averaged as much as $64 a year. The people showed them abounding hospitality. Their preaching, their prayers, their songs made them welcome everywhere. Year by year, they kept going farther west as their numbers increased. They followed the settlers into the valleys and over the mountains and in the closing years of the century they reached Ohio. The Western Conference was organized. It took in all the great West from the summit of the Alleghany Range to the limits of civilization. That Western Conference met in Chillicothe in 1807. The state of Ohio was at that time one great district. I have seen the minutes of that conference. Let me read them to you.

Ohio District, John Sale, presiding elder.
Miami, Benjamin Lakin, John Collins.
Mad River, Agget McGuire, Isaac Quinn.
Scioto, Anthony Houston, Milton Ladd.
Hock Hockin, Joseph Hayes, James King.
Muskingum, Peter Cartwright.

Little Kanawha, William Vermillion.
Guyandotte, John Klingham.

White River, John Hellmuns, Sela Paine.
Licking, William Ellington.

A band of twelve men from whose labors came Ohio Methodism as it stands to-day, with its five great conferences, its 6c0,000 people, its $12,000,000 worth of church property, its schools and colleges all through the land.

Other denominations adopted the itineracy and one pastor was often given charge of four or five groups of believers. These

itinerant preachers were strong men. It would be a delight had we time, to select from them a few types and describe them. Their immediate successors were such men as Bigelow, Christy, Raper and a host of others. Recently, I heard Joseph Parker, a great preacher of London, preach a magnificent sermon. I listened to him with delight and I know that these men I have mentioned would stand shoulder to shoulder with him if they were alive to-day and in the pulpit. They were scholarly men. What they lacked of education at the beginning, they gained by hard work. They studied on horseback. They studied in the cabins of the poor. Thousands were converted under their ministry. Think of men like Russell Bigelow getting a salary of $300 a year while the Archbishop of Canterbury, a very nice man and a very good man, but judging from his published sermons in no sense the equal of Russell Bigelow, receiving $75,000 a year for his salary. But these great men who helped to make Ohio what it is have received their reward in the results of their lives. They wove their lives into the destiny of Ohio and that destiny is to brighten forever beneath the smile of God. Therefore, they have found their reward. They had the strange and wonderful power to cause men to cry out, "What must I do to be saved?" and the story of their triumphs is among the most thrilling and wonderful in the history of the Church of God.

But the religious influences of Ohio did not altogether proceed from the ministry. Christian homes abound, homes like that where Abraham Lincoln was reared, who was trained by his Baptist mother to love the Bible and to read it until his soul was filled with its great thoughts and he made it the guide of his life. No wonder that when he stood by his mother's grave he said, "All that I am or ever hope to be I owe to my angel mother." If you will look carefully into the lives of the greatest men Ohio has ever produced, you will find that they came from such homes as this. U. S. Grant, who was incapable of an unmanly or an unchristian act, came from a Christian home. William McKinley had a mother who was devotedly pious. She taught her boy to believe in God and revere his commands. He showed the result of her teaching and as he was dying drew the whole world nearer to God when he sang, "Nearer my God to Thee, nearer to Thee."

Last Sabbath I heard Bishop Joyce preach. He told the following incident. In one of his great congregations far out in Montana, he called upon all those who were willing to give their lives to Jesus Christ from that day forward to rise. Many responded to his appeal and among them was the owner of the mine in which most of his congregation were employed. When the services were over, the mine owner came to the bishop and said, "I have not been inside of a church for seven long years. Why I am here to-day I can not understand. Your appeal brought to me sacred memories. When I bade my mother goodbye in old Scotland, she said, 'I want to say three things to you. Don't forget God. Don't forget your Bible. Don't forget your mother,' and while you were talking, my mother's face glided before me. That mine owner became a Christian. Several years after, he was injured in his mine and was taken home to die. Although called suddenly away from earth, he was ready. He said to his wife, 'I am glad I gave my heart to God that day when the bishop asked us to rise'."

Volumes might be written of such instances as this that came to the knowledge of the frontier preachers, and they were not slow to appeal to the holiest and most sacred impulses of the human heart. We can not trace the religious influences that made Ohio without taking this into account. Before we can do it accurately, we must catch the holy gleam on many a mother's face as she sorrowfully bids her boy goodbye and sends him out to seek his fortune in the new state. Yea, before we can trace accurately the religious influences that made Ohio, we must be gifted with spiritual insight to enable us to tell how the Holy Spirit of God, who convinces men of sin and of righteousness and of a judgment to come, calls men to repentance, awakens their consciences and as the supreme Teacher leads them into conscious fellowship with Jesus Christ. We must be able to tell how that Spirit dealt with each individual soul, for it is written. that "He lighteneth every man that cometh into the world."

And now what of the future? Let us have no fears but go forward to meet it confident that all will be well. In 1857, I heard George D. Prentiss, the editor of the Louisville Journal, deliver a lecture on American Politics. It was as gloomy a lec

43 o. c.

ture as I ever heard. He spoke of the Ship of State driving upon the breakers and he said, "The pilots are all dead." He referred to the death of Clay and of Webster; and then in his beautifully classic way he said, "Ulysses has gone forth to his wanderings and there is no one left at Ithaca strong enough to bend his bow. Atlas has gone to the shades of Erebus and there is no one left to support the falling skies" and he sat down and left us in the darkness. But God had a Ulysses that George D. Prentiss did not know about. He was in a tan-yard in Galena, Illinois. He had been trained by a Christian mother. And God had ready an Atlas in a law office in Springfield, Illinois, whose character had been moulded and fashioned by a noble Christian woman who taught him to fear God and nothing else. His name was. Abraham Lincoln.

Let us go forward then to meet the future, believing that He who has brought us thus far will still be our guard and guide through all the coming years, and furnish us leaders in every great crisis.

ADDRESS OF CHARLES FOSTER.*

Mr. President and Ladies and Gentlemen: I have no manuscript, and in fact until about ten minutes ago I did not know that I was even expected to talk, and besides that my landlady notified me that I must be home to dinner at halfpast twelve or I would not get anything to eat. (Laughter and cries of "Its past half after twelve now; go on.")

Its past half-past twelve now, dinner is gone, and perhaps for that reason I may detain you a little longer than I otherwise would. (Laughter.)

Egotism as a rule is intolerable, but when fully justified it may be tolerated as is the case in the state of Ohio. (More laughter.)

CHARLES FOSTER.

We care but little to-day about the precise date on which the state was admitted into the Union, or whether Thomas Jefferson and his political associates performed the high political financiering, so-to-speak I don't want to use any harsher term to secure the admission of the state without submitting to a vote of the people. What do these things matter when now, to-day, we have four and one-half millions of people, happy and contented, every one of them.

A condition exists in Ohio and in the whole country for that matter which does not exist anywhere else in the world. There is not a man in all this broad state and country in good health, who to-day can not make a living for himself, secure a home and lay up something besides.

*Stenographer's Report.