into a prominent usefulness emerged from a blacksmith shop in Kingston, and commenced to exhort and explain the liberal doctrines of Methodism to the world in 1787. This was Anning Owen. He had early emigrated from Connecticut to Wyoming with the pioneers; had fought beside the gallant Butler in the Indian battle on the plain until the day was lost, escaping only with his life. He accompanied the fugitives to the East after the massacre, where he remained for nine years before he again crossed the mountain and rolled up his log-cabin and shop on the bank of Toby's Creek, in Kingston. Never neglecting the duties of his shop until his appointments multiplied far and near, he officiated in the double capacity of blacksmith and exhorter for a few seasons before he became a circuit preacher of singular efficiency and power.

A Methodist class was formed at Ross Hill, Wyoming Valley, in 1787-8; three years later a similar society, fewer in numbers, was first organized in the Lackawanna Valley, at the forge of Dr. Wm. Hooker Smith and James Sutton, by the Rev. James Campbell, who had been sent hither by the Philadelphia Conference for this specific purpose. The group, composed of five members, were led by James Sutton as class-leader.

In the summer of 1792 Mr. Owen ascended the Lackawanna to Capoose and upper Providence, where he preached alternately at Preserved Taylor's and Captain John Vaughn's, in private houses. Captain Vaughn had imbibed the broad doctrines of Universalism, but their fallacious character was so demonstrated and proven by the plain blacksmith, that he forsook them forever, and became a zealous convert to Methodism. Meetings were also occasionally held in other log-houses or cabins. along the stream, where the minister, generally poor and penniless, tarried all night, and enjoyed the abundant and real hospitality of the valley. Bishop Asbury, in his reconnoiter of the Lackawanna and Wyoming valleys in 1793, appointed Valentine Cook presiding elder.

In 1800, Methodist meetings were held once a month at the house of Preserved Taylor, in Providence, who lived upon the western border of Capoose Meadow. After Mr. Taylor's removal, the dwelling of Squire Potter, two miles farther up the valley, became a stated preaching point. In fact, the lonely school-house or the isolated cabin, afforded the only places for religious gatherings in the valley until the fall of 1828, when there was erected the first meeting-house in that very portion of it last settled -in Carbondale.

Meetings were sometimes held in cool groves or woods from bare necessity. Some shaded nook, watered by a spring or brook, was chosen for a camp-ground. Here, around a circle well cleared of underbrush and sheltered by hemlock or beech from the rays of the sun, rose the whitened tents like the wigwams of the cunning bowmen, in which were collected groups of old and young, whose pilgrimage to this wild, joyous Mecca was long remembered with pleasure and profit.

In 1803, two noisy itinerants went forth like John the Baptist, to prepare the way of the Lord. They preached at Kingston, Plymouth, Shawney, Wilkes Barre, Pittston, Providence, crossed the Moosic Mountain at Cobb's, journeying through Salem, Canaan, Mount Pleasant, Great Bend, and Tunkhannock, and preaching in all these places before returning to Wyoming. In 1807, a regular circuit was formed, and a portion of the same route was traveled over twelve times a year, or once in every four weeks, From 1810 until 1818, George Harman and Elder Owen officiated in this vineyard. One of the prominent members of the church here then was old "Father Ireland," as he was familiarly called, who emigrated to Providence Township in 1795, and settled upon what is now known as the Briggs's farm. He was a long time a class-leader. In his intercourse with the world, his kindness of heart, and his calm and virtuous life, until his sun passed behind the horizon after a long day, con

tributed no little toward softening the prejudices of the. illiberal against the Methodist Society.

The two events marking their distinctive era in the development of Methodism in the valley were the visit of Bishop Asbury in 1793, and the accession to its strength of the young but bold and fervid presence of the Rev. George Peck, D. D., in 1818. He brought with him a fixed purpose to diffuse Christian truths in the new field before him, in the exercise of which he was made familiar throughout the country as the great champion of Methodism. In less than a century," said he to Brother Taylor, as he was threading his way along the infant settlement, "this charming valley, from its beauty and fertility, will have a large population and need great conversion." Heaven, in its mercy, has given the venerable elder fifty-three years in the pulpit, with a yet firm step and bright eye, so that he has not only lived to witness the fulfillment of his prophecy, but has shared in the triumphs of faith with a fidelity and complacency enjoyed by few. Dr. Peck has achieved distinction as an author of great ability, as his numerous, popular volumes offered the public attest.

Although many of the uncharitable charge the spiritual advisers of this denomination, with mercenary views as they direct the wanderer on to the New Jerusalem, we find them as a body to possess as little selfishness, and quite as much true, honest, available capacity, and appreciation of the right, as can be found in the same number of men of any creed or profession in the country; and, although some within the writer's acquaintance command a fortune, few a competency, while very many are comparatively poor, thus affording a decisive commentary on the utter want of judgment of the illiberal. And, yet, beset, with every inducement, with no hope of personal advantage or emolument from their ministerial labors, and pressed by wants that pride conceals from the careless eye, how rarely do they wield their talents for money,

position or power! And yet when a whole life has been spent to diffuse those sublime, simple truths which form the basis of all morals, how little security does the purity of character or the claim of age offer from the assaults of parishioners whose liturgy seems but a desire to exile their pastor, and whose devotions are the convenience or but the fashion of the hour!

SMELLING HELL.

Anning Owen was a son of Vulcan, a stout, swarthy, genuine specimen of earnestness, who spoke all he knew and sometimes more, in the most impulsive manner. He remarked often, that he preached as he hammered out hot iron, to make an impression. His sermons were always extempore; after he warmed up in his favorite subject, his eye grew animated, his voice full and clear, as he displayed eloquence of a high order.

The Methodists labored under many disadvantages. The self-sacrificing and sometimes boisterous itinerants who were toiling for their race merely for the sake of good, and no possible hope of pecuniary gain, with few thanks, little or no remuneration, often with scanty fare, were sometimes accused of ignorance, bigotry, and fanaticism, and yet under the effective appeals of 'Elder Owen, much of this common error was dispersed, while the church, augmenting in numbers, surpassed every other denomination in the extent of its prosperity. The loud "hallelujahs," "glories," and "amens," which pealed forth from the preachers in such sharp accents as to be heard at least half a mile from the stand at this period, was so different from the sober mode of worship of the more numerous Presbyterians, that many thought them crazy, and in one or two instances attempted to enforce silence by violent measures.

A good story is told of Elder Owen by an old uncle

of the writer, who heard him preach at a quarterly meeting, held at the court-house in Wilkes Barre, in the winter of 1806. Never closing his sermons without reminding sinners of the danger of brimstone, it had at length become so proverbial that the boys in a sportive mood (for there were sons of Belial in those days as well as now), had a living illustration of the virtues of his doctrine, at the elder's expense. In the south wing of the old court-house there was a large fire-place, in which smoked a huge beechen back-log. Behind this some of the boys had placed a yellow roll of the genuine article before the meeting commenced in the evening. The elder -or the Son of Thunder as he was called-opened his battery with more force than usual upon the citadel of Satan. He began to grow excited while elucidating the words of his text, "he that believeth not shall be damned." The flames of the fire began to penetrate the region where lay concealed the warming and wicked brimstone, the fumes of which spread through the room in the most provoking manner. The elder, with such a re-enforcement to his brain and his battery, felt inspired. Although ignorant of the joke the devil was playing upon him, he soon appreciated the odor of his resistless agent. Turning his eye upon the unconverted portion of the congregation, he exclaimed in a loud voice, "Sinners! unless you are converted you will be cast in the bottomless pit." Pausing a moment as he glanced indignantly upon the tittering ones who were enjoying the scene in an eminent degree, he raised himself to his utmost height, elevated his voice to a still loftier key, and at the same time bringing down his clinched fist with a powerful stroke upon the judge's desk, cried out, "Sinners, why don't you repent, don't you smell hell?"

It may be interesting to note that in 1833 the longremembered patriarch, Lorenzo Dow, with his long white beard and imposing equipage, in passing down the valley to his Southern death-bed, preached to a vast assemblage