d within a month there were nearly 200 scholars.

Fatality pursued the enterprise, however, and a year to a day from the
burning of the first building, this second one was reduced to ashes,
with the adjoining church and several houses.

Asbury writes rather philosophically:[39] "I conclude God loveth the
people of Baltimore, and he will keep them poor to make them pure;" but
even Coke gave up hope at this new disaster, and it was twenty years
before a second Methodist College was attempted.

ASBURY COLLEGE.

This was the second Methodist College in the world, and was organized in
1816, the year of Bishop Asbury's death. After a year or two of
successful work, a charter was applied for and it was granted to the
College February 10, 1818.[40] The President, Samuel K. Jennings, M.D.,
a Methodist local preacher, was a rather remarkable man. Coming from New
Jersey, graduating at Rutgers, and settling in the practice of the
medical profession in Virginia, he was converted by the preaching of
Asbury, and was persuaded by him some years later, to move to Baltimore
and take the leadership of the new enterprise.[41] He was said to be, at
one time, the only Methodist preacher with a collegiate education and
was well adapted to the task, from his administrative ability and wide
learning. Around him, he gathered an undenominational faculty of four
professors and began the life of the institution in a large brick
building on the corner of Park Avenue and Franklin Street. In March,
1818, the _Methodist Magazine_ tells us that there were one hundred and
seventy students, and that "The Asbury College has probably exceeded in
its progress, considering the short time it has been established, any
literary institution in the country."[42] In that spring, a class was
graduated, and yet only a few months later Dr. Bangs wrote that the
College "continued for a short time and then, greatly to the
disappointment and mortification of its friends, went down as suddenly
as it had come up, and Asbury College lives only in the recollection of
those who rejoiced over its rise and mourned over its fall."

This statement is not absolutely correct; it is probable that there was
some catastrophe, and possibly Dr. Jennings then began to break away
from the Methodist Episcopal Church, which he left entirely, when the
Methodist Protestant Church was formed in 1828. Still some sort of an
organization was kept up under the old name; for does not good Hezek