d through the intricacies of
a swamp. It was doubtful if he could procure food for man or beast
for days, and it was vain to try to carry a sufficient supply. It
was impossible to procure a guide across 'the forks' of some range
of hills, thickly covered with ravines and with dangerous defiles.
Starvation and all the forms of death lay thick around and before
him. The stoutest heart might have quailed, the most unflinching
sense of duty might have wavered. The rational mind might have
justly demanded a greater degree of equality between the magnitude
of the thing to be accomplished and the difficulties and dangers
attending its accomplishment. All these things gave him not a
moment's pause. Herein was manifest the grandeur of the circuit
rider's character. His mind was not the mind of a rational man, as
we estimate rationality. His profession of faith and his wish for
salvation were sincere to the full extent of their importance as he
estimated it. Religion was a real and a tangible thing to him. The
simple, unhesitating sincerity of his faith was grand, it was
wonderful, it was sublime.... He merged the individual completely
in the work, he lost all sense of personal interest in the craving
to advance the interests of others. He was willing to meet death
for the attainment of the smallest of the tasks set before him. He
was willing to forego all personal comfort as a part of the daily
life of which hunger and thirst were the incidents. Luxury he had
never known or seen.... As the Church increased in numbers and
influence, the pioneer of religion, the one who had hewn for it a
way through the primeval forests, either pushed forward with the
advance line of civilization or yielded to the mellowing influence
of a more genial state of society. As villages developed into towns
with souls enough to repay an exclusive charge, the saddle-bags and
the saddle were exchanged for a settled habitation. Sometimes he
married, and from the first, marriage had practically destroyed his
usefulness as an itinerant. He is now familiar to us only in
tradition. The discipline of Conference assignments of duty, which
carry with them change of habitation, still suggests his noble
activity in the early days of Tennessee history."

And yet, remembering the self-devotion, the sac