olitical agitation. The year before the Stamp Act had
been passed, and the whole chain of colonies, from New Hampshire to
Georgia, had been stirred up to resist the execution of it. This year
the Stamp Act had been repealed, but in such terms as to imply a new
menace and redouble the agitation. From this time forward to the
outbreak of war in 1775, and from that year on till the conclusion of
peace in 1783, the land was never at rest from turmoil. Through it all
the Methodist societies grew and multiplied. In 1767 Embury's house had
overflowed, and a sail-loft was hired for the growing congregation. In
1768 a lot on John Street was secured and a meeting-house was built. The
work had spread to Philadelphia, and, self-planted in Maryland under the
preaching of Robert Strawbridge, was propagating itself rapidly in that
peculiarly congenial soil. In 1769, in response to earnest entreaties
from America, two of Wesley's itinerant preachers, Boardman and Pilmoor,
arrived with his commission to organize an American itinerancy; and two
years later, in 1771, arrived Francis Asbury, who, by virtue of his
preeminent qualifications for organization, administration, and command,
soon became practically the director of the American work, a function to
which, in 1772, he was officially appointed by commission from Wesley.

Very great is the debt that American Christianity owes to Francis
Asbury. It may reasonably be doubted whether any one man, from the
founding of the church in America until now, has achieved so much in the
visible and traceable results of his work. It is very certain that
Wesley himself, with his despotic temper and his High-church and Tory
principles, could not have carried the Methodist movement in the New
World onward through the perils of its infancy on the way to so eminent
a success as that which was prepared by his vicegerent. Fully possessed
of the principles of that autocratic discipline ordained by Wesley, he
knew how to use it as not abusing it, being aware that such a discipline
can continue to subsist, in the long run, only by studying the temper of
the subjects of it, and making sure of obedience to orders by making
sure that the orders are agreeable, on the whole, to the subjects. More
than one polity theoretically aristocratic or monarchic in the
atmosphere of our republic has grown into a practically popular
government, simply through tact and good judgment in the administration
of it, without changin