labors quite as
abundant as the most laborious of these. As she is the greatest of
heroes as well as the best of wives who faithfully discharges the duties
of a step-mother, under the burning criticisms of intermeddlers, not to
mention the too frequent ingratitude of the immediate beneficiaries of
her care, so the local preacher who is faithful to his calling,
notwithstanding unfriendly criticisms and conspicuous ingratitude, is to
be ranked as the greatest of heroes. And of such there were many in the
early years of Indiana Methodism.

But even these were not the greatest heroes of early Indiana Methodism.
The exigencies of the period developed a class of heroes without whose
part the labors of the Wileys, the Stranges and the Armstrongs could not
have been any more than the achievements of the Grants and the Shermans
and the Washingtons in the military could have been without the
burden-bearings of the heroic private soldier. Was it nothing heroic to
open the cabin of the settler for preaching, month after month, for
years, and not merely to prepare it for the meeting, but to put it in
living order after the meeting was over, and then to feed the preacher,
and often a half dozen neighbors who were always ready to accept a half
invitation to dine with the preacher, without ever suggesting that a
good way to enjoy that luxury would be to invite the preacher to eat at
their own table? And yet the men who did this year after year are hardly
mentioned, even as an appreciable force in the history of early
Methodism, much less as heroes of no low grade. The preacher who
preached in that cabin and ate at that table has been duly canonized,
but the man who made that preaching possible at a sacrifice of time and
money, and of domestic comfort which money can not measure, has
generally been regarded as under unspeakable obligations to the preacher
and to his neighbors for being counted worthy to do and to suffer such
things for the church. But the demands upon these for heroic living did
not cease with the removal of the preaching from their cabins to the
school house, or to the church when built. To the end of their lives
their houses and barns were always open to Methodist preachers, whether
they were their pastors or were strangers. It was sufficient that they
came in the name of a Methodist preacher. These heroes were not always
the richest men of their several neighborhoods, nor of the church, but,
honoring God with their