The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-02-27
ROOSEVELT ON MElHODISM.
(Continued from First Page.)

tCOntlnueQ from F1rSC FdSe.I
 Mir Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: I am glad to have the chance of ad- dressing this representative body of the great church which Wesley founded,
 oR the occasion of the commemora ton of the two hundredth anniversary of his birth. America, moreover, has 9 peculiar proprietary claim on Wesley's memory, for it is on our continent that the Methodist church has received it's greatest development. In the days of our colonial life Methodism was not
 on the whole great factor in the re- ligious and social life of the people. The Congregationalists were supreme throughout most of New England; the Episcopalians %on the seaboard from New York southwark while the Pres
 byterian congregations were most nu-
 merous along what was then the en-
 tire western frontier: and the Quaker, Catholic, and Dutch Reformed church.
 es each had developments in special
 places. The great growth of the Meth odist church, like the great growth of the Baptist church, began at about the time os the Revolutionary war. To- day my theme is purely Methodism.
 Since the day of the Revolution not
 only has the Methodist church in-
 creased greatly in the old communities of the thirteen original states, but it
 has played peculiar and prominent part in the pioneer growh of our coun- try and has in consequence assumed a position of immense importance throughout the vast region west of the Alleghenies which has been added to our nation since the days when the Continental Congress first met.
 For century after the Declaration of Independence the greatest work of our people, with the exception only of the work of preservation under Lincoln, was the work of the pioneers as they took possession of this conti- nent. During that century we pushed westward from the Alleghenies to the Pacific, southward to the Gulf and the Rio Grande. and also took possession of Alaska The work of advancing our boundary, of pushing the frontier across forest and desert and mountain chain. was the great typical work of our nation: and the men who did it.. the frontiersmen, the pioneers, the backwoodsmen, plainsmen. mountain men-formed a class by themselves, It was an iron task, which none but men of iron soul and iron body could do. The men who carried it to a success full conclusion had characters strong alike for good and for evil. Their rug fhor,1 hn served light or darkness with fierce intensity; and together with heroic traits they had those evil and dreadful tendencies which are but too apt to be found in characters of heroic possibili- ties. Such men make the most efficient servants of the Lord if their abound ing vitality and energy are directed alright: and if misdirected their inf1u- ence is equally potent against, the cause of Christianity and true civili- zation. In the hard and cruel life of the border with it's grim struggle against the forbidding forces of wild nature and wilder men. there was much to pull the frontiersman down. If left to himself, without moral teach ing and moral guidance, without any of the influences that tend toward the uplifting of the man and the subduing of the brute within him, sad would have been his. and therefore our, fate. From this fate we have been largely rescued by the fact that together with the rest of the pioneers went the pion- eer preachers; and all honor be given to the Methodists for the great propor- ton of these pioneer preachers whom they furnished
 These preachers were of the stamp of old Peter Cartwright-men who suf-