Arizona weekly journal-miner., 1903-03-04
BI=CENTENNIAL
Celebration in New York of Anniversary of Birth ot
 John Wesley.
President Roosevelt's Address on Method ism Which Was Delivered Yester-
 day in Carnegie Hall.


 Wesley was celebrated here at Car negie hall last night. Among the speak CTS of the occasion was Presiden Roosevelt, whose address follows:
 NIT. Chairman. Ladies and gentle men:
 1 am glad of the chance of address ing this represeE. alive body of tn, great5church which Wesley founded on the occasion of the commemoratior of the two hundreth anniversary o his birth. America, moreover, has z peculiar proprietary claim on Wes ley's memory, for it is on our conti nent that the Methodist church ha: received its greatest development. In the days of our colonial life Meth, odism was not on the whole a great factor in the religious and social life of the people The Congregational. ists were supreme throughout most oi New England; the Episcopalians on the seaboard from New York south ward; while the Presbyterian congre- gatiOns were numerous all along what was then the entire western frontier and the Quaker, Catholic. aud Dutch Reformed church each had develop. ments in special places. The great growth of the Methodist church. like the great growth of the Baptist church, began at about the time of the Revolutionary war. Today my theme is purely Methodism.
 Since the days of the revolution not only has the Methodist church in- creased greatly in the old communi- ties of the thirteen original states, but it has played peculiar and prominent part in the pioneer growth of our country and has in consequence assumed a position of immense i'm portance 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 self preservation under Lincoln, was the work of the pioneers as they took possession of this cOnti- nent. During that century we push ed westward from the AIleghenies to the Pacific, southward to the gulf and the Rio Grande, and also took posses sion of Alaska. The york of advanc- ing our boundary, oi 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 pion- eers, the backwoodsmen, the plains men, 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 successful conclusion had characters strong alike for good and for evil. Their rugged natures made them powers who 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 possibilities. Such men make the most efficient ser wants of the Lord if their abounding vitality and energy are directed aright: and if misdirected their in fiuence is equally potent against the cause of Christianity and true civili- ZatiOn. In the hard and cruel life of the border, with its grim struggle aginst the forbidding forces of wild nature and wilder men. there was much to pull the frOntiersman down. If left to himself, without moral teaching and moral guidance, without any of the influences that tend toward the uplifting of 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 pro- portion of these pioneer preachers whom they furnished.
 These preachers were of the stamp of old Peter Cartwright-men who suffered and overcame every hardship in common with their flock. and who in addition tanned the wild and fierce spirits of their fellow pioneers. It was not a task that could have been accomplished by men desirous to live in the soft places of the earth and to walk easily on life's journey. They had to possess the spirit of the mar tyrs; but not Of martyrs who could merely suffer, not of martyrs who could oppose only passive endurance to wrong. The pioneer preachers warred against the forces of spiritual evil with the same fiery zeal and. .en- ergy that they and their fellows show ed in the conquest of the rugged con- tinent They had in them the heroic spirit that scorns ease if it must be purchased by failgre to do duty, the spirit that courts risk and life of hard endeavor if the goal to be reach ed is really worth attaining. Great is our debt to these men and scant the patience we need show toward their critics. At times they seemed hard and narrow to those whose training and surroundings had saved them from similar temptations; and they have been criticised. as all men. whether missionaries. soldiers, explor- CTS, or frontier settlers, are criticized when they go forth to do the rough work that must inevitably be done by those who act as the first harbingers. the first heralds. of civilization in the worlds dark places. It is easy for those who stay at home in comfort, who never have to see humanity in the raw, or to strive against the dread ful naked forces which appear cloth ed. hidden, and subdued in civilized life-it is easy for such to criticise the men who, in rough fashion. and amid grim surroundings, make ready the way for the higher life that is to come afterwards; but let us all remember that the untempted and the effortless should be cautious in passing too