The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1906-05-04

Il AA01Ok1AlCs Il LAlO-A L NJ
whose polished speech and forceful de
livery made a decided Impression upoi
his nearer. The Rev. Mr.. Mccoy said:
NJ. President, and brethren of the gen
eral conference:
| Mine is the voice deputed tonight by til,
two great conferences of Alabama Method
| Ism, comprising 400 itinerant preacher,
and 10000 members, to greet you In th'
name of our common Lord and 10 brins
you assurance Of cordial welcome within
our borders. Many loyal hearts, nurturec
in Methodist traditions and glorying IN
Methodist achievements, have longed tc
| see this day of blessed fellowship Your
| coming to us has been a matter of most
pleasant anticipation Your stay amongst
| us will be marked with white stone
/ in the memory Of all the years TO come
We have coveted for our own folk the
privilege of looking upon this august as
semblage of their fathers and brethren II
Christ and of experiencing the enlarge
| ment of vision and the qulckening of zeal
that must accrue to them from the con-
tact and fellowship of this occasion.
Alabama Methodlsm has always been in
tensely correctional. We have counted
| ourselves members of a body, and not
| as existing Oy ourselves and for our
| whether of men or of means or of power
to work righteousness-all have been
| yours. And i'm all that is yours we have
rejoiced to hold inalienable proprietorship
| Related to you as we are in the organic
| solidarity of our unique eclesasticism, it
means much to us, ! assure you. that we
| are privileged to feel at such close range
| tho heart beat of our great correctional
| ism. Every minister and member and
| ecclesiastical unit with our bounds will
| be articulated more closely with our pc
culiar polty, as we shall meet and mingle
with you.
Great Spiritual Empire.
! Standing at this conveyance of the
lines of Southern Methodist thought and
| fellowship and effort, we shall receive,
and that in no small measure. of that
spirit of militant Christianity that, in lit
tie more than half a century, has wrought
out one of the greatest spiritual empires
of the earth. Here the past will bless
us with its hallowed memories, and the
future will inspire us with the challenge
of its unparalleled opportunities. We will
rest with you under the benediction of
unseen hands, as your gathering recalls
the names Of the fathers of apostolic spirit
and labors who long since swept upward
in chariots of fire We will catch with
you the quick-step OF a militant Method
ism, as you move under the leadership
of the head OF the church. to answer the
call OF this new southland for broader and
deeper spiritual service. Surely our eyes
shall behold a new vision of the sweep
of our Lords kingdom, and our sym
pathies shall be enlarged by the measure
of the worlds needs, as we shall clasp
the hands and look into the faces of our
heroic missionaries who come up to greet
us from the far-hung battle line.
We welcome you for what you are
as stalwart body of men as ever as
sembled on the restful soil of our beloved
state We welcome you for what you rep
resent-our own Methodist fami1y-a
church that has wrought it's life into every
chapter of southern history, and that has
put the mark OF its workmanship on every
phase of southern civilization. We well
come you for what your coming means to
us of blessing large and abiding-even
that blessing of the Lord that maketh
rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it."
Mother Conferences.
This general conference, Mr. President.
represents to us of Alabama more than
the gathering of a sisterhood of con-
ference. I look tonight into the faces
of representatives of annual conferences
that we are honored in calling by the ten
derer name of mother conferences.
The first organized effort to plant Meth
the state of Alabama. was made by the
South Carolina conference. sitting at
Charleston, under the presidency of Fran
els Asbury in 1908. At that session of the
South Carolina conference the Tombec-
bee charge was created. The new appoint
ment embraced strip of country lying
many leagues away In the trackless will
derness. and stretching for seventy or
eighty miles along the Tonbgbee river.
.,Nt Loo 1t,,r -. ft,f
wilderness settlement from any direction.
On the west was an unbroken wilderness
reaching to the Natchez country, to cross
which required from six to eight days.
There were churches. no preachers in
this land of savage beasts and still more
savage men. Not a society had been or
gained. Nothing had been done toward
laying the foundation of the church. Bsh-
OPP Asbury called for volunteers for this
new field, and Matthew P. Sturdevant an
swered the call For twelve months Sturde-
want pushed his way through tangled
Businesses and over swollen streams,
searching out the lone frontersmen in
their rude huts and preaching to them
the gospel of a free and full salvation.
During that year, he was never visited
by his presiding elder. nor did he look
upon the face of a brother preacher. At
the end of the year. he was not able to
report single society organized or a SIN
gle member enrolled. Yet, nothing daunt-
ed, from the session of the South Caro-
lima conference the following fall our
brave missionary again turned his face
toward the gloomy banks of the Tombig
bee This time he was accompanied by
a fellow laborer in the person of Mi
chael Burdge To the thinking of those
sturdy Methodist fathers of South Caro-
lina defeat called not for retirement, but
for reinforcement. BY such faith and
heroism was Methodism planted on Ala
bama soil.
Motherhood of Mississippi.
We acknowledge too, with pride and
gratitude, the motherhood of Mississippi
Methodism. In 1918, by authority of the
general conference of 1872, the Mississippi
conference was organized. and the Tom
becbee charge fell within its bounds.
From that date for more than a decade
and a half, Tombecbee was supplied by
the Mississippi conference. In the list of
pastors for that time are names that
will never perish from our precious an
nails.
so early as 1905. the Western conference,
then embracing the states of Tennessee.
Kentucky. Ohio and a part of Virginia,
sent missionary into "the great bend
of the Tennessee river" now one of the
wealthiest and most populous sections of
northern Alabama Ten years later, the
Rev. Thomas Douglas, presiding elder of
the Nashville district, sent the Rev. Eben-
ezer Hearn into that section south of the
Tennessee river that had just been ceded
to the United States by treaty negotiated