Ip 1111I Columbia (Bntottfftp mtijeCtiptfifcmj^rk THE LIBRARIES Bequest of Frederic Bancroft 1860-1945 < / JOSHUA SOULE METHODIST FOUNDERS' SERIES EDITED BY BISHOP WARREN A. CANDLER LIFE OF JOSHUA SOULE By HORACE M. DU BOSE, D.D. Author of Francis Asbury : A Biographical Study NASHVILLE, TENN. DALLAS, TEX.; RICHMOND, VA. PUBLISHING HOUSI- Of" TjIF m' E. CHURCH, SOUTH S,MiT-I * IaMAR, AGENTS IQl6 Copyright, I9 11 * BY Smith & Lamar. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Page The Sea King Race 9 CHAPTER II. "Come and See" 24 CHAPTER III. Among the Prophets 38 CHAPTER IV. The Methodist Proconsul 57 CHAPTER V. Writing the Constitution 71 CHAPTER VI. An Intercalary Period 89 CHAPTER VII. Counseling the Rulers 102 CHAPTER VIII. A Manifold Stewardship 114 CHAPTER IX. An Effective Protest 129 CHAPTER X. Doubly Called 152 (3) 4 Life of Joshua Soule. CHAPTER XI. Page . Four Times Four 170 CHAPTER XII. The New World's Messenger to the Old 192 CHAPTER XIII. Where Two Seas Met 208 CHAPTER XIV. Cavalier and Puritan 233 CHAPTER XV. The Master in Israel 258 CHAPTER XVI. The Evening Bell 273 THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE. The illustrious man whose life story is written through the pages of this volume expired on March 6, 1867, now somewhat more than three and forty years ago. There has been no time since his death that his biography was not a desideratum. As a testimony to the truth and power of Christianity, the orderly record of such a life could not but have a large use. The sec- ular community is entitled to be put in possession of the facts attending the manifestation of so marked a personality. The inspirational value of his example to young men of serious moods and living ideals is too considerable to be determined by the ordinary means of reckoning. To the great religious body with which he was identified—a cardinal and ever-expanding force in the life of the republic—the record of his words and choosings is of surpassing significance. In his proper and historic person he represents a large element of the past of the Methodist Church in the South and is a deathless pledge of the purposefulness and sincerity of its future. Nor is this view of the serviceableness of the book of his deeds a recent discovery; it is a view that has been held since the day on which he was caught away from the sight of his people. Why, then, has his story remained so long unwritten? Nobody is better qualified than this writer to say that the august subject itself is one calculated to deter the most confident, nor would this pen have attempted on its own initiative a theme so high ; only in obedience to an official command has it been dipped in these (s) 6 Life of Joshua Soule. ethereal fires. As the reader pursues the narrative through its course of nearly a century, other reasons why this service was not undertaken by an earlier bi- ographer will appear. It is not necessary that these reasons be mentioned here. But perhaps the chief de- terrent for these nearly fifty years past has been the ever-remembered interdict which the great rabbi him- self published to posterity. Stronger than the senti- ment of a whole nation, stronger than its wish and judgment as to what is fit, have been the words which guard in their provincial rest the bones of the great Shakespeare. In his climacteric utterance before the General Conference of 1844—an utterance whose force was to stamp meaning and potency upon an epoch now but fairly begun—Bishop Soule said : "I want no man to write my epitaph. I will write it myself. I want no man to write and publish my life. I will do that myself so far as I think it may be necessary for the in- terests of posterity or for the benefit of the Church of God." Bold indeed had been the contemporary or near contemporary who could so far construe that injunc- tion into the fine frenzy of a moment of haste as to en- ter unauthorized upon an ordering of the deeds and days of that self-administered life. But there came a time when, under the urgency of the General Confer- ence, Bishop Soule so far modified the terms of his in- terdict as to consent to have his story told as a side light to that of his long-departed coadjutor, Bishop McKendree. When, however, the biographer elect fal- tered before the uninitiated task, he, for his part and with unconcealed satisfaction, canceled the obligation, leaving the injunction undissolved. The Author s Preface. 7 But the time has come, lest much fair fruit of truth and faith, much grace and loyalty and courage, much glory of Christly manhood perish in oblivion—the time has come that the details of this life, so far as they can be recovered, should be set in orderly array. This I have sought with industry, patience, and, I trust, a be- coming reverence to do ; and I have been at almost ev- ery stage of my investigation pleased to find that the materials to be commanded were more abundant than I had been led to expect. Some of the facts and doc- uments which I have been able to retrieve from immi- nent oblivion and introduce into this narrative as parts of its vital substance are of the greatest value to the Church, and I confidently believe will be of lasting in- terest to the students of Methodist history. The Church whose servant I have humbly conceived myself to be in an especial sense in this work must find in the history of its greatest Bishop, though but too imper- fectly written here, a character the completeness of whose self-confirmatory testimony has been but half suspected, as also an incentive that can but largely af- fect its future plans and spirit. Again protesting a sense of insufficiency that has burdened me through all the months in which I have been employed in this work, I submit it to the judgment of my brethren and to the household of the people called Methodists and, indeed, to those of every house- hold who seek for that which is kingly in human flesh. H. M. Du Bose. April 15, 1910. LIFE OF JOSHUA SOULE. CHAPTER I. The Sea King Race. Heraldries in general are assets of doubtful ap- praisement, but are not without consideration, even in republics. The disposition to improvise an ancestry, or else to improve the one in hand until it reaches a de- sired rank, is so nearly universal that one is justified in counting it a human trait. America, no less than the Old World, has its points of starting out in this matter. Legion is the name of the genealogical romances that refer to the stocks of the Pilgrims and the Cavaliers, and not without temptation and reason. Rugged, hu- manlike, and yet unworldly on the one part and high- born, humanlike, and honor-loving on the other were those Plymouth and Virginia forbears who verily did begin to people the wilderness and the lines of whose descendants run to-day through the augmenting Amer- ican multitudes like veins of silver through the rocks. Amongst the names of "the forty-one male passen- gers and heads of families" that came over in the May- flower appears that of George Soule, as may be seen by any one who consults the list of those worthies pre- served at Plymouth. From this George Soule descend- ed a numerous progeny represented not only in many parts of New England, but in almost every section of the republic. The individuals of this descent are said (9) 10 Life of Joshua Soule. to be marked everywhere by a striking family likeness, the persistence of some far-off ethnic type. Bishop Joshua Soule was a lineal descendant of the Pilgrim father. The village in the low-lying shore lands of Maine where the great Methodist leader was born was scarcely two days' sail from the sandy beach where the feet of his Pilgrim ancestor first touched the soil of America. The early New England race of Soules were sea kings—skippers of whaling and fishing vessels or masters of merchant ships that braved the mid-At- lantic. The second generation settled about the shores of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket Island, in the open face of the surf. They took to the sea as by in- stinct. The spray was in their hair, and the salt was in their blood. The deep was their affinity. Their very virtues were oceanlike—resistless, unconfined. Cour- age and candor were in their hearts. On the sea they welcomed the storm, and on the land they turned not back from any purpose or enterprise. The persistence of the seafaring life in the choice of their generations was not fortuity, nor is the reference of their physical and temperamental qualities to the blood and heredity of the sea kings either fanciful or accommodated. The Soules of both the South of Scot- land and North of England, dwellers about the Tweed, as well as those of France, were Normans of the Nor- mans. Their ancestral blood ran red in the veins of those viking lords through whose prowess Rollo, the Norwegian, in the tenth century established himself on the northern shores of France. From Rollo and his vikings were descended those mighty dukes and their The Sea King Race. n feudal lords who conquered England and gave to it new blood and the capacity for a new faith.