Preparing to Die [pp. 205]

PREPARING TO DIE.
moved to his carriage by friendly hands, to travel
over the continent, preaching occasionally, overseeing the interests of the Church, and aiding, by his
counsel and advice, his associates and the preachers in the prudent and efficient discharge of their
official duties. In the summer of 1824, after having attended the General conference at Baltimore,
he made an extensive tour over the Alleghany
Mountains to the Ohio river, across the country
from Wheeling to Sandusky on Lake Erie, thence
south through the central portions of Ohio to Shelbyville in Kentucky, and west through Indiana
and Illinois to tlie Mississippi, and again south to
Nashville. In 1828, after the adjournment of the
General conference at Pittsburg, he made an extensive tour through Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia,
South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia.
Having visited the Churches, so far as his health
admitted, all along this western and southern tour,
he attended the annual conferences at Baltimore
and at Philadelphia, and then returned south-west
to Nashville.
In the autumn of 1830 he started from Nashville,
with the intention of making a tour through all
the southern and most of the northern Atlantic
states, and of arriving at Philadelphia in the spring
of 1832, to attend the General conference. He succeeded in reaching the seat of the Holston conference, in East Tennessee, near the North Carolina
line, but was so prostrated by the journey as tb be
wholly unable to attend the conference. Being
strongly urged by his friends to abandon his Atlantic tour, and to return by slow and easy stages
to Nashville, he submitted, though, it is said, he
wept; yes, the great, the good M'Kendree wept,
when he found himself compelled by disease to
be borne, like a disabled soldier, from the field.
He feared that he should become useless, and a
burden rather than a blessing to the Church.
Having succeeded, though with many difficulties
and much suffering, in crossing the Cumberland
Mountains, he spent the winter on the banks of
the Cumberland river, near Nashville. In the
spring of 1831 he again started for the north. He
spent the summer in Kentucky and Ohio. In the
autumn he crossed the Alleghanies, and spent the
winter in Baltimore. In the spring of 1832 he
proceeded to Philadelphia, to attend the General
conference. On his arrival in Philadelphia, he was
too feeble to attend regularly the sessions of the
conference. Occasionally he would be seen feebly
walking up the aisle, and taking a seat by the side
of his colleagues; but he could remain in the room
only a short time. His last visit to the conference
room was made the day before the adjournment.
Having remained as long as his strength would
admit, he arose to retire to his lodgings. He was
but too conscious of his approaching dissolution
ever to expect to meet his brethren again in another
General conference. Leaning on his staff, his tall
and manly form bent with age and infirmity, his
eyes suffused with tears, his voice faltering with
emotion, he exclaimed, "My brethren and children,
love one another!" Then spreading forth his hands,
and raising his eyes to heaven, he pronounced,
in impressive accents, the apostolic benediction.
Then slowly and sadly he left the house, to return
no more.
By slow and wearisome journeys, being obliged,
during the latter part of the route, to travel lying
on a bed in his carriage, he reached Nashville in
the autumn of 1832. During the year 1833 and
1834 he occasionally ventured on short excursions
through parts of Western Tennessee, and on one
occasion he passed in steamboat down the Cumberland, the Ohio, and the Mississippi, to New
Orleans.
On the 23d of November, 1834, he preached, at
the Methodist Church in Nashville, his last sermon.
From this time he continued to decline till his
death, which occurred at the house of his brother,
near Nashville, on the 5th of March, 1835.
As this eminent soldier of the cross, this captain
of the hosts of the Lord, this leader of the armies
of the faithful, was standing, at the age of nearly
fourscore years, on the last hights of earth, looking
back on his heroic career for half a century, looking
around on the spoils he had won from sin, and
looking forward along the dark and perilous way
to that "undiscovered country, from whose bourn
no traveler returns," he cried out, in accents of
confidence, "All is well!" As he descended to the
valley of the shadow of death, and stood looking
on the "land of darkness as darkness itself, and of
the shadow of death, without any order, and where
the very light is as darkness," he cried again, in
tones of faith, "All is well!" As he plunged into
the deep and dark shadows, and stood by that
lethean stream, whose oblivious waters all of earth
must cross, his voice again was heard resounding
through the gloom, "All is well!" When, descending to the brink, he had committed himself to the
stream, and the deep, dark, and returnless tide was
bearing him on, the words again arose above the
roar of the waters, "All is well!" Faintly yet
sweetly the echo of those words, from the hill of
the heavenly Zion, seems yet to come back to the
children of earth, "All is well!"
PREPARING TO DIE.
THE amiable and gifted Jane Taylor, the last
time she took up her pen-it was on the day preceding her death-wrote as follows: "O, my dear
friends, if you knew what thoughts I have now,
you would see, as I do, that the whole business of
life is preparation for death."
One who had lived more than fifty years said,
as the hand of Death was upon him, "I have
all my days been getting ready to live, and now
I must die."
How much time is spent in preparing to live!how little in preparing to die!
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