Men were dying all around him, and they must come into his church. They had other denominations close at hand, but they, in his estimation, would not do. The Methodist Episcopal Church was a necessity for sinners, therefore it must be planted in all parts of the land. No sacrifice was too great for the accomplishment of this object. He has lived to see those sacrifices rewarded, to see his church one of the most numerous and powerful religious bodies in the country.
Being so zealous in behalf of his own church, it is not strange that he should have clashed frequently with other denominations. He got along very well with the majority, but with the Baptists and Universalists he was always on the war path. The latter especially excited his uncompromising hostility, and he never failed to attack their doctrines with all his forces wherever he encountered them. "I have thought," says he, "and do still think, if I were to set out to form a plan to contravene the laws of God, to encourage wickedness of all kinds, to corrupt the morals and encourage vice, and crowd hell with the lost and the wailings of the damned, the Universalist plan should be the plan, the very plan that I