Ix South Carolina. 585 



The people after awhile began to feel some attraction to Meth- 

 odist preachers ; but when they first came into that country (Barn- 

 well District in the Edisto Circuit), they were shunned with as much 

 care as you would shun a body of Federal soldiers. As far as the 

 world had any thing to say on the subject, it was decidedly against 

 hearing any thing in the form of a Methodist preacher ; and the 

 Church — what little Church there was in the country — was, if -pos- 

 sible, more vehement in its denunciations of Methodism and Meth- 

 odist preachers than the world itself. But notwithstanding all these 

 remarkable circumstances, the brethren continued from 1801 until I 

 became a traveling preacher myself, to perforin their regular rounds 

 on the circuit, which continued to be a six weeks' circuit until I en- 

 tered the traveling connection. The first time the people saw any 

 thing Pentecostal was (1802) under the ministry of the Eev. Thomas 

 Darley, a powerful preacher. When he had sung and prayed, and 

 Avhen he had taken his text, he stated to the congregation that if his 

 feelings did not deceive him they would see strange things that day. 

 No man or woman present had ever heard of any one being stricken 

 down, or led to cry for mercy as from the belly of hell itself. Sure 

 enough, as Darley was preaching, my father, with all his stern man- 

 hood, commenced shaking like a leaf in the wind, and down he fell 

 upon the floor ; and others fell until I could have made a carpet of 

 weeping sinners. After two years' seeking after it, on that day I 

 experienced converting grace. The news of what had taken place 

 flew all over the country, and in a single day the country was armed 

 against Methodist preachers, as far as having any thing to do with 

 them was concerned. And, after a great many grave counsels, they 

 came to the conclusion that the power that attended Methodist 

 preaching was made up of something that was magical, or wizardly, 

 and they could not think of any thing else so likely as that the 

 preacher was supplied with some strange powders, which, he had 

 wrapped up in his handkerchief, and that during the exercises he 

 gave it a flirt, and these powders fell on the men and women pres- 

 ent. One individual, a Uuiversalist, expressed himself on this wise : 

 " If it were raining rattlesnakes, and a Methodist preacher was to 

 come to my door, he should not enter the house." I never read St. 

 Paul's Epistle, in which he points to the good fruits of the gospel 

 as evidence of its divinity, without thinking of the introduction of 

 Methodism into Barnwell District as a case in point. The preju- 

 dices of the people were worn out and extirpated by what God did 

 through the instrumentality of these itinerant preachers. As to the 



