lead the faith of the endangered to confidence and rest.

This condition continued through all the year 1848, and the effects of it went much further forward in the history of the church on the coast. It was really a most exigent era in the history of Oregon in all respects, though its story belongs to the general rather than to the missionary history of the country.

:

XX.

MISSION CONFERENCE ORGANIZED.

P to the General Conference of 1848, Oregon

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had been considered a foreign mission and administered as such. During the session of that body in May of that year in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania an order was passed authorizing the Board of Bishops to organize, during the quadrennium, an "Oregon and California Mission Conference." Its boundaries were supposed to include all the United States territory west of the Rocky Mountains and extending coastwise from the southern line of British America southward to the northern line of Mexico. Geographically it included all of the present States of California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and a large part of Montana. Actually it only included a few settlements in the Willamette Valley, and three or four specified points in California.

In the spring of 1849 Bishop Waugh, to whom the Episcopal supervision of the work had been committed, wrote a very minute letter of "Instructions" to Rev. William Roberts, the Superinten.. dent of the Mission Conference, directing its or

ganization under the rule adopted by the General Conference. In conformity with these instructions as many of those who were entitled to a place on the roll of the conference and were within reach, gathered in the chapel of the Oregon Institute in Salem on the 5th day of September, 1849, for its organization in due and proper form. When the roll of the Conference was made up it was found that William Roberts of the New Jersey Conference, David Leslie of the Providence Conference, Alvan F. Waller of the Genesse Conference, James H. Wilbur of the Black River Conference, Isaac Owen of the Indiana Conference, and William Taylor of the Baltimore Conference, constituted the "Oregon and California Mission Conference;" two in California and four in Oregon. Will the reader scan that list again? It is short; six names only. Measured by numbers it is one of the smallest lists that ever stood for an organized conference in Methodism. Measured by character, by ability, by power to accomplish, it is one of the mightiest lists that ever stood at the head of church or empire between the eastern and western seas. Culture, eloquence, solid judgment, perseverance, bold and intense evangelism, true statesmanship vere as fully represented in the character and lives of these six men as in the lives of any

other six men whose association at the beginning of an era of which they were the type in the history of Methodism. All are historic. One, at least, became the widest and best known evangelist of the church of Christ in all its ages, and is lingering yet, just fifty years since the date of this gathering, so insignificant in numbers, yet so august in the power and prophecy of their personalities and purposes, under the golden skies of that same California where his tall manhood began its resplendent career. One dislikes to turn away from the transfiguring retrospect, for it so warms the heart to count one's self in the genealogy of such a magnificent fatherhood.

This was the list of membership. But Owen and Taylor were not present, as their work was in California, nearly a thousand miles distant from the seat of the conference.

On the organization of the Conference with William Roberts in the chair, James H. Wilbur was elected secretary. William Helm, a located elder from the Kentucky Conference, was readmitted. J. L. Parrish, who had been received on trial in the Genesse Conference in 1848, was recognized as a probationer in the Conference, and J. E. Parrott, John McKinney and James O. Raynor were admitted on trial.

The statistics reported to the conference were as follows: Oregon City, 30 members and 6 probationers; Salem circuit, 109 members and 25 probationers; Clatsop, 8 members and I probationer; an aggregate of 348 members and 6 probationers. Fourteen local preachers were reported, and a missionary collection of $141 had been taken. There were 3 churches; one at Oregon City, one at Salem, and one on Yamhill circuit. There were 9 Sabbath schools, with 261 scholars. These constituted the totals of Methodist Episcopal statistics on the Pacific Coast on the 5th day of September, 1849. No reports were made from California. Three subjects of interest as furnishing a clue to the thought of the body in regard to the future of the work of the church on the coast were acted upon, namely, a movement towards the selfsupport of the church; the organization of a Missionary Society, and the adoption of the “Oregon Institute" as the educational institution of the body. Thus these men of large purposes and clear and far outlook began at this very first session of the Mission Conference to outline work for the ages. The body remained in session three days, and on the 8th of September adjourned with the announcement of the appointments by Superintendent Roberts: