There can be little doubt that Bishop Asbury’s physical condition had a great deal to do with his extraordinary piety, for it is true that most of the religious leaders have had many things wrong with their bodies, and that the sicker a man is, the more religious he is likely to be. A man who is healthy and normal mentally and physically seldom becomes fanatically religious. True, healthy men sometimes become monks and preachers, but except in rare instances such men are comparatively moderate in their views. And generally they do themselves very well in a material way, especially if they become monks.
It was once my journalistic duty to make a daily visit to a Franciscan monastery in Quincy, Illinois, and the good brothers remain a high light in a somewhat drab period. Jovial and pot-bellied, they were veritable Friar Tucks in brown bathrobes, extraordinarily hearty eaters and drinkers, and not even at pre-Volstead banquets have I ever received as much free food and drink as from the good Franciscans. It was easy to see why such men as these went in for religion, but it is not so easy to understand the motive of the Protestant minister. The earthly rewards are nothing to speak of, and what with evolution and one thing and another, he can no longer be certain that there is a Heaven to go to.
The Franciscans were fascinating spectacles as they padded on their sandaled feet through the gardens of the monastery and along the graveled paths that led to the church next door. I became particularly fond of Brother John—I think they called him Brother John, anyhow I did—who might have stepped from the pages of Boccaccio. He was the press representative of the monastery; he always answered my ring, and through the bars of the door I could see him, waddling genially down the corridor, puffing and rattling his keys. It always seemed to me that Brother John was miscast; doubtless he lived a happy and carefree life, though perhaps overly cluttered with prayer, but I thought it a great pity that he could not have been an alderman. And what a bartender he would have made! His paunch would have elected him a City Father, and his fund of stories would have got him a job in any first-class barroom. But possibly he has reformed and is now leading some such useful life.
Brother John made but one effort to convert me and induce me to join the Catholic Church, and when I said “Bunk!” he stopped immediately and said that inasmuch as I would undoubtedly go to Hell he would still take advantage of my reportorial capacity to get a little publicity for the Church before that unfortunate event occurred. But there was no tolerance in the attitude of my reverend relative, the Bishop. His outstanding characteristic was intolerance; it shows in a hundred different acts of his career; he was arbitrary and domineering. Anyone who was well dressed or who bore any outward signs of prosperity was offensive in his sight; he preached the gospel of poverty and self-denial, and believed that all pleasure was wicked and that self-inflicted suffering was heavenly bliss. He was imperious and scornful of restraint and opposition; what he said was true he thought was true, and that was all there was to it. When men differed with him they were wrong, and he had no disposition to reopen any question which he had once settled in his mind. He believed that he was appointed by God to rule the Methodists in America, and that he was a legitimate successor of the Apostles. In 1801 he wrote:
“I will tell the world what I rest my authority on; first, divine authority; second, seniority in America; third, the election of the General Conference; fourth, my ordination by Thomas Coke, Philip William Otterbein, Richard Whatcoat and Thomas Vasey; fifth, because the signs of an Apostle have been seen in me.”
Divine authority and the signs of an Apostle!
Yet his steadfast belief that he was so appointed was one of the secrets of his power and influence, which were greater than that of any other churchman of his time. We are even yet feeling their effects, and we shall continue to feel them. There seems to be no hope, what with Boards of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals and similar intolerant activities, that the Methodist Church will ever become more worthy of respect than it was in his day. Indeed, it grows worse and worse.
Another prime factor in Bishop Asbury’s extraordinary piety, as can be seen by the entries in his Journals and by a study of the biographies written by other clergymen, was his terrific mental turmoil. Throughout his whole life his mind whirled like a pinwheel; he was constantly in what, back in Missouri, we used to call a “terrible state.” About the time he began to be ill he started referring to himself as “Poor Francis,” and thereafter that was the dominant note of his life. He pitied himself because of his physical ills, and then dosed himself with horrid medicines, and with bleedings and blisterings, making his ailments more painful and himself an object of greater pity. He tortured himself thus physically, and flogged his mind with constant thoughts of his unworthiness; he was continually groveling before God, beseeching the Almighty to put temptation in his path. These extracts taken at random from his Journals show the trend of his thought:
“I do not sufficiently love God nor live by faith.
“I must lament that I am not perfectly crucified with God.