CHAPTER 04 MICHAEL ELLIS

CHAPTER 4 MICHAEL ELLIS In sketching the life of this great and good man — we say great, because all true greatness must have goodness for its basis, and this he possessed in an eminent degree we regret that history furnishes us no record of the date and place of his birth, except that he was born in the state of Maryland. He was among the first that embraced religion in that state through the instrumentality of Wesley’s missionaries. The field was then white unto harvest, and laborers were much needed to gather that harvest; hence, they were thrust out in the order of God’s providence, in a way that the wisdom of the men of the present day would hardly allow to be proper. But God’s ways are not our ways, neither are God’s thoughts our thoughts. He who with "a worm can thrash the mountains," can make the feeblest instrumentality and agency accomplish the mightiest results. Thus, in the early days of Methodism, men were called to preach the Gospel, and thrust out into the field, that even the Methodist Church at the present day would object to as not possessing the necessary qualifications for such a work. Young Ellis thus called; and feeling that woe was him if he did not preach the Gospel, he commenced soon after his conversion to call sinners to repentance. In the year 1784 he was admitted on trial as a traveling preacher; and the first appointment which appears on the Minutes was the city of Baltimore. He may have been traveling some time previous to the same date, as that was the time of his appointment to Baltimore, but of this we have no information. At the same conference where Bishop Asbury was ordained to the episcopal office, he was ordained a deacon. This was in the year 1783, and the presumption is, that he was admitted in the year 1783. The next year, which was 1786, he was appointed to Frederick circuit, and the following year to Fairfax, in the state of Virginia, where he was instrumental, under God, of accomplishing much good in the enlargement of the Redeemer’s kingdom. In the year 1788, for want of that support for his family which the Church could not or would not give, he was obliged either, according to apostolic instruction, to "deny the faith and become worse than an infidel in not providing for his own," or to leave the ministry and serve tables to keep his family from starvation. One duty can never crowd out another; and his first duty being to feed and clothe his wife and children, he could not have been either called of God to preach and travel to their neglect, nor would God have blessed his ministrations while thus engaged. A great many zealous and efficient ministers of the Gospel have been compelled to close their mission on this account, throwing the responsibility upon the Church, where it properly belongs.

If they that preach the Gospel shall live of the Gospel, according to the ordination of heaven, that Church which will muzzle the ox, or, in other words, withhold its support from the minister, will be held accountable in the day of eternity, if not in time, for its gross neglect and dereliction. In the providence of God, however, such Churches are usually visited in time like those of Asia, as Churches like nations are judged in time. Does it not meet the observation of every one, that those individual Church most liberally the wants of their pastors, and engage most heartily in all benevolent enterprises, are the most blessed with spiritual prosperity? With what heart, let us ask can a minister of the gospel dispense the word of life and distribute spiritual things to a Church full of riches and increased in goods, when his heart is borne down with care and anxiety about the next meal for his poor wife and children? It would take a faith greater than Abraham’s to enable him, to pour forth bright, glad streams from such a troubled fountain. We know it is said, "Let him trust in God. He ought not to be anxious about what he shall eat or wear. His treasure is in heaven; and, beside all this, his great Master had not where to lay his head." All this is well enough, but God will not send the ravens to feed him, nor command the stones to be made bread, when there is a Church abundantly able to supply his wants, and God has commanded that Church to give the laborer his hire.

Thus it was with Michael Ellis, and thus it has been with hundreds in the ministry of the Methodist Church. Finding that he must look out for himself he removed, with his family, to Ohio, and settled in Belmont county. Here he went to work with his own hands, toiling hard all week and going out on the Sabbath to preach the Gospel to the destitute in his neighborhood. By his own industry he was enabled to rear a large and interesting family; and one of his sons is now, and has been for the last twenty years, a traveling preacher in the Ohio conference.

It was not till the year 1809 that we became acquainted with this father in Israel. His influence for God and religion, like that of the patriarch Abraham in Mamre, spread all over the country where he resided, and is felt even to this day. His family having grown up, so that by his oversight and industrious, frugal management of his amiable and pious wife he could see his way again opened to enter the itinerant field, he accordingly, on the first of November, 1810, was readmitted into the traveling connection, and appointed to West Wheeling circuit, in the bounds of which he had labored for many years as a local preacher with great acceptability and usefulness. The next year was returned to the same circuit, but such was his increasing popularity, even in the vicinity of home, that he would have been gladly received another year but for disciplinary restrictions. Some preachers soon wear out in their fields of labor, and their sermons become stale and tiresome to their hearers. Under such circumstances the congregations look with anxiety for the close of the year, when their appointments will terminate and they can have a change. Though some are disposed to think — and it may be rightly enough — that our economy, in removing preachers every two years, is calculated to produce a restlessness in the minds of the people and a desire for frequent changes, yet we know, as a general thing, that no minister who devotes himself to study, that his profiting may appear to all, being thus enabled to bring out of the well-stored treasury of his mind that rich variety which the themes of the Gospel so abundantly furnish, will be at all likely to wear out, or cause his congregation to wish for his removal at the expiration of two years. Instead of this, they become increasingly interesting, and are enabled the more effectually to adapt their discourses to their audiences, so as to give to saint and sinner their portion in due season. The desire for a change may arise, however, from other causes beside want of devotion to study. The preacher may render himself unpopular from an uncouthness or unpleasantness, not to say boorishness, of manner, or from a want of sociality or common sense in his judgment of men and things; that, though he possessed the learning of a Clarke, or the eloquence of a Whitefield, he could not, without that necessary combination of requisites in a preacher, make himself useful to the people of his charge. Every minister should study the character of his hearers; and thus, while in his ministrations he would "study to show himself approved unto God a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, giving to all their portion," he would gain favor in sight of all the people. Alas! with too many preachers all the ambition they seem to have in preparing for the pulpit, is to commit to writing or memory a few skeletons or sketches that they have taken from Simeon or Haman, which are as likely to be as full of Calvinism as anything else; and thus, as mere parrots,they "mount the pulpit with a skip," repeat their memoriter harangues, and then "skip" down again. The hungry sheep look up and are not fed.

Instead of taking their Bibles and going into their study, if they have one, and if not, to the woods, and there, by prayer and close, laborious thought, after finding a subject adapted to their hearers, study it out in all its connections and bearings, filling their minds and hearts full of the theme, and then going, baptized with the Holy Ghost, into their pulpits, or school-houses, or log-cabins, and pouring out the garnered truths with their full hearts, alas! how many have not a single thought of their own, and are the mere automata through which others speak! But, again, there are others who are so wonderfully enraptured with anything of a metaphysical or transcendental cast, that the plain, home, heart-searching truths of the Gospel are lost sight of, and, consequently, the hearers who wait upon such a ministry do not minister the good word of God." It is so festooned with the flowers of rhetoric, or scented with the phrases of metaphysics, or incased with the technicalities of logic, that the mind neither comprehends, appreciates, nor enjoys the preaching, if it may so be called. We once heard Bishop Asbury say to a class of young candidates for orders, "When you go into the pulpit, go from your closets. Leave all your vain speculations and metaphysical reasonings behind. Take with you your hearts full of fresh spring water from heaven, and preach Christ crucified and the resurrection, and that will conquer the world."

Although brother Ellis could not be called a learned man in the sciences, yet he was a Bible student, deeply versed in the science of salvation, and one of the soundest, clearest doctrinal preachers we ever heard. He studied divinity in the school of Christ, and was trained under the professorship of Wesley and Fletcher. His heart was deeply imbued with the grace of God; and having attained the fullness of the blessing of the Gospel of Christ, the perfect Love that swelled his heart rolled out to bless mankind. We doubt whether he ever preached a sermon in which he did not introduce the doctrine of Christian perfection as taught in the Bible, and preached by Wesley and Fletcher. It was the plain, old-fashioned, unvarnished doctrine of entire sanctification, without any reference whatever to the philosophy of the intellect, the emotions, and volitions; a simple faith that brought into the soul the life and love of God. One of his favorite texts, in the latter days of his ministry, was, "Jesus Christ, who is made unto us wisdom and righteousness, sanctification and redemption." His mode of treating it was, if we recollect rightly, something after this sort.

After explaining how Christ is made to the believer wisdom, he would divide his subject into three parts; namely, justification, sanctification, and eternal redemption. These doctrines he compared to a ladder, the foot of which rested on earth, and the top of which entered heaven: justification, sanctification, and redemption were the three successive rounds of this ladder, over which the soul passes in its course to heaven. He would clearly describe the doctrine of justification by showing the nature and condition thereof, and its attention by the Holy Spirit. Then he would describe the nature ad condition of sanctification, and finally what the Bible teaches in regard to redemption and glorification in heaven. He seemed to be the living impersonation of his theme, passing through all the progressive stages of his subject till its close, when he would give a shouting peroration that would make every heart feel that the preacher knew and felt whereof he spoke.

Such preaching would not be likely to tire a congregation hungering and thirsting after righteousness, and such a preacher would not be likely to wear out. His heart was fill of the love of God and, when he would pour out that heart, it was refreshing and fructifying as the "dews of heaven that descended upon the mountains of Zion, where the Lord commanded his blessing, even life for evermore." In the year 1812 he was appointed to Knox circuit, and it was a year of great labor and comfort to the old veteran of the cross. His predecessor had sown the seeds of Arianism broadcast all over the circuit, and they had taken deep root and were springing up choking the plants of evangelical piety. Six of the local preachers had embraced the error, and some of the most active and influential members had been beguiled from the faith as it is in Jesus. Such was the confusion and division occasioned by this heresy, that it seemed as if the whole circuit would be broken up unless it were speedily arrested. Ellis went to work with the sword of the Spirit, and, proclaiming the truth in love with its two-edged power, it soon separated falsehood from the pure Gospel, and soon all were enabled to discern the fallacy of Arianism and cling to the divine doctrine. In the year 1813 we were appointed to Barnesville circuit, and had the pleasure of having this eminent servant of God for our colleague. This was a year of great prosperity and blessing to the Church. The circuit, like all circuits of that day, was large, embracing part of Virginia, and lying on the waters of Duck creek, northeast of Marietta. On it there was no leading road, and nothing by which we could reach the settlements but a bridle path. The inhabitants, like all backwoods people in those days, lived by the chase; yet we have often seen in their rude log cabins as powerful exhibitions of the power of Christianity as ever we witnessed in the more refined circles of society. The fare on a great portion of this circuit was too rough for an aged man like father Ellis, and we chose to do all the work during the winter, and let him attend the appointments where the fare was better and the traveling more easy. In the spring he greatly desired to go into this wilderness portion, and to gratify him we consented. At breakfast we said, "Eat hearty, father Ellis; we fear you are going into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. You must prepare to eat raccoon, opossum, or bear meat, and, indeed, in some places you may not be able to get that." Nothing intimidated, the old soldier penetrated the wilderness, and, ere he returned, won many trophies for the cross of Jesus. In the year 1814 he was appointed to the West Wheeling circuit, and the year following to Fairfield, where he continued to do the work of an evangelist, preaching a full and free salvation to all. On this circuit lived old father Walker, the father of Rev. George W. Walker, of the Cincinnati conference; and under the labors of Ellis and his colleague Samuel Brown — the family were converted to God and joined the Church. The old gentleman was a stanch Roman Catholic, and raised his children in that faith; but there was a power in the pure, unadulterated Gospel, as preached by this venerable herald of the cross, that cut its way through the superstitions and dead forms of that corrupt Church, and brought the soul away from all priestly mediation and absolution directly to Jesus Christ, the great high-priest, for pardon and salvation. In the year 1816 he was appointed to Pickaway, and the following year reappointed. In this and all the fields of his toil, he was in labors more abundant, and many souls were gathered into the fold of Christ, being made the happy partakers of saving grace. But his work as an itinerant was done. In the year 1819 he received from the conference a superannuated relation, and continued therein, preaching whenever he was able, till his Master summoned him away from the field of his toil and conflict, to that eternal glory and reward he had so often described. He had taken up his abode in the town Rehoboth, Perry county, Ohio, and there, full of faith and the Holy Ghost, he breathed out his soul into the hands of that Savior whom living he loved, and whom dying he went to embrace forever.

Brother Ellis was a man of fine personal appearance, dignified and courteous in his manners. He was a pleasant speaker, and there was an unction attended his sermons which commended them to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. His example and influence will be felt in the Church for many years to come.