I'm about to import the chapter on Rev Learner Blackman from Rev James B. Finley's book on early Methodist Rev's. His sister,and husband,lead the 1803 Jersey colony to Old Bethel,and,1815,was followed by his brother,my James Blackman. Learner drowned just after a visit with them,and a Methodist conference meeting in Cincinnati. 1970's,the Wesleyn Methodist church on East 5th,downtown Cincinnati, was destroyed so that Procter and Gamble could build their new head quarters towers. And I have a newspaper article of Rev Learner Blackman's tombstone being found beneath the church floor, and picture of same. Downtown Cincinnati had [has?] for years,a private club called the L.B. Harrison club. The L.B. was Learner Blackman. The Harrison portion,my Mon said,was the 2 US President's Harrison's. Several other boys were named for Learner Blackman. And many for the ecentric Rev Lorenzo Dow,with whom Blackman rode the Natchez Trace about 1803. I don't agree entirely with the following,but as Rev Finley wrote,1847- CHAPTER 14 LEARNER BLACKMAN The subject of our present sketch was born in the state of New Jersey; but in regard to the exact date of his birth we have no opportunity of knowing. He was descended from pious parents, and many members of the family, at different periods of life, became religious. Our acquaintance with brother Blackman commenced in the year 1808. He was a brother-in-law of the Rev. John Collins, through whose instrumentality he was brought into the kingdom of grace, and made an heir of salvation. The personal appearance of Blackman was prepossessing, and impressed one, in looking upon his tall, slender form, and dark, flashing eye, that he had genius and eloquence; but when engaged in conversation, the brilliance and fascination of his manners would demonstrate that fact in a remarkable degree. To judge of his eloquence, however, he must be heard; and none who were permitted to listen to his silvery voice, when engaged in description, or its impassioned strains when in declamation, would go away without being impressed with his power over the heart. He may have taken the pathetic Collins for his model as a pulpit orator. Of this, however, we can not speak assuredly; but whoever was his model, or whether he had any that he copied after, one thing is certain, he was an eloquent divine. We have been favored with a description of western preachers by one who has lived to witness what he calls the various phases through which the pulpit style has passed in his day. Among the, first class of Methodist preachers there was a marked, if not an exclusive attention and devotion to doctrinal preaching. In all their sermons the distinctive doctrines of Methodism occupied the chief place. Repentance, faith, justification, sanctification, the possibility of falling from grace, with the doctrine of the atonement as contradistinguished from the Calvinian view, and occasional brushes at Church polity and ordinances as held by other denominations, formed the staples of the sermons of these early preachers. But not only was Calvinism attacked; Arianism, Universalism, and other forms of error were made feel the lash of these sturdy pioneers of the faith of Wesley. The next class which immediately succeeded these, in a great measure lost sight of polemic theology, and turned their attention to the graces of oratory. Their sermons were profusely interlarded with poetry, and some of the preachers possessed a peculiar penchant for blank verse. We recollect to have heard it said of one of the preachers of this class, that "he would break a square any time to make a jingle." Nicely-rounded periods, beauty of expression, and fine, rhetorical flourishes, were regarded as of more importance than orthodoxy itself. Still, however, there were exceptions to this general rule, as also in regards to the first class. This class had its day, and was followed by a third, and succeeding one, whose characteristic consisted in a didactic style of preaching. Their sermons, though not elaborately ornamented with poetry and flights of fancy, were, nevertheless, illustrated, from beginning to end, with anecdotes and incidents, some of which were so appropriate, that they are told by preachers of this class with thrilling effect, even to this day. A well authenticated anecdote or incident, in the hands of a skillful preacher, will frequently accomplish more in arresting the attention and stirring up the soul to action, than the most powerful declamation itself. We shall have occasion, in another part of this book, to relates some of these. This peculiar style of preaching, however, did not last always. It served its allotted time and gave way, not to a new class, but to the revival of an old one; and it seems that it did not stop in a medium in regard to its predecessors, but bounded back to the old stock, and revived the good old doctrinal style, mixing it up, however, with a little more of the, historical and exegetical. How far this applies to the Methodist pulpit of the present day, your old friend will leave some graphic delineator of the times to describe. We do not profess to wield such a pen as would claim for us the qualification to enter upon the task of describing the Methodist pulpit of the present day, though were we to assume it we would not be disposed to consider it as being marked by any one striking characteristic distinguishing it from the pulpits of other denominations. We believe the Methodist pulpit to have vastly more learning at the present time than at any former period; but whether it possesses more zeal, and devotion, and wisdom, such as is adequate to win souls to Christ, is a question we shall not at present discuss, only so far as to say that our Church seems, in the hands of the present ministry, to be enlarging her borders beyond all precedent, in every section of the country. But we ask pardon of our readers for having digressed so far from our subject, and shall resume our sketch of the young and talented Blackman. At the early age of nineteen he commenced his itinerant life. He was admitted on trial in the year 1800, and sent to Kent circuit. After this he traveled in regular succession Dover, Russell, New River, and Lexington circuits. Concerning his labors in these respective fields we have no information. In the year 1805 he was sent as a missionary to Natchez, thus passing rapidly over a vast extents of country. The new field of labor to which he was destined was then the farthest west. To reach his appointment it was necessary for him to travel through a wilderness seven or eight hundred miles in extent, untenanted, except by savages and beasts of prey. But no, there were worse men than savages and beasts of prey -- more cruel than the panther. We allude to those Indian traders who, to rob the red man of his skins and furs, would give them ardent spirits to drink and make them drunk, so that they would, in turn, rob and murder the traveler. It is the example of the white man that gave to the Indian character its desperate savageness; and as an old soldier and statesman, well acquainted with the history and policy of the nation, the other day remarked in Congress, "In every treaty that has been violated by the Indians the white man has been the aggressor." Nothing daunted, our young hero missionary started on his journey. For fourteen days and nights he traveled alone and unattended through the wilderness. At night he would hitch his horse, and taking his saddlebags for a pillow and his blanket for a covering, he would lie down in the woods, commending himself to the keeping of his God. At length he arrived at the place of his destination. Methodism had scarcely gained an existence in the place. Yet there were a few who had been awakened and converted to God through the labors of Rev. Tobias Gibson, and they were struggling to keep alive the spark of grace in the midst of the superabounding wickedness. Notwithstanding there were some reputable persons friendly disposed to religion and morals, yet it was a lamentable fact that the vast majority were totally bankrupt in morals, and their proud hearts and vicious lives made them decided opponents of the Gospel of Christ; but their opposition was more strictly arrayed against those who preached it. At one time, when a plain, unlettered man was preaching, the wicked portion of the audience had great merriment on account of his ignorance of correct language. It seems that they had set themselves up to be judges, not hearers, of the word. We have such hearers at the present day. They will make a man offend for a word, and they will tax their shallow brains so much to recollect that, such is their anxiety to criticize, that if one should ask them about the division of the subject, or even the text itself, their feeble brains can not recall it. They are unable to hold but one idea at a time. At one time the grammar of this preacher was at fault, at another time his rhetoric, and then his logic, besides his gestures were awkward, etc. They did all they could to hedge up the poor man's way, and said he was not competent to preach. However, he was not to be intimidated by the laugh and sneer of his ungodly hearers. On one of his visits he took for his text the following: "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell!" Then said he in tones of thunder, "Gentlemen, is that grammar?" he was divinely assisted in his sermon, and having greatly the advantage of his censors, who sat as if taken by surprise, he kept it by pouring upon them passage after passage of divine denunciation upon the wicked, frequently asking the annoying question, "Gentlemen, is that grammar?" So successful was that effort, that ever afterward there was a studied silence in regard to the preacher's defects, and his grammar never afterward was called in question. In the midst of such society young Blackman commenced his labors in that distant region. He was a stranger in a strange land, far from home and kindred. There were then no missionary funds to aid the itinerant in planting the Gospel in destitute places, and all the support upon which he could rely was the naked promise, "Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world." He shared largely in the labors, privations, and reproaches incident to his calling, as a minister; but he realized the fulfillment of the promise in the presence of his Master, and the consolations of his grace. Occasionally the bright and happy scenes of home would flit across his memory, and the temptation to return to the loved ones he had left would be presented to his mind. "Surely," would the tempter say, "Your God is not a hard master, and he does not require you to preach the Gospel to these who will neither receive nor support it." But "The vows of God were on him, And he dare not turn aside to Pluck terrestrial fruit, or play with Earthy flowers." What if they did not receive him; they also rejected his Master, and the servant must not be greater than his Lord; so in faith, and patience, and hope he labored on in the service of his King and Savior. In the year 1806 he was appointed presiding elder of the Mississippi district. Now laborers were brought into the field, which, while it proved a source of mutual encouragement, enabled them to present a stronger front to the enemy. The strongholds of sin and infidelity were attacked; errors, incrusted by time and fortified by custom, were destroyed; prejudices, the most inveterate, were driven away; and the light of the Gospel began to shed its cheering beams upon the long night of darkness which had reigned. Sinners were awakened and converted to God, houses of worship were erected, Churches organized, and the institutions of religion established; in fine, "the wilderness and solitary places were made glad, and the desert to rejoice and blossom as the rose," through the instrumentality of these faithful, self-denying heralds of the cross. In all the bounds of his present field of labor, when he first entered upon his work, there were but seventy-four whites and sixty-two colored members; and after three years labor he was permitted to see embraced in the same field an entire district, with five circuits and a large increase in the membership. But the itinerant system required him to cultivate other fields, and he left the lowlands of Mississippi, where he was beloved and respected by a numerous host of friends, whom God had raised up as the fruits of his labors, and went to Tennessee to preside on the Holston district. Here he continued two years, and from thence was removed to the Cumberland district, where he also remained two years, and at the expiration of which time he was placed, by the authorities of the Church, on the Nashville district. On all these fields he was in labors more abundant, and God crowned those labors with success, by making them effectual in bringing into the Church a rich harvest of souls. Perhaps under the labors of no one, in his day, were the borders of Zion more enlarged in the lengthening of her cords and the strengthening of her stakes. In the year 1815 he was reappointed to the Cumberland district. In the mean time he had married; and desirous of visiting his relations in Ohio, among whom was brother Collins, who had married his sister, he took a few days of spare time for that purpose. He was again at his home and surrounded by the scenes of his youth -- surrounded by the friends of other days, whose presence called up hallowed associations. After enjoying their society for a short time -- for he could spare but a little while to turn aside and greet his friends -- he bade them adieu and started for the field of his labors. Many tears were shed at parting, but none knew that they were the tears of a last farewell. None knew that in a few hours that tall, graceful form would be cold in death, and that dark but kindly eye, which beamed with such happiness, would close its light on earth forever. But the ways of God are inscrutable; "Impervious shadows hide The mystery of heaven." The minister and his young, blooming bride, on their return, reached Cincinnati. Here they must cross the Ohio; but no proud steamer, as now, with its spacious guards spread out to the beach, is waiting to receive the passengers and ferry them over. A crazy craft, with sails and paddles, in that olden time, was all the means possessed for keeping up a communication between Ohio and Kentucky. Alighting from the carriage, the horses were driven into the flat, and it was pushed from the shore. Brother Blackman stood in front of his horses to hold them. When all was clear, and the boat was a short distance from the shore, the ferryman commenced hoisting his sails, the sight or flapping of which frightened the horses. Blackman made every effort to hold them, but before assistance could be had they plunged overboard, taking him with them. He had a strong arm and was a good swimmer; but, alas! neither strength nor skill can avail when the work of man is done. Till that hour he was immortal, but the time had come for the termination of his labors and his release from earth. He sank to rise no more a living man, till Jesus shall wake his saints from the sleep of death and call them up to heaven. Thus ended the laborious life of the young and talented Learner Blackman; and though the waters of the river, which roll yonder, quenched his life and drowned his dying words, yet we believe he sleeps in Jesus.