The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 4

VIII. Smith Dismissed by Maine Ecclesiastics for Beliefs

Note another case. THOMAS SMITH, ³⁵ Methodist minister for about twenty-four years under various Maine appointments, was said not only to have preached to but to have visited, prayed with, and gathered more members into his church than any other minister in the Maine Conference. He was unusually studious, spending much time in prayer and study that others spent in sleep. Christ was ever his grand theme. Obtaining a copy of Miller’s Lectures, he compared them carefully and critically with the Bible, and became “thoroughly convinced” of the imminence of the advent of Christ, although he was not altogether certain as to the “precise time” feature. He was conscientious about adopting any point that he felt had not been fully demonstrated by evidence. But he was sure on the nearness of the advent, and held that the end of all things was at hand. This quickened every faculty of his soul. PFF4 778.2

Smith began preaching the facts as he saw them, and won ninety converts on his circuit in 1842. In 1843 he was stationed at Fayette, a hard area, and there came under the restrictions of the “Bath Resolutions.” Having great reverence for his ecclesiastical superiors and the Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal church government, he felt perplexed and crippled. God was blessing his preaching, and sinners were being converted, even though he felt he was “gagged” as to preaching the second advent. But the question arose, Was it right for him to bring those converts to a church whose presiding officers forbade her preachers by church discipline from preaching and teaching the most solemn and important truth now due the church? He prayed and wept over his problem. Then, after a severe struggle, he surrendered his credentials to the presiding elder, and so was no longer responsible to the conference for his future acts. ³⁶ It was a crisis hour in his personal experience. PFF4 778.3

Smith continued to preach and to baptize converts, but now without initiating them into the Methodist church. So the storm broke. The next conference, at Bangor, he was brought to trial. Smith was exhorted by past associations and future contingencies to “give up the whole thing.” But more—he was threatened with the dire results of leaving a large, popular, and affluent church whose funds were ample to care for her preachers in sickness and old age, in contrast with going out into an unpopular religious movement, and a “deluded and unorganized people.” PFF4 779.1

But to him convictions of conscience and truth were at stake, and direct relationship with a covenant-keeping God triumphed over worldly considerations. Smith stood firm, asking permission to speak to the conference in a confession of his faith. But the privilege that he contended was accorded to Paul in a Roman court-to speak in defense of his faith upon a doctrine which “they call heresy”—was refused him. He would not retract, and so was dismissed from the conference. He was then free to go where he might elect. This he did, preaching in Maine and Massachusetts. PFF4 779.2