This, as has been seen, was a large and laborious circuit; it included Boehm’s Chapel and Lancaster, as well as many other places. We had hard work to get a foothold in Lancaster, and met with powerful opposition. Having no church there, we preached in the market, and those of the baser sort annoyed my colleague and myself exceedingly. Once while I was preaching, and there was some disturbance, I saw a man coming toward me from the tavern. He seemed to be full of wrath, and pressed through the crowd toward my pulpit, which was a butcher’s block, as if he intended violence. I kept on preaching, throwing out some hot shots, when suddenly he stopped, his countenance changed, and the lion became a lamb, and I was preserved from the harm he no doubt intended I should suffer. Brother Owen had tried to preach there several times, and once they so interrupted him, and even threatened him, that he bade them farewell, after telling them his skirts were clear from their blood, and he literally shook off the dust of his feet as a testimony against them. Then we abandoned the place, and for three years after no Methodist preachers visited it. It was not till 1807 I formed a class there, as will be seen in a following chapter. There was a small class earlier, but it soon died away. One of our preaching places was David Musselmen’s. He lived about seven miles from Lancaster, between that and Marietta. It was a fine family, and their house one of the choice homes the early ministers loved to find. There was something very peculiar about his conversion. He was a Pharisee; thought himself good enough, a little better than most men, and looked on experimental religion as fanaticism. One day he was in his field at work, in the summer of 1800, when a storm suddenly gathered, and the clouds were dark and lowering. His little boy was with him. He saw they would not have time to reach the house before the rain fell, so they went under a large walnut tree that stood by the roadside. The rain fell in torrents; there was a flash of lightning, and quick as thought a loud peal of thunder followed. The tree was struck, and father and son fell to the ground, both senseless. When the father recovered he heard louder thunder—the thunder of Mount Sinai; all his sins were set in order before him; his guilty soul trembled. He had hoped that his darling boy was, like himself, only stunned; but, alas! he found he was dead. His self-righteousness was now all gone, and he cried out, “O Lord, I thank thee that thou hast taken the innocent and spared the guilty.” There under the tree, beside his dead son, he knelt down and sought the Lord with prayer and tears, and the Lord heard and answered. He united with the Methodist Church, and was a most excellent member. His house was the pilgrim’s rest, indeed it was a sanctuary, “for there the Lord commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.” My father, Thomas Burch, myself,