In no portion of our Zion have ministers made stronger and more lasting impression upon the people. Whenever present in a home they were the guests of honor. Their strong personalities and noble traits of character, as well as their calling itself, won for them the esteem of old and young. Parents named their children after them, and exhorted their sons to find in them their models for manhood. In thus honoring these noblemen of God they exalted the work of the ministry in the minds of the young, and prepared the way for the Lord to call them into his service. This may account, at least in part, for the great number who have gone into the ministry from these mountain districts. Let no one fancy that somber shadows rested continually upon the pathway of these ministers. There was a joyous side to their ministerial life. When together as a class, or among their parishioners, their stories and jokes were abundant, spontaneous, and of the purest type. When they met at institutes, camp-meetings, and conferences they enjoyed one round of good cheer and solid comfort. Their services of song drowned all dull cares. Their lives had shadows, but they refreshed themselves in the rifts and glorious sunbursts. The people to whom these men of God proclaimed the gospel were not, as a rule, rich in material things, but they possessed great hearts, in which love and kindness flowed as pure and refreshing as the streams of water that rippled down the mountain side. We rejoice that Bishop Weekley has given to the Church this book. Many aged ministers, who once toiled in the Virginias, will live over again the scenes of their lives as they read these pages. Young men will be stimulated to more earnest endeavor as they learn of the hardships and complete consecration of God’s servants in pioneer days. No one will weary in reading this excellent volume. The good Bishop has written in harmony with an established sentiment in book-making—“it is the chief of all perfections in books to be plain and brief.” W. O. FRIES. _Dayton, Ohio._ CHAPTER I.