Excerpt from The History of Southern Methodism on the Pacific Coast At the Conference held in Santa Rosa, October, 1877, my brethren of the Pacific Conference, by formal resolution, requested me to prepare the material for a History of Southern Methodism on the Pacific. I was, even then, the only effective member of the Conference who was present at the organization of the body, and who had been intimately and actively connected with it in all of its history. I accepted the duty with no high estimate of my ability to meet the demands of the Conference. I had read much of Church history, some of it contemporary history, and from personal observation I knew it to be an exceedingly difficult task to be a correct, faithful historian. I knew there were currents of fact and thought into which a historian is liable to drift, sometimes unduly magnifying the actions of men, sometimes giving too great prominence to certain events, sometimes overlooking the true heroes and neglecting the record of events best calculated to reveal the truth. Notwithstanding this, at the call of my brethren I undertook the work, and to me it has been "a labor of love." I have lived over again the scenes of other years, and have held communion with the beloved companions whose voices have long since been hushed in death. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.