Comfort, Silas, Dd

Comfort, Silas, D.D.

a Methodist Episcopal minister, was born at Deer Park, Orange County, N.Y., May 18, 1803. He was converted at the age of nine, he became a class-leader at eighteen, a travelling preacher at twenty, and in 1827 entered the Genesee Conference. Then began in earnest his student life, studying on horseback, by torchlight, amid the confusion of families, always rising at four o'clock. Thus the dead languages, science, general literature, Biblical criticism, and systematic theology were thoroughly explored by him. During his forty-five years in the ministry he served sixteen years as presiding elder, wrote several valuable volumes, and contributed largely to the first periodicals of the Church. In 1835 he was transferred to the Missouri Conference, returned to the Oneida Conference seven years later, and in it labored until his sudden death, January 10, 1868. See Minutes of Annual Conferences, 1868, page 105; Simpson, Cyclop. of Methodism, s.v.