Scott, Levi, Dd

Scott, Levi, D.D.

a bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, was born at Cantwell's Bridge (now Odessa), Delaware, October 11, 1802. He was trained to labor, and began his thorough intellectual discipline after reaching manhood. He grew up in a Christian home, his father being an itinerant minister. Levi was converted in 1822, and entered the Philadelphia Conference in 1825. He served a number of the most important charges in his conference, and soon gained a high reputation as a clear, logical, incisive preacher. In 1840 he became principal of the grammar-school of Dickinson College, where he remained until 1843. The next two years he was pastor of Union Church, Philadelphia; and from 1845 to 1848 presiding elder of the South Philadelphia District. At the General Conference of 1848 he was made assistant book-agent at New York. In 1852 he was elected bishop, and from that time until the close of his active career was most earnest in labors for the Master. Shortly after his election to the episcopal office he visited our mission in Liberia, and for many years suffered from the effects of the climate. In 880, after twenty-eight years as bishop, and fifty-five in the active ministry, he retired to his childhood's home, where he gradually declined until his death, July 13, 1882. "In his most vigorous days the hearer was first arrested by the searching expression of the preacher's eye; then by the condensed energy of his diction; then by the conciseness and clearness with which point after point of the argument was made out. No time was lost in amplification; the paragraphs of logic were sent home to the conscience with the force of shocks from an electric battery. A torrent of appeal, brief, but intense, followed, and the preacher's work was done." See Minutes of Annual Conferences, 1882, page 301; Life and Times, by Dr. Mitchell (N.Y. 1884).