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Janes, Edmund Storer, D.D., LL.D.

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Janes, Edwin L.

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a bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, was born of highly respectable but not wealthy parents, at Sheffield, Massachusetts, April 27, 1807. He was converted in 1820, and united with the Methodist Episcopal Church. From 1824 to 1830 he was engaged in teaching, during which time he studied law with the intention of making it the profession of his life; but in 1830 joined the Philadelphia Conference, and during the first few years of his ministry, in addition to his work as a minister and his theological studies, which were thorough if not broad, studied medicine. He was ordained deacon in 1832, an elder in 1834, and after filling various important charges was, in 1838, appointed agent for Dickinson College. In 1840 he was elected financial secretary of the American Bible Society; and in 1844 was elected to the bishopric in conjunction with bishop Hamline, they being the last of the bishops who received the vote of the undivided Church.

For more than thirty-one years he discharged his duties in the episcopal office, travelling in all the states except Florida, and in most of the territories, besides being president of the Missionary Society, of the Board of Church Extension, and of the Sunday school Union and Tract Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, as well as being one of the managers of the American Bible Society, of the directors of the American Colonization Society, of the trustees of the Wesleyan University at Middletown, Connecticut, of the Drew Theological Seminary, and president of the Minard Home, Morristown, N.J. Bishop Janes was in many respects one of the most remarkable men in the history of American Methodism. He inherited the sterling mental and moral qualities of his Puritan ancestors; possessed a mind of a high order, enriched by generous culture, and disciplined by the severest training. He was a model platform speaker, ready, earnest, and impressive; a preacher of rare power, grasp, and eloquence; and an administrator of peerless activity, clearness, decision, patience, and comprehensiveness. He was a man of inflexible principle, thorough, conscientious, and untiring in labor and devotion; and a Christian of the purest humility. He died September 18, 1876. See Minutes of Annual Conferences, 1876, page 365; Simpson, jyclop. of Methodism, s.v.; Life, by Dr. Ridgaway (N.Y. 1882).