History has proven John Carroll to have been a kind of Parson Adams of the real, an itinerant minister who actually did manage to publish his sermons to universal acclaim. His exchange with history was so thorough, in fact, that his various writings have assumed a profound historical significance that in no way detracts from their theological astuteness. Whether he wrote Methodist biography, history, or apologetics, Carroll invariably documented the evangelization of Canadian society and bore witness to the process of Canadian Confederation, but, even more important, he held up a flawless homiletic glass to himself, revealing as much about his own character as an overactive missionary as about the character of a land founded through missionary hyperactivity. His biographical portraits of Alexander Byrne, William Case, Robert Corson, a host of supporting Methodists, and even the fanciful Father McRorey and Squire Firstman are also an inadvertent self-portrait, just...