The following paper, presented by (Rev.) W. M. Swindells, of Philadelphia, was adopted:

"WHEREAS, The Chartered Fund, organized in 1796, has completed a century of its beneficence, and, although its capital is only about $50,000, it has declared in dividends to conference claimants a sum three times the amount of its capital stock; therefore,

"Resolved, That this General Conference recommends that during the year 1896 each pastor of each charge in the Church shall so present the benevolent features of the fund to his congregation that its capital stock may be increased to a sum worthy of the cause and creditable to the Church." (Journal of General Conference of 1896, page 100.)

In 1832 the General Conference ordered an annual collection in all the congregations for "conference claimants," and an estimating committee in each annual conference, to examine into and report to the conference stewards the amount needed by each of the claimants. The second place of honor is given to this collection. Every preacher, on the passage of his character at his annual conference, is required to report: first, the amount he has raised for missions; and second, the amount raised for conference claimants.

Previous to 1804 there had been an entrance fee of twenty shillings, Pennsylvania currency, paid by each itinerant on entering the ranks, but at that session this bar was let down. Doubtless it was found that there were hindrances enough to keep mercenary and ambitious men out of this ministry, without making them pay two dollars and sixty cents at the door. But, once in, he must pay the twenty shillings a year into the charity fund of the conference, which amount, it was hoped, would allow sixty-four dollars a year to each "worn-out preacher," and nearly the same amount to the widow of a preacher who had actually worked himself to death.

It was at the Christmas Conference that "allowances" were first made; but by degrees the plans for the maintenance of the preachers, the superannuates, and the widows and orphans were recast into a chapter in the Discipline, entitled, "Ministerial Support." The men in actual service came at length to sustain business relations to their people, except that in no case where a preacher failed to receive the salary estimated for

him by the "Estimating Committee" of his charge, could he collect the deficiency by process of law. It was, and still is, held that a preacher takes his place at his own risk, just as the charge takes the preacher at theirs; and under this view it presently came to be a matter for concealment rather than complaint on the part of a pastor who was obliged to go to conference with a margin of his salary unpaid.

Notwithstanding the privations incident to the life of a Methodist preacher, only once in the period between 1812 and the present time has there been a serious deficiency in the number of men for the rapidly-growing work. At the General Conference of 1852, held in the city of Boston, a day of prayer was ordered to be observed "for the raising up of more ministers." This prayer was speedily answered in the large increase of the number of students for the ministry, so that it soon became possible for the Church to man all its pulpits, and to give large and valuable help to other evangelical Churches.

THAT

CHAPTER III.

SLAVERY.

HAT word "slavery," which now has such immeasurable significance of sin and shame and horror and blood, has acquired a greatly enlarged definition since the beginning of Methodist history in America.

For the first few years that great revival movement gathered the majority of its trophies in the slave states of Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina: masters and slaves alike coming under its heavenly power. Indeed, as Dr. Sherman suggests in his most careful résumé of the History of the Discipline, the success of the gospel among both these classes came to be one of the chief embarrassments of the situation. It does not appear that colored persons were admitted to membership of the societies on equal terms with white people; but services were held for their especial benefit. A few of them, among whom was Black Harry Hosier, Bishop Asbury's faithful and eloquent servant, were allowed to act as local preachers. Thus the good work went forward for more than fifty years in a degree of peace and quietness, not even broken off by that seven years' misery-to wit, the war of the Revolution. That was a fight for liberty, it is true; but it was liberty for white men only, and this the slaves came fully to understand.

Those slaveholders with whom the preachers first and most came in contact were thoughtful of the spiritual needs of their servants; and so high was the estimate of their Christian character that the ownership of slaves was no bar to their membership in the Methodist societies. It was to have been expected that the English preachers would look with displeasure upon an institution which had never existed in Great Britain, and which was finally banished from her West India colonies; and Bishop Coke on several occasions narrowly escaped personal violence for denouncing the holding of human beings in bondage. But he was so greatly British and so little

American, and, withal, was so slightly acquainted with those Methodists who were slaveholders, that his remarks were onesided, dealing with slavery in the abstract rather than with the actually existing situation. He also made the mistake of omitting to notice the New Testament directions to slaves concerning their duties towards their masters, on which account he was thought to be stirring up the Negroes to insurrection. It was, no doubt, on this account that, after one of his antislavery discourses, a woman who had been in the congregation offered to give any one fifty pounds who would take Dr. Coke and give him a hundred lashes.

But Asbury and most of the preachers under him, although they hated slavery from the bottom of their hearts, had at first no serious difficulty on account of it, and in spite of it great revivals of religion were enjoyed. Many good men in the south had begun to think of slavery as a burden rather than an advantage; but it was a patriarchal institution, and was recognized in the Decalogue, wherein a man-servant and a maidservant were specified as property, not to be coveted from one's neighbor. It had existed in Israel, whose people were authorized to buy bondmen and bondmaids from the heathen nations round about them, though not from their brethren of the house of Jacob. Nor were there any specific commandments against it in the New Testament; but St. Paul had commanded Timothy to teach such servants as were "under the yoke" to "count their own masters worthy of all honor, that the name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed." Besides, the men of that generation were not responsible for the existence of slavery in America; and since the revival wave swept over slave states as well as free states, it is not surprising that those good men. did not feel that the holding of slaves ought to be a bar to Christian fellowship, nor yet to the ministry of the gospel.

Even the great George Whitefield, on whose plantation and orphanage in Georgia slavery had at first been prohibited, afterwards sought for an amendment to his charter by which it should be permitted. With such a faint conscience against it on the part of truly pious men, perhaps it is fair to conclude that the facts concerning the institution which came to the knowledge of the English preachers in those days were less

stirring and tragic than those which afterwards led to the great Civil War. The first official notice of this evil appears in the action of the annual conference held at Baltimore in 1780, as follows:

"Ques. 16. Ought not this Conference to require those traveling preachers who hold slaves to give promise to set them free? "Ans. Yes."

There is no accessible record as to who those traveling preachers were who were rich enough to own Negroes; nor yet who were the local preachers who, at sessions shortly following that of 1780, were laid under special requirements to provide for the emancipation of their slaves in those states where the laws would admit of it.

There must have been at that period a growing anti-slavery sentiment in the conferences, and the discussion of the subject must have been regarded by the societies, many of which were in slave territory, as right and proper. Hence, in the Discipline of 1784 appears the following:

"Ques. 12. What shall we do with our friends that will buy and sell slaves?

"Ans. If they buy with no other design than to hold them as slaves, and have been previously warned, they shall be expelled; and permitted to sell on no consideration.

"Ques. 13. What shall we do with our local preachers who will not emancipate their slaves in the states where the laws admit of it? "Ans. Try those in Virginia another year; and suspend the preachers in Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvaniæ, and New Jersey."

Such mild measures on this question compare strangely with the sharp penalties threatened against preachers who presumed to celebrate the ordinances of the gospel contrary to the order of the Prayer Book of the Church of England, and against the members of society who distilled grain into liquor, both of which classes of offenders were to be excommunicated and disowned. In 1785 the rule against slavery was suspended; but the rules against distillation and against meddling with the prerogatives of the English clergy were continued.

The General Conference of 1796 restored and enlarged the rule against slavery, including all the former provisions, and designating the ages at which the children of slave mothers,