Church-a body in the Middle South, having four bishops and a General Conference.

It was at this time also that the memorable action was taken with regard to holding an Ecumenical Methodist Conference. The prime mover in this important project was the late Rev. Augustus C. George, D. D., of the Central New York Conference. The body approved the suggestion, and a Committee of Correspondence, with the view of forwarding the proposal, was raised and ordered to report in 1880. (Journal of General Conference of 1876, pp. 367, 368.)

Agreeably to the above direction the Committee of Correspondence reported to the General Conference of 1880 in the city of Cincinnati, for substance, that the purpose and plan of holding an Ecumenical Methodist Conference had been presented by Rev. E. O. Haven, D. D., to the British Wesleyan Conference at its session in Bradford, England, July 31, 1878. The mother Conference gave most hearty response to the suggestion of her eldest daughter; and from all around the world the younger members of the great household responded with delight. The Conference, therefore, since the design had been universally approved, called a meeting of a joint committee from the several American Methodisms, which was held in the city of Cincinnati, May 10, 1880. This committee formally recommended the holding of the proposed Ecumenical Conference in the City Road Chapel, London, in the middle of August, 1881; and in accordance thereto the General Assembly of representatives of a world-wide Methodism was duly held at the place above mentioned, September 7-20, 1881.

The great event at the General Conference of 1880 was the appearance of the Rev. William Arthur, M. A., as delegate from the British Wesleyan Conference. With a single exception, his was at that time the greatest name in British Methodism. He was fresh from his vivid experiences in Italy during its revolution from tyranny to liberty; and his reception, for personal as well as official reasons, was something to warm his heart to his dying day.

At that time also spoke the Rev. Dr. Atticus G. Haygood, later a bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, the

man who had the courage and the Christly love to write, "Our Brother in Black,"-two good men, cast in great molds, who have left the Church richer by their name and fame.

In the large fraternity section of the Journal of the General Conference of 1884, held in Philadelphia, appears the report of its distinguished representatives at the Ecumenical Conference, which met in the City Road Chapel, LondonJohn Wesley's old church-on the 7th of September, 1881. The Journal of this historic assembly makes a large volume. Nor does it claim attention here. But readers of these pages will be pleased to know that in at least three of the chief departments of effort the Methodists of America bore off the palm. Bishop Simpson was the matchless preacher; Bishop Peck showed himself the prince of chairmen; and the Rev. Dr. Price, one of the colored preachers from the South, was the prime favorite as an extemporaneous orator.

The second Ecumenical Methodist Conference was held at the Metropolitan Church, Washington, D. C., on the 7th of October, 1891. Two only of the great utterances of that memorable occasion can even be mentioned here. The first was the opening sermon of the Rev. William Arthur, read by his friend, the Rev. T. B. Stephenson, D. D., LL. D. The second, in which the period of flood-tide was reached, was the oration of Bishop Fowler on the present status of Methodism in the Western Section. The scene at the close of this sublime address was beyond all description. The whole audience sprang to their feet, and shouted and cheered and laughed and wept together. Then the tumult died away; but a second time it rose, cheer on cheer, till it seemed like the shouting of a great army at the moment of victory. Then a second time there was silence. But a third time the applause broke forth, as if the vast assembly could not contain itself under the surging tides of emotion aroused by the mighty thoughts and the matchless sentences of Methodism's great orator, always hitherto unequaled save by one, who was then above.

At the session of 1892, in Omaha, Neb., no new candidates for fraternal honors appeared.

A suggestive fact in current Methodist history was the

appearance, at the General Conference of 1896, held in Cleveland, Ohio, of a delegate from New Zealand, the Rev. J. J. Lewis, who was on his way to perform a similar office at the approaching session of the British Wesleyan Conference.

By this time fraternity is a fact so vast as to be almost oppressive. Hence the method, now fast coming into use, of messages by telegraph conveying the brotherly salutations of one great body of true believers to another. We say true believers; for it is to be noticed that of all the many bodies represented at this great quadrennial Council, no loose or "liberal" or doubtful sect has ever reached out a fraternal hand. Methodism has no fellowship with men who think themselves good enough without regeneration, wise enough to sit in judgment upon Divine revelation, and great enough not to bow down before the Son of God.

FOR

CHAPTER VI.

LAY DELEGATION: MEN-WOMEN.

OR more than fifty years the exclusively clerical administration of all spiritual affairs in the Church was accepted without serious question. It was assumed as a matter of course that, so far as official government was concerned, the Church was the ministry, and the ministry was the Church. But with the appearance of a generation of native-born American Methodists this instinctive sentiment, which the original members of the societies brought over the sea with them, began to change; and there was a call for more of the membership and less of the ministry in the direction of Church affairs.

It was a blessing to the great body of the Church that those who wished to conform its polity to that of the new nation gathered together and set up a communion for themselvesthe Methodist Protestant Church, in 1828, and the Wesleyan Methodist Connection in 1843, both of them with only a single order, that of elder, in their ministry. The name of this lastmentioned secession was not historically appropriate. As every one knows, Wesley was an opposer of the slave-trade; but, as the members of this divisive company seem to have forgotten, he was as far as possible from being an advocate of republicanism of any kind. With the disappearance of slavery, all that was "Wesleyan" in their system, as distinguished from that of the Methodist Episcopal Church, disappeared. As in the name of Wesleyan abolitionism they went out, so in the name of Wesleyan episcopacy they might return.

The first mention of "Lay Delegation" in the annals of the General Conference is found in the Journal of the session. of 1824. The body refused the measure, and, as the subject was at that time agitating the Church, an argument against it was ordered to be prepared for official publication. At the next meeting of the Great Council the subject reappeared, and met with a similar response. The reply to the memorialists in its favor was, in this instance, made by Dr. John Emory, after

wards one of the bishops, author of the standard work, entitled, "Defense of Our Fathers."

In the midst of the anti-slavery excitement at the General Conference of 1840 time was found for another discussion of the Lay Delegation question, as was also the case in 1852, on both of which occasions the clerical lawmakers refused to share their prerogatives with the laity, as being the demand of only a few malcontents.

In the month of March, prior to the session of 1852, a very respectable convention of Methodists had been held in Philadelphia, at which a memorial to the approaching Conference was prepared, praying for the establishment of lay delegation, both in the annual and General Conferences of the Church. On the 5th of May following another convention of Methodist laymen was held in the same city, deprecating the measures asked for by the previous assembly. Memorials both for and against the proposed change, but mostly against it, were poured in upon the Conference. In due time the committee to whom the papers had been referred, reported that the great majority of the Church were either indifferent or opposed to lay delegation; and the substance of their report was incorporated into the Pastoral Address.

During the next few years the leaders of the movement gathered to themselves several prominent ministers; but from first to last it was noticeable that their following embraced, proportionally, a larger number of clergymen than of laymen. The rank and file of the Church, in whose interest the reform was pushed, did not have any interest in it.

At its opening session, the General Conference of 1860, held in the city of Buffalo, on motion of J. M. Reid, added to the usual list of standing committees a Committee on Lay Delegation. By this it was evident that the measure had been gaining strength. On the 30th of May, William H. Goode, chairman of this committee, moved that the order of the day be suspended, to receive the report on lay delegation. Daniel Curry moved to strike out the words "to receive the report of the Committee on Lay Delegation," and insert the words, "to take up the report on slavery." This proposed amendment was laid on the table by what may be regarded as a test vote of 93 to 61.