Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/198

Rh 188 METHODISM opponent of the Methodists or a man of disreputable conduct. Before Wesley s death (in 1791) it would seem that there were more than a dozen of his preachers who had at different times, in Scot land or in England, been ordained to administer the sacraments. The foregoing view of the development of Methodism as an organization, during the lifetime of its fcmnder, will have conveyed a general idea of its structure and polity. There is one cardinal, though variable, element in its organization, however, of which there has as yet been no occasion to speak. The societies of Methodism each of these consisting of one or more &quot; classes &quot; were themselves grouped into circuits, each of which was placed under the care of one or more of Wesley s Conference preachers, who were called his &quot;assistants&quot; or &quot;helpers,&quot; the assistant being the chief preacher of a circuit, and the helper being a colleague and subordinate. The &quot;assistants&quot; were directly responsible to Wesley, who had absolute power over them, and exercised it between the Conferences. The same power he equally possessed in the Conference, at the yearly meetings, but he made it a rule, during his later life, to take counsel with the Conference as to all matters of importance affecting the permanent status of the preachers personally, or relating to the societies and their govern ment. He thus prepared the Connexion, both preachers and people, to accept the government and the legislative control of the Conference after his death. At the time of Wesley s death there were in Great Britain, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands, 19 circuits, 227 preachers, and 57,562 members. In Ireland there were 29 circuits, 67 preachers, and 14,006 members. There were also 11 mission circuits in the West Indies and British America, 19 preachers, and 5300 members. The number of members in the United States was returned as 43,265. It has already been explained that in connexion with each society there was a leaders meeting, of which society stewards and poor stewards as well as leaders were members. It must here be added that each circuit had its quarterly meeting, of which, at first, only the society stewards and the general steward (or treasurer) for the circuit, in conjunction with the itinerant preachers, were necessary members. Leaders, however, in some circuits were very early, if not from the first, associated with the stewards in the quarterly meeting, or at least had liberty to attend. The quarterly meeting was not defined in Wesleyan Methodism until the year 1852. The leaders meeting had no defined authority until some years after Wesley s death. Discipline, including the admission and expulsion of members, lay absolutely with the &quot;assistant,&quot; subject only to appeal to Mr Wesley. Many years, however, before Wesley s death it had become the usage for the &quot;assistant,&quot; or, in his absence, the &quot;helper,&quot; his colleague, to consult the leaders meeting as to important questions either of appointment to office or of discipline. As the consolidated &quot;society&quot; approached towards the character of a &quot;church, &quot;the leaders meeting began to acquire the character and functions of a church court, and private members to be treated, iu regard to matters of discipline, as having a status and rights which might be pleaded before such a &quot; court.&quot; The rights, indeed, which, soon after Wesley s death, were guaranteed to leaders meetings and members of society had, there can be no doubt, so far grown up, before his death, as to be generally recognized as undeniable. &quot; Bands&quot; were a marked feature in early Methodism, but in later years were allowed, at least in their original form, to fall out of use. There is no reference to them in the &quot; Minutes of Conference &quot; after 1768, although till after Wesley s death they held a place in the oldest and largest societies. Originally there were usually in each considerable society four bands, the members of which were collected from the various society classes one band composed of married and another of unmarried men, one of married and another of un married women. All the members of society, however, were not of necessity members of bands. Some maturity of experience was expected, and it was the responsibility of the &quot; assistant &quot; to admit into band or to exclude from band. After Mr Wesley s death, where &quot;bands&quot; so called were kept up, they lost their private character, and became weekly fellowship meetings for the society. The &quot;love-feast&quot; was a meeting the idea of which was borrowed from the Moravians, but which was also regarded as reviving the primitive institute of the agape. In the love-feast the members of different societies come together for a collective fellowship meeting. One feature of the meeting a memory of the primitive agape is that all present eat a small portion of bread or cake and drink of water in common. It may be supposed that in such a system as Methodism a large number of preachers and exhorters, from all the social grades included within the societies, could not but be continually raised up. These, during Wesley s life, acted entirely under the directions of the assistant, and were by him admitted or excluded, subject to an appeal to Wesley. Once a quarter often in conjunction with the circuit quarterly meeting a meeting of these local lay helpers, called &quot;local preachers,&quot; was held for mutual consultation and arrangement, and to examine and accredit candidates for the. office. 3. Wesleyan Methodism after Wesley s Death (1791). When Wesley died the Conference remained as the bond of union and fountain of authority for the Connexion. But between the meetings of Conference Wesley had acted as patriarch and visitor with summary and supreme jurisdiction. The first need to be supplied after his death was an authority for the discharge of this particular func tion. In America Wesley had organized a system of bishops (presbyter-bishops), presbyters or elders, and deacons or ministers on probation. Among some of those preachers who had been most intimate with Wesley there was a conviction that his own judgment would have approved such a plan for England. No document, how ever, remains to show that such was his desire. The only request he left behind him for the Conference to respect was one which rather looked in another direction the well-known letter produced before the Conference on its first meeting after his death by his friend and personal attendant, Mr Bradford, in which he begged the members of the legal hundred to assume no advantage over the other preachers in any respect. The preachers, accordingly, in their first Conference after Wesley s death, instead of appointing bishops, each with his diocese or province, divided the country into districts, and appointed district committees to have all power of discipline and direction within the districts, subject only to an appeal to the Conference, all the preachers exercising equal rights also in the Conference, the &quot; legal hundred &quot; merely confirming and validating pro forma the resolutions and decisions of the whole assembly. At first the preachers stationed in the districts were instructed to elect their own chairmen, one for each district. But the plan was speedily changed, and the chairmen were elected each year by the whole Conference ; and this method has been maintained ever since. The &quot; district meetings&quot; as they are generally called are still &quot; com mittees &quot; of the Conference, and have ad interim its power and responsibilities as to discipline and administration. Originally they were composed exclusively of preachers, but before many years had passed circuit stewards and district lay officers came to be associated with the preachers during the transaction of all the business except such as was regarded as properly pastoral. The relation of the Conference to the government of the Connexion having thus been determined, the question which next arose, and which occupied and indeed convulsed the Connexion for several years (1792-95), was that of the administration of the sacraments, especially of the Lord s Supper, to the societies. The societies generally insisted on their right to have the sacraments from their own preachers. Many of the wealthier members, however, and in particular a large number of the trustees of chapels, opposed these demands. At length, between 1794 and 1795, after more than one attempt at compromise had been made by the Conference, the feeling of the societies as against the trustees became too strong to be longer resisted, and accordingly at the Conference of 1795 the &quot; plan of pacification &quot; was adopted, the leading provision being that, wherever the majority of the trustees of any chapel, on the one hand, and the majority of the stewards and leaders, on the other, consented to the administration of the sacraments, they should be administered, but not in opposition to either the one or the other of these authorities. In England the Lord s Supper was always to be adminis tered after the Episcopal form ; in Scotland it might still, if necessary, be administered, as it had commonly been before, after the Presbyterian form. In any case, however, &quot; full liberty was to be left to give out hymns and to use exhortation and extemporary prayer.&quot; The result was that within a generation the administration of the sacraments