Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/201

Rh METHODISM to attend these preparatory Conference committees. In 1877 and 1S78 the final and natural consummation of the whole course of advance since 1791 was effected in the constitution of the united Conference of ministers and lay representatives. The ministers meet by themselves to discharge the functions which belong to them as the common pastorate of the Connexion. As to all the points involved in their specific character and common responsibility, as the mutually exchanging and itinerating pastoir, in common of a vast common flock, they take mutual counsel in a separate assembly. The Conference, in its ministerial-and-lay or representative session, meets after the pastoral business is completed, and occupies a full week between Sundays in discussing and settling the business of all the funds and the general administrative departments of the body. The Conference in its pastoral session assembles on the last Tuesday in July, that session closing on the Friday or Saturday week following ; the representative session occupies the following week. It is legally necessary that the decisions of the Conference in both its sessions should be confirmed and validated by the vote of the &quot;leg;d hundred.&quot; This confirmation is, however, given as a matter of course. The Conference in its pastoral session is not formally representa tive. To each district is assigned by the preceding Conference a certain amount of representation, there being at present thirty-five districts. The numbers allocated to the districts vary according to circumstances. The total number of ministers and laymen com posing the Conference in its representative session is 480, or 240 ministers and 240 laymen. The basis of the lay representation in the Conference is the constituency of lay officials in the district committees. The Connexion at large is represented by the lay officials of the general Connexional departments. The business transacted in the Conference during its representative session re lates to all the Connexional departments of general administration, vi/. , the committee of privileges, foreign missions, the maintenance and education fund (and the schools) for ministers children, chapel affairs (general, metropolitan, and provincial), the home mission and contingent fund, district sustentation funds, army and navy evangelization, lay mission work, the worn-out ministers and ministers widows fund, the theological institution with its four colleges, Sunday and day schools and the children s home and orphanage, higher education, the extension fund of Methodism, alterations and divisions of circuits and districts, and the Lord s Day observance and temperance questions. The president of the Conference is chosen by the ministers by ballot on the opening of the pastoral session. After the election of president follows that of secretary. These elections, however, cannot take place until the vacancies in the hundred have been filled up. Such vacancies are caused by death, by absence for two years together without a dispensation, by expulsion, or by super annuation, which takes place ordinarily after two years retirement from the full work of the ministry. The principal statistics of the denomination at the last Conference (1882) were as follows : - Retired Members. On Trial. Ministers. On Trial. or Super numerary Sunday Scholars. Ministers. Great Britain 393,754 40,653 1,549 81 279 829,666 24 475 776 200 18 43 Foreign missions. 1 89,369 12,934 34S 193 16 Of the Sunday scholars in Great Britain, 177,965 were over fifteen years of age, and 93,127 were members of society or on trial as members. Wealeyan Methodism in Ireland has always been part and parcel of British Methodism, but since 1782 it has had a branch Confer ence of its own. The acts of this Conference are, in accordance with a provision in the Conference Deed Poll, made valid by the concurrence with them of a delegate from the British Conference, who is to the Irish Conference what the legal Conference is to the British Conference. Ten ministers of the Irish Conference are members of the &quot;legal hundred&quot; of the British Conference. The &quot;plan of pacification &quot; of 1795 was not carried out at the time by the Irish Conference. In the year 1816, however, it was adopted in Ireland. The result was a secession which assumed the designation &quot;Primitive Wesleyans,&quot; a very different body from the Primitive Methodists of England. In 1878 the Primitive Wesleyans were reunited to the parent Connexion. The number of members in Ireland has, owing to emigration, not increased of late years. The last return showed 24,475 members. Affiliated Conferences. For more than twenty years there were several &quot;affiliated Conferences&quot; of British Methodism. But there are now only two the French Methodist Conference, and that of South Africa, the latter constituted quite recently (1882). Since 1852 French Methodism has been under an affiliated Conference. The dimensions of the French Connexion, however, are very small, and it is dependent to a considerable extent on pecuniary aid fur- 1 Chiefly in the West Indies, Africa, India, and China. nished by the Wesleyan Missionary Society. The last statistical return showed 1769 members, 126 members on trial, 27 ministers, 1 minister on trial, and 3 supernumerary or retired ministers. Tho British Conference has a right of veto as to certain points of legis lation in the case of affiliated Conferences. Australasian Methodism was for more than twenty years under an affiliated Conference, dating from 1854. Since 1876, however, the Australasian Conference has been independent. The General Conference meets once in three years, having under it our annual Conferences one for New South Wales and Queensland, another for Victoria and Tasmania, a third for South Australia, and a fourth for New Zealand. These Conferences the general and the annual are all mixed and representative after the same general pattern as the British Conference. They have also under their charge, and as part of their Connexion, the Wesleyan missions in Tonga and Fiji, which were begun by the parent body before the original affiliated yearly Conference for Australasia was organized. The numbers in 1881 were for the Methodism of Australia 28,310 members with 362 ministers, and for the South Sea missions 33,411 members with 16 missionaries of European blood and a very large number of native ministers and assistant ministers. Canadian Methodism was also affiliated till 1873, when it became an independent Connexion. It includes six provincial annual Con ferences and one General Conference which meets every three years. The General Conference is mixed and representative ; the annual Conferences are purely ministerial. Canadian Methodism occupies a powerful position in the Dominion. It numbers as nearly as can be ascertained about 116,000 members, and is strongest in Upper Canada. It possesses a university the Victoria University in Upper Canada. The Doctrines of Methodism. In doctrine all branches of Methodism are substantially identical. Wesley s doctrines are contained in fifty-three sermons known as the &quot; four volumes &quot; and in his Notes on the New Testament. The Conference has, however, published two catechisms, one for younger the other for older children, of which a new and carefully revised edition has lately been completed. 2 In general, Wesleyan theology is to be described as a system of evangelical Arminianism. In particular, Wesleyan divines insist on the doctrines of original sin, general redemption, repentance, justification by faith, the witness of the Spirit, and Christian perfection, or, as it has been customary for Methodists to say, the doctrines of a &quot; present, free, and full salvation.&quot; By the witness of the Spirit is meant a consciousness of the Divine favour through the atonement of Jesus Christ. Wesleyans have often been represented as holding the Calvinistic doctrine of &quot;assurance.&quot; The word, however, is not a Wesleyan phrase, and assurance, so far as it may be said to be taught by Methodists, signifies, not any certainty of final salvation, but merely a &quot; sense of sin forgiven.&quot; 8 II. AMERICAN EPISCOPAL METHODISM. The beginnings of American Methodism are traceable to the year 1766, when a few pious emigrants from Ireland introduced Methodism into New York. On receiving an appeal in 1768 from the New York Methodists, who were engaged in building a preaching-house, Wesley laid the case of America before the Conference at Leeds in 1769, and two preachers, Boardman and Pilmoor, volunteered to go to the colonies. Boardman went to New York, Pilmoor to Philadelphia. In 1771 two other Methodist itinerants, Francis Asbury the most famous name in American Methodism and Richard Wright, went out to America. In 1773 Thomas Rankin, a preacher of experience sent out = Besides Wesley s Sermons and Notes, his Appeals and his treatise on Original Sin, in reply to Dr Taylor of Norwich, should be read in order to appreciate his The Holy Catholic Church,&quot; and Dr Ring s Discourses and Addresses. ^ _ Jackson s Life of Charles Wesley; Afinii tes of Conference, vol. i., 1744-98; Dr George Smith, History of Wesleyan Methodism, 3 vols.; Dr Abel Stevens, History of Methodism, 3 vols. ; Pierce, Polity of Methodism; Dr Williams, Constitution and Polity of Wesleyan Methodism ; Rigg, Connexional Economy; and the Minutes, 1877 to 1881.