/ 

 
 METHODIST FRATERNITY 
 AND FEDERATION.
 
 Methodist Fraternity 
 and Federation 
 
 BEING SEVERAL ADDRESSES 
 
 AND OTHER PAPERS ON 
 
 THIS GENERAL 
 
 SUBJECT 
 
 Bp 
 
 BISHOP E. E. HOSS 
 ft 
 
 NASHVILLE, TENN. 
 DALLAS, TEX.; RICHMOND, VA. 
 
 PUBLISHING HOUSE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, SOUTH 
 
 SMITH & LAMAR, AGENTS 
 
 1913
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 IT has long been an established belief with me that 
 anybody who ventures to publish a new book should 
 be haled into court and required to show cause. I 
 cannot plead any very good reason for sending forth 
 this little volume. A few intimate friends insisted that 
 I should do it, and I have yielded to their wishes. The 
 fact, moreover, that I have been honored by being 
 made fraternal messenger from my Church to the 
 Methodist Episcopal Church, the Canadian Methodist 
 Church, and the Wesleyan Methodist Church of Great 
 Britain may be some excuse for putting the addresses 
 which I delivered before the representatives of those 
 three bodies into a somewhat permanent form. I shall 
 be glad if enough copies are sold to pay the printer. 
 
 E. E. Hoss. 
 
 NASHVILLE, TENN., February 20, 1913. 
 
 (v)
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 GREETINGS TO OUR CANADIAN KINSFOLK I 
 
 SALUTATIONS TO OUR TWIN SISTER OF THE NORTH 27 
 
 A MESSAGE TO THE MOTHER CHURCH OF METHODISM 65 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS NEWSPAPER 93 
 
 THE NEW DEMANDS UPON METHODIST AUTHORSHIP 105 
 
 AT THE GATHERING OF THE TRIBES 115 
 
 SOME CONDITIONS OF ORGANIC UNION 121 
 
 (vii)
 
 I. 
 
 GREETINGS TO OUR CANADIAN KINSFOLK.
 
 "Fellowship with all we hold, that hold it with the head." 
 (Charles Wesley.)
 
 GREETINGS TO OUR CANADIAN KINSFOLK. 
 
 [Fraternal address delivered before the General Conference 
 of the Methodist Church in Canada, September 14, 1894.] 
 
 Mr. President and Brethren of the General Confer- 
 ence of the Methodist Church in Canada: As my cre- 
 dentials indicate, I am deputed by the Methodist Epis- 
 copal Church, South, through its College of Bishops, to 
 bring you a message of brotherly love. To discharge 
 this agreeable task is my only business here. You may 
 take it for granted that I have not come either to par- 
 ticipate in your debates or to thrust any impertinent 
 advice upon you in regard to the conduct of your af- 
 fairs. We Southern Methodists, having suffered not a 
 little from the mistaken kindness of outside friends 
 who thought themselves providentially called to shape 
 our policies for us, have grown a trifle timid about 
 offering to interfere with the concerns of other people. 
 I may also add that we do not doubt your perfect com- 
 petency to attend to your own business in your own 
 way. 
 
 Allow me, then, first of all, in the name of the 1,400,- 
 ooo Methodists whose obedient servant I am, to thank 
 you most sincerely for the honor conferred upon us by 
 the official visit of your distinguished representative, 
 Rev. Dr. Alexander Sutherland, to the twelfth session 
 of our General Conference, held in the city of Mem- 
 phis, Tenn., during the month of May last past. It is 
 strictly within the limits of the truth to say that he 
 
 (3)
 
 4 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 came and saw and conquered. No man from any 
 quarter has ever appeared among us and left a more 
 pleasant impression behind him than Dr. Sutherland 
 did. His stately address a body of copious and or- 
 derly thought clothed in a garb of fitting words will 
 be talked about for a generation ; and his clear, strong, 
 and tender sermons the pure gospel set to perfect 
 music will linger in our hearts like the memory of 
 sweet bells heard in the distant and unclouded days of 
 childhood. 
 
 In truth, Mr. President, you have never at any time 
 sent us a fraternal delegate who by his attainments and 
 his character would not have been a credit to any 
 Church in Christendom. Under the existing circum- 
 stances I shall not be guilty of the grave impropriety 
 of discussing the question of annexation. Still I beg 
 your courteous permission to say that we are perfectly 
 ready at any time to annex Drs. Sprague, Briggs, 
 Stone, and Sutherland. If, moreover, you should feel 
 that you cannot part company with these capable and 
 honorable brethren without some sort of return, then be 
 assured that we have at least a few able-bodied itiner- 
 ants on our side of the line whom we should be glad to 
 offer you in exchange, quid pro quo. It is a standing 
 question with us, Mr. President, whether you grow 
 much of this tall timber in your part of the world. 
 
 Your first messenger to us has lately gone hence to 
 the high places of the universe. It is easy to think of 
 him as at home in those lofty spheres. Let us pro- 
 nounce his name gently. Blessings on the memory of 
 Dr. George Douglas, who blended together the chivalry 
 of a knight and the spirituality of a saint Richard the
 
 Greetings to Our Canadian Kinsfolk. 5 
 
 Lion-Hearted and Thomas a Kempis both in one and 
 whose eloquence was as brilliant as the sunsets of trop- 
 ical climes or as the auroral lights that flame in your 
 northern heavens ! To have known one such man is to 
 have learned how to think better of our humanity. 
 
 I speak with perfect sobriety, Mr. President, when I 
 say that we are greatly delighted to hear of your con- 
 tinued and increasing prosperity. The history of Meth- 
 odism in Canada stirs our hearts like the blast of a 
 trumpet. A nobler race of ministers never lived than 
 those who, through infinite toil and self-denial, laid in 
 these vast spaces the foundations of your vigorous and 
 growing Church. From all the indications, the infer- 
 ence is clear that they transmitted their intellectual and 
 moral qualities to their successors of the present gen- 
 eration. There is no sign hereabout of a decrepit or 
 a degenerate Methodism. From sea to sea, and from 
 the Great Lakes northward to the uttermost line of 
 human habitation, you are flying your flag and pushing 
 your conquests. All this is good tidings to our ears. 
 As our venerable and much-loved Bishop Keener said 
 on a memorable occasion : "When victor)' is gained at 
 one end of the line, it will be heard in shout and paean 
 at the other." 
 
 Let me congratulate you on the unity that prevails 
 among you. Unlike the river of Eden, "which was 
 parted thence and became into four heads," you rather 
 resemble our Mississippi and our Ohio, which gather 
 each into a resistless current all the affluents that rush 
 down from the encompassing hills. Herein you are an 
 edifying spectacle, if not "to the world and to angels 
 and to men," at least to the rest of the Methodist
 
 6 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 Churches. May your oneness of ecclesiastical organi- 
 zation be more and more the outward expression and 
 visible token of the fact that you are "endeavoring to 
 keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace" ! 
 
 Let me congratulate you on your steady increase in 
 membership. There are some people who have pon- 
 dered the story of Gideon and the three hundred, and 
 dwelt upon the idea that the Church is "a little flock," 
 until they are loud in the assertion that numbers are a 
 matter of no importance. Such a view does not at all 
 harmonize with the Wesleyan interpretation of the gos- 
 pel. The true position is that the world is our parish. 
 "All" and "everyone" are great terms in that catholic 
 theology which not only commends itself to the closet 
 thinker, but bears the test and strain of actual preach- 
 ing in the open daylight of the world. 
 
 The address of our bishops for 1894 correctly and 
 tersely says : 
 
 The numerical increase of the Church is a most interesting 
 and momentous item. It measures more than any other figures 
 can both the fruits of our labors and the forces now at com- 
 mand to carry forward the work. What can equal the interest 
 and significance of numbers when they are the numbers of 
 saved souls? The increase is God's blessing in response to 
 the longings, prayers, and toils of his servants. Hunger for 
 converts cannot be satisfied while any are out of Christ. If 
 our accessions were the spoiling of other folds, there might be 
 small cause for rejoicing; but we raise the shout of praise and 
 triumph over those whom God has delivered from the power 
 of darkness and translated into the kingdom of his dear Son. 
 
 Let me congratulate you on the rising tide of mis- 
 sionary enthusiasm which enables you to spend one
 
 Greetings to Our Canadian Kinsfolk. 7 
 
 dollar per member every year for the spread of the gos- 
 pel in destitute and heathen parts. The chief function 
 of the Church is not to coddle itself, but to evangelize 
 the world. Any ecclesiastical body that forgets this 
 truth deserves to die and be buried without epitaph or 
 tombstone in the nearest potter's field. The notion 
 that we should simply be solicitous to hold our own and 
 let the rest of our fellow men take care of themselves 
 is the first article in the devil's creed. We discredit 
 our Lord and dishonor our own professions by listening 
 to it for a single moment. 
 
 Let me congratulate you on the stability of your edu- 
 cational institutions, and on the great army of your 
 young men and women that are seeking the advantages 
 of highest culture under Christian auspices; on the 
 assured success of your Publishing House, which with 
 each new quadrennium widens the scope of its influ- 
 ence and sends out an increasing volume of religious 
 literature; on your more than two thousand faithful 
 ministers who go everywhere preaching the Word ; and, 
 most of all, on the general fact that as a Church you 
 still stand fast in the faith of the fathers, cherishing the 
 firm conviction that you have in trust a bona fide offer 
 of salvation for every man a salvation suspended on 
 the solitary condition of obedient faith in the finished 
 work of our Lord Jesus Christ, consciously realized as 
 a transfiguring experience through the operation of the 
 sanctifying and witnessing Spirit, and attesting itself 
 as a divine reality before all men by an upright walk 
 and a godly conversation. 
 
 Mr. President, you have learned from the lips of my 
 esteemed brethren who have been here in advance of
 
 8 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 me Bishops McTyeire and Galloway, and Drs. Sar- 
 gent, Kelley, and Sledd that Methodism in the South- 
 ern States of the American Union is a very vigorous 
 and aggressive type of Christianity. It has been so 
 from the beginning. Whether this is to be explained as 
 the result of a natural affinity between fervent doctrines 
 and fervent temperaments, I shall not stop to consider. 
 The fact is matter of record and beyond dispute. 
 
 Of course you are aware that the pleasant story 
 about the historical priority of good Philip Embury and 
 his John Street Chapel, although it was long regarded 
 as of canonical authority, is only a piece of consecrated 
 fiction. The real origin of American Methodism is to 
 be looked for under the ministry of Robert Straw- 
 bridge, that fiery Irishman who began to hold forth the 
 gospel to his neighbors in the State of Maryland as 
 early as 1760. Not only is it true that Strawbridge was 
 first in point of time, but it is also true that he was first 
 in point of zeal, ability, and success. The Annual Con- 
 ferences began in 1773. At the session of that year, 
 held in Philadelphia, 1,160 members were reported, as 
 follows: Virginia, 100; New Jersey, 200; Philadelphia, 
 180 ; New York, 180 ; Maryland, 500. Our Bishop Mc- 
 Tyeire, who dearly loved a hard-headed and self-willed 
 man at a convenient distance from his own juris- 
 diction makes this remark in his "History of Meth- 
 odism": "Indeed, about half the business done at the 
 Philadelphia Conference, besides stationing the ten 
 preachers, was in restraining the two grand and impet- 
 uous men (Strawbridge and Williams) by whom more 
 than half the work up to date had been performed." 
 And he further adds : "If any notable preacher or lay-
 
 Greetings to Our Canadian Kinsfolk. 9 
 
 man has developed in the first generation from what it 
 has become popular to call 'the cradle of American 
 Methodism/ history fails to record the name. But sev- 
 eral preachers were raised up by Strawbridge in his 
 travels in Baltimore and Harford Counties, and many 
 laymen whose families have been identified with the 
 whole subsequent progress of Methodism in their re- 
 spective localities, if not in the nation generally." 
 
 It may surprise some of you to learn that in the fif- 
 teen Southern States there are to-day 3,000,00x5 Meth- 
 odists a larger number, that is to say, than are found 
 in the thirty-three Northern and Western States and 
 territories. These do not all belong to us. About 
 1,000,000 of them are colored Methodists, and perhaps 
 500,000 are connected with the Methodist Episcopal 
 and Methodist Protestant Churches. 
 
 Our own existence as a separate Church dates back 
 to 1844-46. Of the causes which led to the disruption 
 of the original Methodist Episcopal Church, it would 
 not be seemly for me to speak here, though there is no 
 part of the record which we are not willing, under 
 proper circumstances, to blazon to the world. From my 
 heart of hearts I thank God that the unchristian aliena- 
 tions growing out of the epochal disturbances of half 
 a century ago are rapidly vanishing away. There is no 
 reason under heaven why they should any longer con- 
 tinue to exist. The two Methodisms ought to have no 
 rivalry except as to which shall display the greater zeal 
 in extending the kingdom of Christ. Whoever contrib- 
 utes, either by word or by deed, to the revival of dead 
 issues, or to the continued life of such evil passions as 
 itill maintain a lingering and forbidden existence, is
 
 io Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 either blind or bad and there are times when blindness 
 is badness. 
 
 We began in 1846 with about 500,000 members. 
 When the Civil War came, in 1861, we had increased 
 to over 700,000, of whom 207,000 were persons of 
 African descent a larger body of converted heathen 
 than could then be found in all the mission stations of 
 the world. In many communities there was a great 
 preponderance of colored over white members. For 
 example, Trinity Church, Charleston, S. C, reported 
 in 1863 only 385 white members and probationers 
 against 700 colored; and Bethel Church, in the same 
 city, reported 383 white members against 1,492 col- 
 ored. These dusky sons of Africa were brought from 
 darkness to light partly by the teaching and exam- 
 ple of such Christian masters as Nathanael Gilbert 
 of Antigua, two of whose servants were baptized by 
 John Wesley at Wandsworth, England, in 1760, and 
 who himself became a local preacher eleven years be- 
 fore the first missionaries were appointed to the island 
 of his residence, and died leaving a well-organized 
 society of two hundred members behind him partly, 
 I say, by such as he, and partly by the unselfish and 
 persistent labors of the godly itinerants who went from 
 year to year to the lowly cabins on the cotton and rice 
 plantations with the message of life. During the fif- 
 teen years between 1845 an d 1860 we spent $1,875,000 
 in the prosecution of this form of religious activity. In 
 the States of South Carolina and Georgia alone we had 
 at the latter date sixty picked and capable men none 
 other were deemed fit whose sole occupation it was to 
 minister to the religious wants of the colored people.
 
 Greetings to Our Canadian Kinsfolk. II 
 
 But the close of the war left us prostrate. No words 
 of mine can describe the wide desolation that stretched 
 from the Ohio to the Gulf, and from the Potomac to 
 the Rio Grande. It was enough to take the heart out 
 of any people, and it would have taken the heart out of 
 us if we had not had a thousand years of English his- 
 tory in our blood. The Churches, of course, shared in 
 the general depression. The first census after the ces- 
 sation of avowed hostilities showed that we had lost 
 more than forty per cent of our numerical strength; 
 and this was not so bad as the social and religious 
 demoralization that always follows in the wake of war. 
 One hundred and thirty thousand of our colored mem- 
 bers left us before a General Conference could be con- 
 vened, many of them led away by delusive promises 
 that have not yet been fulfilled. To save the rest, and 
 not, as has been cruelly charged, to get rid of an un- 
 pleasant responsibility, we set them up into a separate 
 Church ; and though then in the depths of poverty, we 
 gave them property to begin with worth more than 
 $250,000. 
 
 It was confidently predicted in some quarters that 
 we should never be able to resume business on our own 
 account. Clearly the wish was father to the thought. 
 Prophecy is safer after the event. In less than six 
 months from the close of the war the word went down 
 the line to close up the ranks, and it met with an in- 
 stant response. In 1866 the General Conference came 
 together at New Orleans. It was by all odds the most 
 radical Methodist legislature that ever assembled in 
 any land. Things with us were in so bad a condition 
 that nothing could make them any worse. Hence the
 
 12 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 willingness to try divers and sundry experiments, all, 
 however, within the line of reason. The progress of 
 a generation was accomplished inside of four weeks. 
 The pastoral term was extended from two to four 
 years ; the hard and fast time limit for probation was 
 abolished, but the probationary* principle was retained. 
 The class meeting test of membership was wiped out, 
 yet class meetings were still recommended as an in- 
 valuable means of grace. Church Conferences and 
 District Conferences were introduced. Four new 
 bishops William M. Wightman, David S. Doggett, 
 Enoch M. Marvin, and Holland N. McTyeire, each 
 one in every sense a full-grown man were elected. 
 More important, however, than all these things was the 
 adoption of a plan of lay delegation, not a tentative 
 makeshift, but the genuine article equal representa- 
 tion in the General Conference and effective represen- 
 tation in the Annual Conferences and other administra- 
 tive bodies of the Church. 
 
 From that date we have taken no backward step. 
 Instead of 447,000 members, which we then enrolled, 
 we had grown at the close of 1893 to 1,345,210, an 
 increase during the preceding quadrennium of 178,060. 
 As the present year has been notable for its conversions 
 and accessions, the probabilities are that we now num- 
 ber quite 1,400,000, embraced in forty-eight Annual 
 Conferences. Two of the strongest of these Confer- 
 ences are the North and South Georgia, covering the 
 State in which John Wesley labored during his stay in 
 America, and having respectively 89,995 and 57,949 
 communicants. You will be glad to know that in that 
 goodly commonwealth, the last of the thirteen original
 
 Greetings to Our Canadian Kinsfolk. 13 
 
 colonies, it is considered perfectly "good form" to be a 
 Methodist. 
 
 Our people belong to every class and rank in society. 
 "The rich and the poor meet together; the Lord is the 
 Maker of them all." But the great majority of those 
 who worship at our altars are plain folk who earn 
 their daily bread by their daily toil. May it ever be so ! 
 If we should forget the rock whence we were hewn and 
 the hole of the pit whence we were digged, God would 
 have no further use for us. Our mission is to the 
 masses. Methodism is preeminently the people's 
 Church. All this may be said without in the least in- 
 veighing against honest wealth or encouraging that 
 seductive nonsense which, mixing some very old truths 
 with some very old errors, takes to itself the title of 
 Christian Socialism and seeks to get a vehicle of utter- 
 ance through the evangelical pulpits of to-day. 
 
 The South has few large cities. Besides Baltimore, 
 St. Louis, Louisville, and New Orleans, all of which, 
 except the last, are on the border, there are none 
 that go beyond 100,000. In New Orleans it took a 
 long, hard, and costly effort to get the substantial foot- 
 ing which we now occupy. It is not necessary to tell 
 you what the difficulties are in establishing Methodism 
 in a community that is dominated by French Cathol- 
 icism, and that includes within its borders as cosmo- 
 politan a population as can be found on the face of the 
 earth. In St. Louis and Louisville we have lately 
 taken on fresh life and are making most satisfactory 
 progress. Baltimore is strongly occupied by our sister 
 Church, though we have there a number of good con- 
 gregations and nearly 3,000 members.
 
 14 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 In almost all the Southern towns of from 10,000 
 inhabitants up we are well to the front. In such cities 
 as Norfolk, Atlanta, and Nashville, that range from 
 50,000 to 80,000, you can scarcely throw a stone into 
 any crowd without hitting a Methodist. We have seen 
 no reason to suppose that our Church is less adapted 
 to urban than to rural communities. Still the fact ex- 
 ists that the main body of our membership is found in 
 the country circuits, a great many of which furnish 
 the ideal conditions for pleasant and successful pastoral 
 labor. There is no picture that is sweeter than that of 
 a neat country church, embowered in a grove of oaks 
 and maples, with a hundred horses hitched all around 
 it, and a congregation of devout and earnest worshipers 
 within. One thing in particular is true among us : our 
 supply of ministers comes chiefly from the country. 
 Towns and cities do not breed many great preachers. 
 
 We have 5,487 traveling and 6,515 local preachers; 
 13,363 Sunday schools, with 95,676 teachers and 765,- 
 286 scholars; 13,185 churches, worth $20,567,757; 
 3,163 parsonages, worth $3,675,306; 179 schools and 
 colleges, with 897 teachers and 16,620 scholars ; prop- 
 erty valued at $4,485,042, and endowments aggregating 
 $1,538,000. Last year we raised for missions, foreign 
 and domestic, $388,566, besides the $71,199 contributed 
 and expended under the management of the Woman's 
 Missionary Society. We have prosperous missions in 
 China, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, and the Indian Territory. 
 The number of missionaries, male and female, exclusive 
 of those in the Indian Territory, is 100, and the number 
 of members about 8,000. The Indian Mission Confer- 
 ence has 103 traveling and 176 local preachers, and
 
 Greetings to Our Canadian Kinsfolk. 15 
 
 10,037 white and 3,225 Indian members. Our Church 
 Extension Society has an average annual income of 
 $65,000 and a growing permanent loan fund of about 
 $100,000. Our Publishing House is worth, including 
 its plant and operating capital, not less than $650,000 
 and is without any incumbrance. Within the quadren- 
 nium just closed, it gave $70,000 of its profits to the 
 superannuated preachers. The Christian Advocate, 
 the general organ of the Church, has an average circu- 
 lation of 27,000 copies. There are twelve or fifteen 
 other Church papers, many of which are ably edited 
 and carry subscription lists of from 5,000 to 20,000. 
 The Quarterly Reiiew is a scholarly and able period- 
 ical. Up to this date it has not quite paid its way, but 
 it is expected that its revenues will hereafter equal its 
 expenses. Of the various Sunday school periodicals, 
 largely over a million copies are issued. The General 
 Conference, just closed, provided a complete organiza- 
 tion for the Epworth League, ordered the publication 
 of the Epu'orth Era, and elected one of our most bril- 
 liant men Secretary and Editor. 
 
 It is a matter for which we feel profoundly grateful 
 to Almighty God that a highly esteemed citizen of St. 
 Louis, the late Mr. Robert A. Barnes, not himself a 
 Methodist, but the son of a Methodist mother, made a 
 bequest in his will, which was probated about two years 
 ago, of $1,400,000 to be used in erecting and main- 
 taining a great free hospital under the control of our 
 Church. The conviction more and more spreads itself 
 among us that in all matters of practical beneficence 
 we must bestir ourselves beyond anything that we have 
 yet done.
 
 16 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 If you ask whether in achieving the results that I 
 have thus sought to enumerate we have used any pe- 
 culiar methods, I answer that we have not. We are 
 simply Methodists, holding and preaching every Wes- 
 leyan doctrine from preventing grace to perfect love, 
 and offering no apology to any man or body of men 
 for the fact that we are in the world. 
 
 Our polity, it is true, differs somewhat from yours, 
 and is neither the better nor the worse for that fact. 
 We are Episcopal Methodists, and spell General Super- 
 intendent with a rather large B. It is not to be denied 
 that our bishops have very great powers powers that 
 could not be safely trusted for a single day except to 
 wise and godly men, nor without due restraints to any 
 men. Though without voice or vote in making our 
 laws, they are invested with a limited veto as regards 
 constitutional questions. In addition to this, the. deci- 
 sion of a bishop on a point of law raised in a case 
 actually pending becomes, after it has been approved 
 by the College of Bishops and duly published, an au- 
 thoritative construction of law. 
 
 Theoretically, moreover, the appointments of all the 
 preachers are in the hands of the bishops ; but as a mat- 
 ter of fact, most of them are settled by the concurrent 
 judgment of the presiding elders. It is rumored that 
 once in a while a wealthy layman or a board of Church 
 officials undertakes to say who shall come to this place 
 or go to that. But our present senior bishop declares 
 that in twenty-five years he has known no such in- 
 stance. For the most part, at least, preachers and 
 people live faithfully up to their compact with one an- 
 other and leave the whole question of the appointments
 
 Greetings to Our Canadian Kinsfolk. 17 
 
 to the impartial mediation of the bishops and their 
 recognized advisers. 
 
 English and Canadian Methodists are sometimes 
 puzzled, and naturally so, to know why it is that in a 
 republican country authority so unusual is put into the 
 hands of a small class of men. If I offer an explana- 
 tion, you will not suppose for one moment that I am 
 making an indecorous boast or suggesting an invidious 
 comparison. What suits our conditions very well might 
 not suit you at all. Suffer me, then, with this disclaim- 
 er in mind, to say a words ad rem. 
 
 1. The itinerancy needs a strong executive. Looked 
 at from a merely human standpoint, it ought in any 
 case to break down. That it has lasted for more than 
 one hundred years is just cause for wonder. To make 
 it most effective it must be vigorously administered. 
 We do not fear to give a large grant of power to our 
 chief pastors, provided we hedge it about with restric- 
 tions and limitations that render the abuse of it a vir- 
 tual impossibility. 
 
 2. Fortunately for us, the men whom we have here- 
 tofore chosen to lead and guide our hosts have been, 
 without exception, both capable and upright in their 
 high office. If the mere suspicion of their incompe- 
 tency and unfaithfulness should get a general lodgment 
 in the mind of the Giurch, the system could not sur- 
 vive for a decade. We are profoundly deferential to 
 a government of law, but would not tolerate for one 
 day the assumption and exercise of personal preroga- 
 tives. 
 
 3. Our bishops are the work of our own hands. 
 They are not made for us ; we make them for our- 
 
 2
 
 l8 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 selves. We do not claim for them the warrant of ex- 
 press divine authorization. The cry of "No bishop, 
 no Church" is a bigot's cry. In common with all 
 Methodists, while holding fast to the rich and fruitful 
 conception of the historical continuity of the Christian 
 Church, we utterly scout and repudiate the thin and 
 vaporous conceit of tactual succession. Even if it 
 could be proved that there is such a succession as it 
 cannot be we frankly avow that we are not in it, 
 and we are glad of it. When the next business revival 
 comes, we ought, in all justice, to take up a general 
 collection for the purpose of building a monument to 
 the memory of that good bishop of London who re- 
 fused to ordain Mr. Wesley's preachers for North 
 America. If he had yielded to the earnest solicitations 
 of our pious founder, he would have inoculated us with 
 the successional virus a catastrophe the bare contem- 
 plation of which is enough to make a good Methodist 
 shudder. 
 
 I repeat it, Mr. President, that our bishops do not 
 look for their title deeds in the confused and musty 
 records of a medieval ecclesiasticism. In the exercise 
 of our God-given rights as Christian men we elect 
 them, ordain them, prescribe their functions, and fix 
 legal limitations to their authority. We are glad that 
 the first in the line was set apart by John Wesley, who 
 stood in a unique providential relation to the great 
 revival movement out of which our Church had its 
 birth. But we do not admit that the validity of our 
 episcopacy or of our other ministerial orders rests 
 upon the action of that great man. A wise conserva- 
 .tism dictated the propriety of looking to him for
 
 Greetings to Our Canadian Kinsfolk. 19 
 
 counsel and direction at a critical moment in our his- 
 tory ; yet in the last anah sis of the principles involved 
 we had a perfect right to do for ourselves what he did 
 for us. 
 
 Before concluding this address, which is already 
 growing too long, I must add that it would be a serious 
 mistake to suppose that everything is well with us. 
 Southern Methodism may claim to be a true Church 
 of Jesus Christ, but the fact remains that it is far from 
 being such a Church as it ought to be. There are many 
 goats in the flock of sheep, "whose beards are sprouting 
 down toward hell against God's dreadful, separating 
 judgment day." We confess the truth with unfeigned 
 sorrow. Nor do we dare affirm that the general aver- 
 age of religious life among us is up to the proper level. 
 Worldliness creeps in at a thousand points. Subtle, 
 elusive, persistent, it defies even the most stringent 
 statutes that are framed to suppress it, and slips like 
 an invisible spirit through the finest meshes of pro- 
 hibitory legislation. The mad rush for wealth has 
 drowned many of our people in destruction and perdi- 
 tion, and the fatal allurement of ungodly pleasures has 
 drawn many others away from the simplicity that is in 
 Christ. Some whose parents or grandparents were 
 fished up out of the depths of social obscurity through 
 the faithful agency of humble circuit riders have be- 
 come so ambitious to move and shine in what they 
 are pleased to call "the upper circles of society" that 
 they are willing to forget their fealty to Jesus Christ 
 and their obligations to Methodism. In some places, 
 not many, the conditions are such from all these causes 
 as to force the true pastor to cry out : "O that my head
 
 20 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I 
 might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter 
 of my people !" We solicit an interest in your prayers 
 that we may become indeed a pure Church, "without 
 spot or wrinkle or any such thing." 
 
 Up to this time we have suffered little disturbance 
 from "the higher criticism." But, as a matter of course, 
 we cannot hope that this exemption will be permanent. 
 The battle is on and must be fought to a finish. In 
 due time even the most conservative body feels the 
 force of whatever disputes and debates are going on 
 in the world. Whether a people bred from infancy to 
 believe that the Bible is the word of God can make the 
 transition to the position that the Bible contains the 
 word of God without suffering loss and damage, is a 
 question that has not yet been settled. Only the actual 
 issue can enable us to give a satisfactory answer. In 
 any event we shall not be guilty of the folly of taking 
 a stand against the results of sound and reverent schol- 
 arship. Whatever can be proved true, we are bound 
 to accept; whatever can be shown to be false, we are 
 equally bound to reject. But we shall not be in a 
 hurry to shift our ground. It will be ample time to do 
 that when the men who are most competent to collate, 
 weigh, and sift the facts shall have pronounced a final 
 judgment. In the meantime our attitude is not one of 
 stupid indifference as to the result, but rather one of 
 the profoundest concern. With whatever intelligence 
 we can command we shall follow the course of the 
 struggle. The opinion is general among us that the 
 discussion of the higher criticism from the pulpit, in- 
 volving as it does the statement of many facts and
 
 Greetings to Our Canadian Kinsfolk. 21 
 
 principles which even the most cultivated of our con- 
 gregations are scarcely prepared to comprehend, is an 
 admirable way of producing a generation of skeptics. 
 The pulpit should give itself to the proclamation of 
 assured truths, and not to the dissemination of doubtful 
 theories. We feel certain that the final result of the 
 conflict, through whatever stages it may pass, will be a 
 firmer and purer faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of 
 God and the Saviour of the world. 
 
 We are affected like the rest of the world, yet prob- 
 ably less than the rest, by the contentions that are 
 springing up between capital and labor. As our civili- 
 zation grows older and more complex, the natural tend- 
 ency is toward the separation of society into classes. 
 The old, frank, and brotherly democracy which was 
 once our boast seems to be in danger of passing away. 
 We are threatened on the one hand with an aristocracy 
 whose sole title to recognition is found, not in noble 
 blood, nor in eminent services to the commonwealth, 
 nor in wide learning, nor in high character, but simply 
 in vulgar and shoddyish wealth ; and on the other hand 
 with a rabble of serfs, tramps, and paupers who have 
 lost all hope and cherish no ambition except to be fed 
 out of the public crib. I regret to be compelled to ad- 
 mit that, in view of such conditions, a number of our 
 preachers have become amateur political economists 
 and, without adequate knowledge of that intricate sci- 
 ence, are seeking to control public opinion by dogmatic 
 deliverances from the pulpit. On this subject, as on 
 others, it remains true that no man knows any more 
 than he has learned, and that not even the sanctity of 
 the ministry can invest crude and foolish notions with
 
 22 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 superior right to be heard. After all, while we ought 
 to be deeply interested in whatever affects the social 
 and industrial welfare of the whole people, it is still 
 true that the Church of Jesus Christ is somewhat more 
 than a reform club, and that the preaching of an un- 
 earthly gospel is the best remedy for all earthly ills. 
 
 The whisky traffic is one of the chief curses of our 
 times. With us, as with you, it is organized, lawless, 
 and defiant. One of our most eminent men has said: 
 "We must put it down or it will put us down." The 
 Discipline of our Church prohibits our members abso- 
 lutely and on pain of expulsion from engaging in the 
 nefarious business, and also classifies the use of ardent 
 spirits as a beverage under the head of immorality. 
 Our preachers almost to a man are teetotalers. About 
 one-half of our territory is under some form of prohi- 
 bition. In the State of Mississippi, for example, seven- 
 ty counties out of seventy-six have closed the saloons. 
 In Georgia over ninety counties out of one hundred and 
 thirty have done the same. In Tennessee and other 
 States we are running in a like direction. The one 
 thing that delays our final victory over the liquor power 
 is the presence of so large a mass of ignorant and pur- 
 chasable voters. If they were out of the way, the prob- 
 lem would become easy of solution. 
 
 In addition to the foregoing ills that beset us in 
 common with the Churches of Jesus Christ throughout 
 the world, there are others that belong to us alone. 
 The Civil War raised nearly as many questions as it 
 settled. Chief among these is the relation between two 
 races living side by side, speaking the same language, 
 professing the same religion, enjoying exactly the same
 
 Greetings to Our Canadian Kinsfolk. 23 
 
 civil rights, and yet as socially distinct as if they were 
 in different worlds. I know that it is impossible in the 
 brief space at my command to say anything on this 
 subject that will not need to be taken with qualification. 
 The more I ponder the matter, the less I am disposed 
 to dogmatize about it. The only persons I have ever 
 met who thought themselves perfectly competent to set- 
 tle it offhand were ignoramuses who had given it no 
 serious attention. 
 
 Those of you who have sought to read the larger 
 lessons of history will not suppose for one moment that 
 a social and political upheaval, the vastest in modern 
 times, could take place without much strife, disorder, 
 and bloodshed. When the tremendous changes that 
 have been wrought in the fabric of our institutions are 
 considered, the wonder is not that they have been ac- 
 companied with so much violence, but with so little. 
 
 As a Southern man I bow my head and confess with 
 shame that we have been disgraced these twenty years 
 past by many crimes. Nor do I speak one thing here 
 and another at home. As much as any man on the 
 continent, and as vigorously, I have denounced all 
 forms of illegal and violent dealing with the colored 
 people. I also make bold to affirm that the outrages to 
 which I have alluded do not in any sense meet with the 
 approbation of the Christian people of the Southern 
 States. We are no more responsible for them than 
 British Christians are for the opium trade in China or, 
 the slaughtering of the Matabeles by the thousand in 
 South Africa. 
 
 Nor is it true that the 7,000,000 negroes are so many 
 angels in ebony who are persecuted by their white
 
 24 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 neighbors for their superior virtues. The race is not 
 without noble and amiable traits. Individual members 
 of it reach the altitudes of character. To speak an un- 
 kind or coarse word of it would be a thing I should not 
 know how to do. On the whole it is making progress, 
 slowly yet surely. But no sensible man supposes that 
 it will leap at once to the front rank of civilization or 
 fly to those summits of power which English-speaking 
 people have reached by the most gradual steps through 
 nearly two millenniums of progress. And in the vast 
 host there are scores of thousands in whose breasts the 
 passions of tropical savagery still rage. 
 
 There are certain large facts which I beg you to 
 contemplate as showing, in spite of indications which 
 seem to you to look in another direction, the sincere 
 friendliness of the Southern people toward their broth- 
 ers in black. First, the fifteen Southern States' have 
 taxed themselves since the war in the sum of $50,000,- 
 ooo to educate the children of their former slaves. If 
 this fact has any parallel in human history, bring it 
 out. Secondly, the colored people have themselves 
 accumulated property worth 50,000,000 of English 
 money. Would that have been possible in a country 
 where the rights of person and property were not re- 
 spected ? 
 
 But I must close. Let me say, in conclusion, that we 
 look hopefully to the future. We are not whining pes- 
 simists nor atrabilious saints. The world, it seems to 
 us, is getting better and not worse, is swinging for- 
 ward into the light and not receding into the darkness. 
 This is the best century that it has ever seen, and the 
 last quarter of it is better than the first. It is more
 
 Greetings to Our Canadian Kinsfolk. 25 
 
 glorious to be living in America now than in the Athens 
 of Pericles, or in the Rome of Caesar Augustus, or in 
 England during the wide and spacious times of Queen 
 Elizabeth. The golden age is ahead of us. On some 
 future generation it will dawn with undreamed-of 
 splendor. God is still on his throne. The world be- 
 longs to him and not to the devil. Let us be jubilant 
 in the prospects before us. It is a time to shout and 
 sing: 
 
 "We're soldiers fighting for our God, 
 
 Let trembling cowards fly; 
 We'll stand unbroken, firm, and fixed, 
 
 With Christ to live and die." 
 
 My dear brethren, may God bless you in the midst 
 of your toils ! In the most important respects we are 
 one with you, claiming a common inheritance of Eng- 
 lish law, literature and civilization, and a common in- 
 terest in our blessed Methodism. You under your 
 northern skies and amid the virgin whiteness of your 
 wintry snows, and we where the southern sun woos the 
 magnolia into its perfect beauty and fills the orange 
 with its nectar, will not cease to stand in the panoplied 
 strength of Christian righteousness, fighting for all 
 good, fighting against all evil, distrustful of ourselves, 
 confident in the Rock of our salvation, and looking 
 ever with longing eyes and beating hearts to our re- 
 lease from toil and our entrance into the many man- 
 sions which our Lord has gone to prepare for us.
 
 II. 
 
 SALUTATIONS TO OUR TWIN SISTER OF 
 THE NORTH.
 
 "There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in 
 one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 
 one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, 
 and in you all." (Eph. iv. 4-6.)
 
 SALUTATIONS TO OUR TWIN SISTER OF 
 THE NORTH. 
 
 [Fraternal address delivered before the General Conference 
 of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Chicago, 111., May, 1900.] 
 
 Mr. President, Venerable Bishops, and Honorable 
 Brethren: My credentials, which have just been read 
 in your hearing, certify that I come to you as the offi- 
 cial bearer of fraternal salutations from the General 
 Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. 
 If I were to conceal my belief that it is a high honor 
 to have been sent on such an errand, I should be guilty 
 of a piece of unmanly insincerity. It is, moreover, 
 most agreeable to my feelings to stand on this plat- 
 form and look squarely into the faces of this body of 
 Christian men without the slightest misgiving as to 
 how my presence is regarded, but with the definite 
 conviction that my welcome here is as warm as genuine 
 fraternity can make it. 
 
 At the same time I must modestly confess that in 
 the outset I hesitated to assume a task the proper dis- 
 charge of which calls for the exercise of far nobler 
 faculties than any which I dare claim to possess. If 
 my poor utterance should seem to you to fall below the 
 level of such an occasion, let me crave in advance the 
 grace of your brotherly indulgence and beg you to 
 look away from me to the million and a half true and 
 honest Southern Methodists who stand behind me and 
 whose mouthpiece and organ of expression I am. You 
 
 (29)
 
 30 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 may depend upon it that they would not have commis- 
 sioned me hither if they had not been deeply interested 
 in you and your work. As they are only human crea- 
 tures, it must be admitted that they have their faults. 
 But it cannot be set down against them that they lack 
 frankness. They have never acquired the pernicious 
 habit of professing a friendship which they do not feel, 
 nor have they learned the villainous art of using am- 
 biguous words as a cloak for their real thoughts. 
 Nothing could be more foreign to their spirit than to 
 take a conscious part in a mere quadrennial farce 
 having no significance of any sort beyond the brief 
 hour required for its performance and affronting Al- 
 mighty God by its hollow hypocrisy. If they should 
 ever conclude that this interchange of denominational 
 courtesies has ceased to be an open exhibition of 'Chris- 
 tian brotherhood and has degenerated into a tiresome 
 and formal parade, they would be the first to suggest 
 its discontinuance. 
 
 Speaking, then, in their name and representing what 
 I know to be their true frame of mind, I give you fer- 
 vent greeting as brethren beloved and fellow laborers 
 in the kingdom and patience of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 praying that grace and peace may rest upon you, and 
 that all the labor of your hands may have a blessed 
 issue in the glory of God and the salvation of men. 
 Now I make bold to borrow the very words of the 
 apostle to the Gentiles and to use them as the me- 
 dium and vehicle of sentiments which are too deep to 
 find adequate outlet through any unconsecrated forms 
 of speech :
 
 Salutations to Our Twin Sister of the North. 31 
 
 "Wherefore we also, after we heard of your faith in the 
 Lord Jesus, and love unto all the saints, cease not to give 
 thanks for you, making mention of you in our prayers; that 
 the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may 
 give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the 
 knowledge of him : the eyes of your understanding being en- 
 lightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, 
 and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the 
 saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power to 
 us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty 
 power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from 
 the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly 
 places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and 
 dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this 
 world, but also in that which is to come : and hath put all 
 things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all 
 things to the Church, which is his body, the fullness of him 
 that filleth all in all." 
 
 It is my bounden duty, Mr. President, as it is also 
 my great pleasure, to return to you our hearty thanks 
 for the visit of those distinguished brethren, the Rev. 
 Dr. Joseph F. Berry and the Hon. Jonathan P. Dolli- 
 ver, whom you were kind enough to depute to our 
 General Conference assembled in the city of Baltimore 
 in May, 1898. Whether the manner in which they 
 were entertained while among us was perfectly cordial, 
 I leave it for them to declare. But both courtesy and 
 truth require me to affirm that you could have scarcely 
 selected two gentlemen more fit in every way to make 
 a favorable impression upon our people. At any rate, 
 we shall decline to believe that you have any better 
 representatives than they until we have had ocular and 
 audible demonstration of the fact. 
 
 Dr. Berry sets the pace for the multitudinous army
 
 32 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 of Epworth Leaguers, and must needs, therefore, be 
 alive and awake in all the fibers of his being. As an 
 editor he is bright without being flippant, orthodox 
 without being hidebound, and an intense Methodist 
 without being bigoted. His message to us was wise 
 and weighty, worthy of himself and worthy of you. 
 
 Mr. Dolliver, born in a parsonage and bred on a four 
 weeks' circuit, though still on the sunny side of fifty, 
 has long been an influential member of the Federal 
 House of Representatives, an orator the tropical splen- 
 dors of whose eloquence fascinate every audience be- 
 fore which he stands, and a statesman so clean in char- 
 acter and so broad of vision as to be well fitted for 
 carrying the gravest dignities of the republic. We do 
 not forget, Mr. President, that, in spite of his long res- 
 idence in Iowa, he is a native of old Virginia ; and we 
 may be excused for fancying that in his golden sen- 
 tences we can hear some far-off echoes of those tremen- 
 dous periods with which Patrick Henry, in the Revolu- 
 tionary era, shook the American Continent and aston- 
 ished the world. If in the white heat of our enthusiasm 
 we cheered everything that our highly esteemed broth- 
 er said so lustily as to make him think that we were 
 ready to incorporate it all in the creed, we must not be 
 held too closely to the record. Some of us were quite 
 possibly in the condition that day of the old Tennes- 
 seean who, at the close of a stirring sermon, made a 
 liberal subscription to the support of the preacher and, 
 when he was afterwards called upon to pay it, excused 
 himself by saying: "I was a little too religious just then 
 to be capable of taking care of my own interests." 
 
 And now, Mr. President, what more shall I say?
 
 Salutations to Our Twin Sister of the North. 33 
 
 Usage makes it proper that I should bring you some re- 
 port as to how it fares with us. But I cannot suppose 
 it likely that you would be seriously concerned in any 
 mere statistical display of our strength ; and I remem- 
 ber, besides, the striking aphorism of Canning, that 
 ''nothing is so false as facts except figures." Were I 
 to affect the role of census taker, I might leave either 
 an inadequate or an exaggerated impression upon your 
 minds. If my memory serves me right, there is Bib- 
 lical warrant also for the notion that ecclesiastical cen- 
 sus takers are not the special favorites of Divine Provi- 
 dence a fact which may find its explanation in their 
 disposition to suppress or minify whatever collides 
 with their prejudices, and to exploit and emphasize 
 whatever lends support to their favorite opinions. 
 
 But it requires no slightest departure from absolute 
 veracity to affirm that by many tokens the Lord God of 
 our fathers abides with us. The pillar of cloud still 
 goes before us by day, and the pillar of fire, in all its 
 ancient glory, still flames on our eyes through the dark- 
 ness of the darkest nights. With many things to de- 
 depress and dismay us, we have also unnumbered rea- 
 sons for abounding hopefulness ; and we cannot bring 
 ourselves to believe that He who has led us through 
 the storms and tempests of the past means to desert us 
 now. That was a just and wise inference drawn by 
 the wife of Manoah when her husband was shaken 
 with terror at the ascent of the angel of the Lord in 
 the sacrificial flame: '"If the Lord were pleased to kill 
 us, he would not have received a burnt offering and a 
 meat offering at our hands, neither would he have 
 showed us all these things." The main lesson of his- 
 3
 
 34 'Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 tory is a lesson of confidence in Jehovah. It is not 
 possible that pessimism should get a permanent lodg- 
 ment in men's minds until they have ceased to believe 
 in the living God, the same yesterday, to-day, and for- 
 ever, seated now as of old on his throne, high and 
 lifted up, with the trailing glories of his vestments of 
 light filling the temple of the universe, and the sera- 
 phim veiling their faces with their wings in his pres- 
 ence, and crying to one another day and night : "Holy, 
 holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts : the whole earth is full 
 of his glory." We believe that our help is in the name 
 of the Lord that made heaven and earth. And our 
 deepest prayer is that of the Hebrew psalmist : "Give 
 ear, O Shepherd of Israel, thou that leadest Joseph 
 like a flock; thou that dwellest between the cherubim, 
 shine forth. Before Ephraim and Benjamin and Ma- 
 nasseh, stir up thy strength, and come and save" us." 
 
 Since 1866 we have grown from 427,000 communi- 
 cants to 1,476,000. During this whole period we have 
 had but one year of arrested growth. In 1898 the 
 General Minutes showed a decrease in the membership 
 of about 8,000. But in 1899 the tide again turned in 
 the right direction with an increase of over 6,000. All 
 the indications are that we shall go out of the century 
 with 1,500,000 names on our Church registers. Sorry 
 as we are that the figures are not greater, we are 
 grateful and happy that they are not less. The causes 
 which have lately led to an arrest in the rate of growth 
 in the various Protestant denominations our own 
 among the rest are quite too multiform and compli- 
 cated to be set forth in a single word. It is not worth 
 while to pay much attention to the self-conceited the-
 
 Salutations to Our Twin Sister of the North. 35 
 
 orist who thinks that he can put the whole case in a 
 nutshell. Nevertheless, the situation is one that excites 
 painful apprehension and demands careful and prayer- 
 ful investigation. 
 
 Our missionary work in China, Japan, Korea, Mex- 
 ico, Cuba, Brazil, and elsewhere is prospering more 
 largely than at any former period of our history. 
 Slowly but surely we are coming to grasp the full force 
 of the truth that the business of the Church of Jesus 
 Christ is not to nurse itself, but to evangelize the 
 world. What St. Paul said of his personal mission is 
 also in some measure true of the whole company of 
 the faithful: "Unto me, who am less than the least of 
 all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach 
 among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ ; 
 and to make all men see what is the fellowship of the 
 mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath 
 been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ : 
 to the intent that now unto the principalities and pow- 
 ers in heavenly places might be known by the Church 
 the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal 
 purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord." 
 The adoption of any narrower program than the one 
 which is thus so magnificently outlined is sure to bring 
 on spiritual paralysis and to end at last in utter death. 
 This whole world, with every rational creature in it, 
 belongs to our Lord by right of redemption, and it is 
 the business of his Church to see to it that as speedily 
 as possible he comes into possession of his own. For 
 foreign and domestic missions, including the contribu- 
 tions of the Woman's Board, which are managed with 
 very great ability, we collect and disburse not far from
 
 36 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 $600,000 per annum. Our Board of Church Extension, 
 organized in 1882, grows constantly stronger. It now 
 has fixed loan funds aggregating over $200,000, and 
 gathers from the congregations annually about $70,000 
 for current needs. 
 
 Our publishing interests are in a reasonably healthy 
 condition, but it must be acknowledged that our people 
 at large do not show so intelligent an appreciation of 
 this arm of power as could be desired. The conviction 
 grows upon the thoughtful among us that we must 
 make a larger and better use of the press in the future 
 than we have done in the past. Whoever can devise a 
 feasible plan for effecting this end will be at least as 
 well entitled to canonization as some people that have 
 actually passed the scrutiny and been enrolled among 
 the saints. That old story of Martin Luther's throwing 
 his inkstand at the devil is symbolic of many meanings. 
 Is it amiss to affirm that the sturdy reformer was wiser 
 than he knew ? One thing is certain : the devil is con- 
 stantly throwing his inkstand at the Church. Let us 
 be sure to make the game as lively for him as we can. 
 A single other hint may be let slip in passing: the 
 success of our Book Concerns is to be measured, not 
 so much by the lengthening list of their publications, 
 nor by the increase of their capital stock, as by the 
 extent to which they actually get into circulation a lit- 
 erature that is so sound in substance and so attractive 
 in form as to command the attention of the reading 
 public. 
 
 Our schools and colleges, in spite of many embar- 
 rassments, have done and are doing a great work. The 
 energy, persistency, and self-denial of the men who
 
 Salutations to Our Twin Sister of the North. 37 
 
 have them in charge deserve the highest praise. The 
 educators of Methodism have been to the full as faith- 
 ful and as useful as any other class of her servants. It 
 is my hope and belief that a new generation of trained 
 and competent teachers is coming on who will prove fit 
 to be compared with Stephen Olin, Landon C. Garland, 
 Henry B. Bascom, Augustus B. Longstreet, Robert 
 Paine, George F. Pierce, Ephraim E. Wiley, James A. 
 Duncan, William M. Wightman, Francis A. Mood, and 
 others, the fine old masters who in their own characters 
 set before our Southern youth a living illustration of 
 what Isaac Taylor so finely described as "the triple 
 nobility of nature, culture, and faith." All the signs 
 go to show that we shall succeed in raising the mil- 
 lion and a half dollars that we have asked as a twen- 
 tieth century thank offering for educational purposes. 
 Only a few weeks ago Vanderbilt University received 
 a bequest of about $200,000 from Mrs. Mary J. Fur- 
 man, of Nashville, which is the third large gift that it 
 has had from elect Methodist women, to say nothing of 
 the fact that the final and controlling consideration 
 which led Commodore Vanderbilt to open his purse to 
 it so royally in the first instance was the desire to grat- 
 ify the wishes of his excellent Methodist wife, who, as 
 good providence would have it, was also a cousin of 
 the late Mrs. Bishop McTyeire. Trinity College, Dur- 
 ham, N. C., has been the recipient in recent years of 
 $400,000 or $500,000 from Mr. Washington Duke and 
 his sons, and will probably get whatever sums are 
 needed for its further development. Five or six of our 
 other colleges have passed the experimental stage with 
 good equipments, larger or smaller endowments, and
 
 38 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 the prospect of increasing support from many quarters. 
 The rest are having a hard time trying to make ends 
 meet. Some of them will survive and flourish, and 
 some, it is to be feared, will go the way of so many 
 similar institutions in the South and West. As Meth- 
 odism believes in a gospel of light, it must be true to 
 the old traditions and educate. Let the State do what 
 it will, the Church is bound to look out for the higher 
 training of her youth. She has some lessons to teach 
 them which the State has no voice to convey, and at 
 whatever cost she must sustain, enlarge, and endow her 
 seats of learning. Is it a note of narrowness to add 
 that they in turn must be true and loyal to her inter- 
 ests? A Church college is no better than any other, 
 unless it is better. That it should venture to call for 
 ecclesiastical patronage and yet refuse to submit to 
 ecclesiastical guidance is an anomaly not to be 'toler- 
 ated. What right has it to ask for anything more in 
 the way of support than it is willing to give in the 
 way of service? We Methodists are at the farthest 
 possible remove from narrow sectarianism, for which 
 let us devoutly thank God. But this is no reason why 
 we should not openly fly our denominational banner 
 over all the institutions of every sort that depend upon 
 us for maintenance. 
 
 The Sunday school cause was never better looked 
 after among us than at the present time. Each year 
 marks an advance in the number of schools, of teachers, 
 and of scholars. That there are still grave deficiencies 
 in the quality of the instruction given and the other 
 work done through this agency is lamentably true, but 
 that there are also marked and constant improvements
 
 Salutations to Our Twin Sister of the North. 39 
 
 is equally beyond dispute. My candid opinion is that 
 our Sunday school literature is equal in its range and 
 virility to the best in the United States. Another fact 
 furnishes ground for gratitude: there is a widespread 
 and deepening feeling among all concerned that the 
 supreme end to be sought after is the conversion of 
 the children to Christ, and that all efforts which do 
 not look to this consummation are a mere beating of 
 the air. 
 
 We were a little behind you in adopting the Epworth 
 League, and it is hardly to be expected that we shall 
 ever quite catch up. There be some among us whose 
 solicitude on the subject is not sufficiently keen to 
 cause them to lose sleep. The fact that the bulk of 
 our members live in the country, and often far apart 
 from one another, renders it difficult to bring the 
 young people together except on the Lord's day; and 
 there are other reasons lying in the peculiarities of our 
 social life that militate in some measure against the 
 perfect success of the League movement. It must not 
 be inferred from this remark that our labors herein 
 have been marked by failure. Far from it. We have 
 in the aggregate an intelligent and consecrated host of 
 young men and women (about 250,000) banded to- 
 gether under the inspiring motto of "All for Christ" 
 and following in the wake of a most competent leader- 
 ship. The modesty, the docility, the "sweet reason- 
 ableness" which they have generally displayed in their 
 relation to the pastors and others in authority is, we 
 take it, an omen for good, as is also their unwearied 
 zeal in all manner of good works. 
 
 If asked as to the character of our pulpit, I should
 
 40 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 be compelled to give a qualified reply. My impression 
 is that we have fewer men of supreme preaching abil- 
 ity than formerly. There is no one quite like Bascom, 
 or Pierce, or Kavanaugh, or Doggett, or Marvin, or 
 Munsey, towering up head and shoulders above his 
 brethren. But there are some who as expounders and 
 proclaimers of the Word of God are the equals, if not 
 the superiors, of any of their predecessors ; and there 
 is a large class who for vigor of thought, lucidity of 
 expression, and fervor of spirit are workmen that need 
 not to be ashamed. That the general average of the 
 preaching has improved is certain. If there has been 
 any serious loss, it is found in the failure to look for 
 immediate results as the fathers did. Possibly, but not 
 certainly, this is an inevitable consequence of changed 
 conditions. It calls for inquiry. The great majority 
 of our ministers preach a simple and unadulterated 
 gospel '"Christ and him crucified," "Jesus and the 
 resurrection" with a firm persuasion that it is "the 
 power of God unto salvation." Not many of them 
 waste time on alien themes or squander their strength 
 in running after vain fads. The rule with them is to 
 keep in the middle of the road. It is only now and 
 then that a brother makes his appearance who, without 
 scientific training, cherishes a conceit of competency to 
 teach the scientists, as Gideon taught the elders of 
 Succoth, "with thorns and briers of the wilderness"; 
 or, without knowledge of history, politics, and econom- 
 ics, dreams that he possesses the ability to reconstruct 
 society from the foundations up; or, without more 
 than the scantest acquaintance with the wide field of 
 literature, has the crude audacity to spin out a series
 
 Salutations to Our Twin Sister of the North. 41 
 
 of thin and vaporous discourses on "The Ethics of Po- 
 etry" or "The Religious Aims of the Great Novelists." 
 Such ministers soon run their course in our latitude. 
 The average Southerner refuses to go to church to 
 listen to a stale rehash of the daily newspaper, or a 
 bungling lecture on evolution, or a milk-and-water 
 essay in belles Icttres. He will tolerate a good deal of 
 dullness and even of stupidity if it has a distinctly reli- 
 gious flavor in it, but he has no taste for trivial semi- 
 secularities in the house of God. 
 
 The moral tone of our ministry is, on the whole, 
 most excellent. A cleaner or more upright body of 
 men does not exist in this modern world. As a rule, 
 they are not only correct in outward deportment, but 
 are also experimentally familiar with the spiritualities 
 of religion and utterly devoted to Jesus Christ. They 
 have had a severe schooling in poverty, in self-denial, 
 in all manner of hardships ; but it has yielded in them 
 the peaceable fruit of righteousness. You can never 
 know, Mr. President, at what a terrible cost the in- 
 terests of Methodism and of the kingdom of Christ in 
 general have been protected in the South since the 
 close of the Civil War. But it must now be clear to 
 all open-minded persons that it was better for our 
 manhood that we should stand by our own religious 
 organizations and share in all respects the lot of the 
 people than that we should desert them in the day of 
 disaster with the aim and hope of a missionary stipend 
 from other sources. Nothing could have so separated 
 us from our struggling flocks as the knowledge on their 
 part that we were drawing pay from beyond the Ohio. 
 The course of events has fully vindicated the wisdom
 
 42 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 of our action. Without a helping hand or a cheering 
 word from all the world, and with a chorus of censure 
 and condemnation that was often loud in our ears, we 
 have held the field and saved the situation, demon- 
 strating afresh that a faithful ministry can subsist 
 wherever a Christian people can live, and that the 
 toils and sacrifices of such a ministry are never in vain. 
 We have not latterly introduced any marked changes 
 into our polity, and we have not had to. As far back 
 as 1866 we fell into a temporary spell of radicalism and 
 overhauled our house in various particulars, abolish- 
 ing, not, it is true, the law of probation, but the hard 
 and fast six months' limit, removing the class meeting 
 test of membership and putting that particular means 
 of grace on the same basis with others, extending the 
 pastoral limit from two to four years, and introducing 
 voluntarily and without compulsion or pressure of any 
 kind equal lay representation in the General Confer- 
 ence and effective lay representation in the Annual 
 Conferences. At that time things were in so ill a shape 
 with us that it was thought we could not make them 
 much worse by any alterations and might possibly im- 
 prove them. But it would be a grave error to infer 
 that the leaders in the New Orleans General Confer- 
 ence were simply burrowing in the dark. On the 
 contrary, they were men of the highest intelligence, 
 who for long years had been going over all the ground 
 in the light of the New Testament and of ecclesiastical 
 history; and they were fully convinced in their own 
 minds that on every one of the points mentioned they 
 were moving in accordance with the drift and spirit 
 of the gospel and responding to the imperative demands
 
 Salutations to Our Twin Sister of the North. 43 
 
 of the age. We rejoice in the fact that in respect to 
 these particular issues they thus put our Church far in 
 advance of any other branch of Methodism in the 
 world, and paved the way along which all the rest have 
 since been moving with the steadiness of gravitation. 
 There is nobody in our ranks that would even think of 
 going back to the old order. Especially is this the 
 case with regard to lay delegation. Our laymen have 
 proved vastly beneficial to us in the deliberations of the 
 General Conference. Quite unexpectedly, they have 
 always been a trifle more conservative than the minis- 
 ters and more than once have put a decided check upon 
 hasty and ill-conceived legislation. Nor have they been 
 less useful in the administrative work of the Annual 
 Conferences. We simply could not do without them, 
 and we are by no means minded to try the experi- 
 ment. 
 
 There is another point concerning which it may not 
 be improper for me to speak a word in this connection, 
 though in doing so I must be allowed to disclaim the 
 slightest disposition to thrust any impertinent sugges- 
 tions into the course of your discussions. The General 
 Conference of 1854, at the instigation of that Ajax 
 Telamon of Methodism, Dr. William A. Smith, of 
 Virginia, by mere legislative action, invested the epis- 
 copacy with a veto power, appending the following 
 new proviso to the Restrictive Rules : 
 
 When any rule or regulation is adopted by the General 
 Conference which, in the opinion of the bishops, is unconsti- 
 tutional, the bishops may present to the General Conference 
 their opinion to such a rule or regulation with the reasons 
 therefor; and if, after taking the objections and reasons of the
 
 44 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 bishops, two-thirds of the members of the Conference present 
 shall vote in favor of the rule or regulation so objected to, it 
 shall have the force of law ; otherwise it shall be null and void. 
 
 This was in general line with the declaration made by 
 Bishop Joshua Soule in 1824, as follows : "The General 
 Conference is not the proper judge of the constitution- 
 ality of its own acts. If the General Conference be the 
 sole judge of such questions, then there are no bounds 
 to its power." But it will be seen that, after all, the final 
 power to decide on the constitutionality of proposed 
 legislation was left by the action of 1854 in the hands of 
 a two-thirds majority of the General Conference. 
 
 The case stood so until 1870, when a resolution was 
 introduced instructing the Committee on Episcopacy 
 to inquire, first, whether this proviso had been legally 
 introduced into the Discipline, and, secondly, whether 
 any additional legislation in regard to it was necessary. 
 On the fourteenth day of the session Dr. Leroy M. 
 Lee, nephew of Jesse Lee and a famous man in his 
 own right, brought in a report from the committee, a 
 great State paper dealing with every phase of the sub- 
 ject in a most masterly way, not only maintaining that 
 the General Conference is incompetent by its own ac- 
 tion to add any proviso to the Restrictive Rules, but 
 going farther and insisting, inter alia, on the following 
 positions : 
 
 The veto power does not inhere in the episcopal office. 
 . . . The General Conference is a dependent and respon- 
 sible body dependent for its being and authority upon the 
 original body of elders and responsible to them for its fidelity 
 in the use of the powers delegated to it. But without some 
 provision of the Constitution such as was aimed to be estab-
 
 Salutations to Our Twin Sister of the North. 45 
 
 lished in the proviso under consideration, there is no legitimate 
 or authoritative mode either of questioning the constitution- 
 ality of its acts or of admitting them to another tribunal for 
 adjudication. And in the absence of suitable provision for 
 this purpose the General Conference may exercise the powers, 
 even if it does not claim the right of determining the consti- 
 tutionality of its own acts; and in such an event the General 
 Conference absorbs all power into itself, its responsibility 
 ceases, and it can "revoke, alter, change, or destroy" even the 
 Constitution itself at its own will and by its own act. Such 
 power is not given to it nor intended to be given. But all this 
 power would have been given if in what was given was in- 
 cluded the right of determining the constitutionality of its 
 own acts. The original body of elders delegated everything of 
 the powers they possessed, if they delegated this power. They 
 reserved nothing to themselves if they did not reserve the 
 right of determining the constitutionality of the acts of the 
 delegated body, if they did not reserve the right to hold their 
 agents and representatives in the grasp of a grave, dignified, 
 and ceaseless responsibility to themselves as the ultimate and 
 only legitimate judge of their acts and of their fidelity to the 
 engagements and obligations of the Constitution made and 
 provided for their special guidance and government. It is 
 incredible that such a body of men as those who inaugurated 
 the Constitution of the Church and checked and restrained 
 the General Conference with such limitations to its acts and 
 such restraints upon its power could have been so incautious 
 and inconsiderate as to deprive themselves so utterly of any 
 further and all future relations to and control over those to 
 whom they intrusted their rights and delegated their powers. 
 Such a supposition would be an assault upon their integrity 
 and intelligence as unjust as it is unmerited. 
 
 To set specific limits alike to the power of the Gen- 
 eral Conference and to the authority of the bishops, a 
 new proviso, prepared by Dr. Lee, was then passed by 
 a two-thirds vote of the General Conference and sent
 
 46 'Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 around to the Annual Conferences, where it received a 
 three- fourths vote. It reads as follows : 
 
 Provided, That when any rule or regulation is adopted by 
 the General Conference which, in the opinion of the bishops, 
 is unconstitutional, the bishops may present to the Conference 
 which passed said rule or regulation their objections thereto 
 with their reasons; and if then the General Conference shall 
 by a two-thirds vote adhere to its action on said rule or regu- 
 lation, it shall then take the course prescribed for altering a 
 restrictive rule; and if thus passed upon affirmatively, the 
 bishops shall announce that such rule or regulation takes effect 
 from that time. 
 
 Twenty-four years elapsed from the date of its pas- 
 sage before the power which it bestows on the bishops 
 was ever called into use. In 1894 a bill which indi- 
 rectly made it possible that a layman should sit on the 
 trial committee of a minister was held to be obnoxious 
 to the Fifth Restrictive Rule and vetoed, and the Gen- 
 eral Conference took no further action in the premises. 
 Some rather amusing consequences have followed upon 
 this single exercise of the episcopal veto. We thought 
 we knew exactly what our Constitution was, and some 
 of us were a little inclined to make game of your per- 
 plexities thereto anent. But it turns out that we are not 
 so certain about it as we were, and we now have a 
 learned commission at work for the purpose of reaching 
 a determination. There are wise men among us who 
 rest easier of nights because of this detent in our 
 machinery. 
 
 If time and circumstances allowed, there are many 
 other features of our ecclesiastical life and methods 
 which I should be glad to bring to your attention. But 
 I have heard that it is possible for a fraternal delegate
 
 Salutations to Our Twin Sister of the North. 47 
 
 to speak too long, and I shall therefore begin to consider 
 the propriety of bringing my address to a close. Be- 
 fore doing so, however, I must be permitted to say that 
 you and we alike have a rich common inheritance, and 
 that hereafter nothing for good or ill can happen to 
 either one of us that will not materially affect the other 
 also. 
 
 i. We have a common Methodism. Everything be- 
 yond 1844 belongs to us both alike. Wesley and White- 
 field, Embury and Strawbridge, Coke and Asbury, Mc- 
 Kendree and Soule, and the whole brotherhood of itin- 
 erants that rode round the continent, preaching the 
 most rational, the most joyous, the most commanding 
 gospel that this world has ever heard all are ours. 
 The achievements that they have wrought cannot be 
 selfishly and exclusively claimed by either section. If 
 the South sent Freeborn Garretson and Jesse Lee and 
 Peter Akers and John P. Durbin to the North, the 
 North sent Joshua Soule and William Winans and 
 Jefferson Hamilton and Stephen Olin to the South, the 
 last to be converted in a humble Methodist home in 
 Carolina and sent back to his native New England as 
 a burning and shining light. The tides of personal 
 activity and of religious influence flowed backward and 
 forward over all imaginary lines. In those early days 
 we were one in every sense. Nor can any unprejudiced 
 man read the proceedings of the great Conference that 
 issued in disruption without feeling that the partici- 
 pants in the debates, instead of being angry partisans 
 anxious to precipitate a revolution, were thoughtful 
 and godly men most solicitous to avoid such a catas- 
 trophe. What was done was done in sorrow, not in
 
 48 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 anger. The parting caused a thousand heartaches. 
 The anger came later and flamed out at last in bitter 
 and passionate speech. Many things were said by 
 your representatives and by ours that in our cooler 
 moments we cannot possibly justify, things that must 
 have grieved the heart of the compassionate Christ 
 who died for us. They ought to be buried in oblivion. 
 The day for utterance of that sort is gone. We know 
 one another better now, and we understand the men of 
 half a century ago better than they understood them- 
 selves. In our years of separation we have doubtless 
 drifted apart in some outward and noticeable partic- 
 ulars. But a careful study of the two Episcopal 
 Methodisms, made in large part on the ground where 
 they are both actually at work, has served to convince 
 me that, after all, the differences between them are 
 infinitesimal when compared with the points in which 
 they agree. Superficially disunited, they are yet linked 
 together by a thousand ties as close and holy as the 
 love of God can make them. Even in outward aspects 
 they are as much alike as two handsome sisters, each 
 one of whom, while retaining her individuality of ex- 
 pression and bearing, also carries all the family marks. 
 Why should there be any unkind or jealous feelings 
 between them? This is the year of grace 1900, and 
 the world is sweeping forward at a rate which makes 
 the old contentions look distant and small. The only 
 people, North or South, who still cherish the hates and 
 discords of 1844 or 1861 are those who, like the Gad- 
 arine demoniacs, "make their dwelling among the 
 tombs." Far be it from us who stand fronting the 
 surpassing glories of the future ages to waste our
 
 Salutations to Our Twin Sister of the North. 49 
 
 energies by digging forever in the cold ashes of burned- 
 out controversies. Magnanimity breeds magnanimity 
 by a natural law. It should be our highest aim to pro- 
 voke one another to love and to good works. Ever 
 since President Henry Wade Rogers appeared before 
 our General Conference at Memphis in 1894 and de- 
 livered himself with such Christian fairness on the 
 historical issues between us, we Southern Methodists, 
 not to be outdone in generosity, have been perfectly 
 willing to grant that when you withdrew from us under 
 the terms of a solemn mutual compact "it was a sepa- 
 ration and not a secession." Let it stand at that. It 
 may interest you to know that our last General Con- 
 ference fully ratified the work of the Joint Commission 
 on Federation and continued our commission with full 
 power to act. Let us devoutly pray that the final out- 
 come may be so perfect an adjustment of our misun- 
 derstandings as will' destroy our lingering rivalries, 
 remove the last vestige of bitterness, and enable us to 
 deliver the full force of our glorious Methodism upon 
 any given point at a given time. What specific meas- 
 ures may be adopted to secure this result is a matter of 
 small moment. But it will be an unspeakable disgrace 
 to us if in the face of all our bitter and banded foes 
 we waste an ounce of energy or a dollar of money in 
 fighting one another. 
 
 2. We have a common country. And what a country 
 it is ! Stretching away through endless leagues from 
 the Penobscot and the Kennebec on the east to the 
 Sacramento and the Columbia on the west, and from the 
 Great Lakes on the north to the Florida Keys on the 
 south, with its outlying fringes of possessions and de- 
 4
 
 50 'Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 pendencies, it is the mightiest seat of empire that the 
 world has ever seen. The allegation is sometimes 
 brought against the Southerner that he is naturally 
 sectional and provincial in his temper; and, truth to 
 tell, he does love his own sunny home with an ardor 
 that colder folk find it hard to understand. But he is 
 none the less a national patriot for all that. What is 
 patriotism but provincialism on a large scale? Pas- 
 sionate local attachments are the raw material out of 
 which affection for one's whole country is manufac- 
 tured. There are no better Americans than those who 
 dwell below the Potomac, and none more ready when 
 the emergency arises to make sacrifices for the glory 
 and honor of these United States. They revere the 
 common flag which flies in beauty and triumph over 
 sea and land, and they devoutly trust that wherever it 
 is spread to the breeze it may be the symbol not merely 
 of American authority and power, but also of American 
 laws and institutions, meaning not one thing here and 
 another yonder, but liberty, opportunity, and progress 
 everywhere. For they have taken to heart those preg- 
 nant words of a great historian : "From all the history 
 of the European world since the later days of the 
 Roman republic, there is no more important lesson to 
 be learned than this that it is impossible for a free 
 people to govern a dependent people despotically with- 
 out endangering its own freedom." 
 
 3. Behind us we have a common history. Though 
 each one of the original colonies started as a separate 
 and independent settlement, yet almost from the very 
 beginning they were all drawn more or less closely to- 
 gether by forces that were as irresistible as the move-
 
 Salutations to Our Twin Sister of the North. 51 
 
 ment of the tides. The Revolutionary War drove them 
 into a loose confederation, and the Constitutional Con- 
 vention of 1787, when its action had been ratified by 
 the assent of the various sovereign States, bound them 
 into a close Federal Union. Thenceforward the streams 
 of their political life flowed more and more into one 
 broad channel. There was never any more perfect 
 buncombe than the threadbare talk of two distinct civ- 
 ilizations Puritan and Cavalier radiating from Ply- 
 mouth Rock and Jamestown respectively and clashing 
 with one another from the beginning. Real Cavaliers 
 were always scarce in the South, even in Virginia, 
 which knew them not outside of the tidewater region. 
 In our early Tennessee history we had only two of any 
 prominence, the brothers William and Willie Blount, 
 whose great-grandfather was a follower of King Charles 
 and fled to North Carolina after the establishment of 
 the commonwealth. In Kentucky, unless I am much 
 at fault, they had none at all. The South was settled 
 mainly by middle-class English, Scotch-Irish, German, 
 and Huguenot immigrants. 
 
 And not all New Englanders were Puritans even in 
 blood, much less in temper and disposition. Such men 
 as Caleb dishing and Benjamin F. Butler were also 
 types and stood each for a large class. It is worth 
 noting that even Daniel Webster, the New Hampshire 
 Colossus, whose reply to Hayne was one of the in- 
 spirations of my boyhood, had nearly all the personal 
 shortcomings that are popularly supposed to be the 
 special inheritance of the Cavalier, and that John C. 
 Calhoun, the incarnation of South Carolina, chaste as 
 an icicle and incorruptible as Aristides, had all the
 
 52 Methodist Federation" and Union. 
 
 virtues that are commonly attributed to the Puritans. 
 As to the West, its citizenship from the start has been 
 extremely composite. There is to-day scarcely a com- 
 munity in this State of Illinois that is not now made up 
 in part of men and women whose parents or grand- 
 parents came from the South. 
 
 May I not say, without suspicion of arrogance or of 
 self-assertion, that in winning this country and creating 
 this government of ours the South did her full share ? 
 If I should seem to you to tell only our part of the 
 story, it is because I am firmly convinced that you will 
 not be behindhand in telling yours. And has not each 
 American an undivided interest in every great and 
 noble thing that any American has done? To use the 
 very words of John Fiske, "the first formal defiance of 
 the Stamp Act came from Virginia" in the form of 
 Patrick Henry's "resolves," which were adopted by the 
 House of Burgesses in 1765. At the Congress which 
 convened in New York in the fall of the same year, in 
 response to a circular letter from the Massachusetts 
 Legislature, "it was Christopher Gadsden, of South 
 Carolina, who of all the delegates present took the 
 broadest ground in behalf both of liberty and of united 
 action among the colonies. He objected to sending 
 petitions to Parliament, lest thereby its paramount au- 
 thority should implicitly and unwillingly be acknowl- 
 edged." It was Thomas Jefferson who ten years later 
 framed the Declaration of Independence, and Richard 
 Henry Lee who moved its adoption. It was George 
 Washington who in the teeth of the most disheartening 
 conditions held our tattered army together and led it 
 to final victory. Here in Chicago it is proper to add
 
 Salutations to Our Twin Sister of the North. 53 
 
 that it was George Rogers Clarke with his few hun- 
 dred Virginians who took the Northwest Territory for 
 the nascent republic. As Theodore Roosevelt says 
 ("The Winning of the West") : "Alone and with the 
 very slenderest means he conquered and held a vast and 
 very beautiful region which but for him would have 
 formed a part of a foreign and hostile empire." Had 
 it not been for his far-sighted policy and his indomi- 
 table courage, Canada would probably have come down 
 to the Ohio River (and Arthur Edwards might have 
 been born a subject of Queen Victoria). 
 
 Mr. Roosevelt frankly adds some further statements 
 that are likely to startle those who have not taken the 
 pains to investigate the facts. The subject is so im- 
 portant that an extensive quotation may be pardoned : 
 
 The way in which the southern part of our Western coun- 
 try that is, all the land south of the Ohio, and from thence 
 on to the Rio Grande and the Pacific was won and settled 
 stands quite alone. The region north of it was filled up in 
 quite a different manner. The Southwest, including therein 
 what was once simply called the West and afterwards the 
 Middle West, was won by the people themselves, acting as 
 individuals or as groups of individuals, who hewed out their 
 own fortunes in advance of any governmental action. On the 
 other hand, the Northwest, speaking broadly, was acquired by 
 the government, the settlers merely taking possession of what 
 the whole country guaranteed them. The Northwest is es- 
 sentially a national domain ; it is fitting that it should be as it 
 is, not only by position, but by feeling the heart of the nation. 
 North of the Ohio the regular army went first. The settle- 
 ments grew up behind the shelter of the Federal troops of 
 Harmar, St. Clair, Wayne, and of their successors even 
 to our own day. The wars in which the borderers themselves 
 bore any part were few and trifling compared to the contests
 
 54 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 waged by the adventurers who won Kentucky, Tennessee, and 
 Texas. In the Southwest the early settlers acted as their own 
 army and supplied both leaders and men. Sevier, Robertson, 
 Clarke, and Boone led their fellow pioneers to battle, as Jack- 
 son did afterwards, and Houston did later still. Indeed, the 
 Southwesterners not only won their own soil for themselves, 
 but they were the chief instruments in the original acquisition 
 of the Northwest also. Had it not been for the conquest of the 
 Illinois towns in 1799, we would probably never have had any 
 Northwest to settle. And the huge tract between the Upper 
 Mississippi and the Columbia, then called Upper Louisiana, 
 also fell into our hands only because the Kentuckians and 
 Tennesseeans were resolutely bent upon taking possession of 
 New Orleans either by bargain or by battle. All of our terri- 
 tory lying beyond the Alleghanies, north and south, was first 
 won for us by the Southwesterners, fighting for their own 
 land. 
 
 So far Mr. Roosevelt. 
 
 When Mr. Jefferson finally made the Louisiana 
 purchase in 1803, the Hon. Josiah Quincy, of Massa- 
 chusetts, declared that it was a just cause for the se- 
 cession of the Eastern States, as it was sure to disturb 
 the balance of power in the Union by leading to the 
 formation of at least five or six new commonwealths. 
 Exactly ! 
 
 To quote Fiske once more : 
 
 It was James Madison on whom the leading part of the 
 Federal Convention fell a young man somewhat less brilliant 
 than Hamilton, but superior to him in sobriety and balance of 
 powers. He used to be called the "Father of the Constitution," 
 and it is true that the government under which we live is more 
 his work than that of any other man. 
 
 It was John Marshall whom the same writer declares 
 to be "second to none among all the illustrious jurists 
 of the English race," and of whom he adds : "The
 
 Salutations to Our Twin Sister of the North. 55 
 
 practical working of our Federal Constitution during 
 the first thirty years of the nineteenth century was 
 saved to so great an extent by his profound and lumi- 
 nous decisions that he must be assigned a foremost 
 place among the founders of the Federal Union." 
 
 In all our later struggles the South has never once 
 failed to show her hand. The annalists are agreed that 
 as a nation we did not get much honor, except on the 
 sea, out of our second war with Great Britain until the 
 time came for "Old Hickory" with his ragged battal- 
 ions of Tennesseeans and Kentuckians to smite the Pe- 
 ninsular veterans of Wellington at New Orleans and 
 win a victory the like of which is not found in the 
 history of the world. There has been much talk lately 
 about the amazing mobility of the Boers in South Af- 
 rica by those who have forgotten, if they ever knew, 
 that General Coffee and two regiments of mounted 
 Tennessee riflemen in December, 1814, marched one 
 hundred and fifty-seven miles in two days in order to 
 reenforce the slender garrison with which Jackson was 
 holding at bay the invading forces under Pakenham. 
 
 Of the conflicts that brought us Texas and the great 
 States of the Pacific Slope, it is not necessary to speak, 
 as the record is read of all men. As to the life-and- 
 death wrestle of 1861-65, everybody ought now to be 
 dispassionate enough to see that it was inevitable, and 
 that, though it put the fate of the republic in jeopardy, 
 it furnished on both sides abundant illustrations of 
 even-thing that is most glorious in human character. 
 The South is not ashamed of her 600,000 sons who 
 "bore bayonets against destiny" as Confederate sol- 
 diers, nor will she admit that the cilivization was ready
 
 56 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 to decay that could furnish such commanders as Albert 
 Sidney Johnston, Stonewall Jackson, and Robert E. Lee 
 for this grim fighting host. But there is something 
 often lost sight of that I may venture to call to your 
 attention : the Southern States were not solidly on one 
 side. They sent, in round numbers, 400,000 white men 
 into the Union army, and among them such capable 
 captains as George H. Thomas, "the Rock of Chicka- 
 mauga," and David Farragut, the hero of Mobile Bay. 
 Nay, one of them out of the mighty loins of her com- 
 mon stock bred the Titanic figure of Abraham Lincoln, 
 whose most famous political canvass was made against 
 Stephen A. Douglas, a son of New England. My own 
 State of Tennessee, on whose soil four hundred and 
 sixty-seven battles and skirmishes were fought, was 
 literally rent asunder by the diverging convictions of 
 its citizens. The Congressional district in which I was 
 reared, after raising six or eight picked regiments of 
 Confederates, then furnished more volunteers (not a 
 drafted man among them) for the Federal army than 
 any other Congressional district in the United States. 
 
 You cannot forget that in the brief tussle with Spain 
 the first victim was Worth Bagley, in whose patrician 
 veins ran the best blood of the "Old North State ;" nor 
 that the man who boldly pushed his way through the 
 Cuban jungle into the Spanish lines at Santiago and 
 made sure of the presence of the ships of Cervera in 
 the inner bay was Victor Blue, of South Carolina ; nor 
 that the man who performed the coolest act in naval 
 warfare by sailing the Merrimac into the jaws of death 
 and blowing her up with dynamite was Richmond Pear- 
 son Hobson, of Alabama; nor that the gray-headed
 
 Salutations to Our Twin Sister of the North. 57 
 
 veteran who, though burning up with Cuban fever, 
 abandoned his ambulance and rode to the firing line on 
 horseback, and who stoutly resisted every suggestion of 
 retreat, was Joseph Wheeler of the United States. 
 But enough of this. 
 
 4. If behind us there is a common history, before us 
 there lies a common destiny with its common perils. 
 We are all in the same boat. If that thought could only 
 sink deeply enough into our minds, it would at once 
 save us from the petty squabblings which are a dis- 
 grace to our humanity and a sin against God. What of 
 the future? As our vision sweeps forward to the ut- 
 most edge of the horizon, is everything perfectly clear ? 
 Or do storm signals show themselves here and there ? 
 He must be blind indeed who does not see that there 
 are breakers ahead, and that there is need for the best 
 seamanship if we expect to weather the gale and reach 
 the port without loss or danger to cargo and crew. To 
 abandon the figure and drop down to literal speech, 
 what are some of the dangers that beset us so threaten- 
 ingly at the present time ? 
 
 ( i ) First of all, there is a widespread infidelity pen- 
 etrating and poisoning the very atmosphere that we 
 breathe and insensibly towjejing the victorious tone of. 
 religious faith. Sometimes it takes on the form of a 
 scientific negationalism, denying the existence of a 
 personal God at once immanent and transcendent 
 and putting in his place either the caput mortuum of 
 blind Force or that icy ghost of Deity, "a stream of 
 tendency not ourselves that makes for righteousness," 
 as if anything but an intelligent and self-determining 
 thinker could possibly have created a universe which
 
 58 'Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 only intelligent thought is able to construe. Some- 
 times it assumes the shape of historical skepticism, 
 subjecting the documentary records of religion to a 
 hard and pitiless dissection which, if universally fol- 
 lowed, would cancel all satisfactory knowledge of past 
 events and leave us quite uncertain as to whether we 
 have any solid ground of fact on which to plant 
 the soles of our feet, and yet seeking to console us 
 with the delusive assurance that, though the New 
 Testament be taken away from us, we still have the 
 Christ left. Let there be no misunderstanding here. 
 If the four gospels are not substantially true, then we 
 are building on sand. The cry o<f "Back to Christ !" 
 may itself be a delusion and a snare. The only Christ 
 to whom it is worth while to go back is not the Christ 
 of unaccredited tradition, nor yet that floating phan- 
 tom, the so-called Christ of the Christian conscious- 
 ness, but the homely and familiar Christ who was_ 
 born in a manger, died on the cross, rose in majesty 
 from the sepulcher, and ascended to the right hand of 
 God. Schpjarship has its rights, but it must be rever- 
 ent as well as learned. You may not dogmatically re- 
 quire it to labor in the interest of preconceived opin- 
 ions ; but you may require that it shall not rudely dis- 
 turb the great pieties of the world by setting forth 
 incomplete and unverified theories as if they had the_ 
 authority of final conclusions, and you may insist that 
 jt^ prosecute all its investigations not in tlie temper of__ 
 the forum or the market place but in the temper of the_ 
 closet and. the sanctuary. 
 
 (2) There is an immense amount of gross practical 
 materialism which is not thoughtful enough to frame
 
 Salutations to Our Twin Sister of the North. 59 
 
 a definite creed, but which, nevertheless, acts upon the 
 assumed belief that the chief end of man is not to 
 "glorify God and enjoy him forever," but to heap up 
 vast riches by fair means or foul and to revel in the 
 luxury which such riches can command. The mad 
 desire for wealth in these United States is an unpar- 
 alelled phenomenon. Already it has done incalculable 
 harm; and in the future, unless it is checked and 
 stayed, it may work our ruin. Not satisfied with 
 gains that two generations ago would have seemed in- 
 credible, it is perpetually clamoring for more. Enter- 
 ing into trusts and combines, it crushes out competi- 
 tion, destroys the small producer or holds him as a 
 victim at its pleasure, limits the output of furnaces and 
 factories to suit its own advantage without any regard 
 for the public welfare, swings its whip over the shoul- 
 ders of the common toiler and enforces his absolute 
 obedience by the threat of starvation for himself and 
 family, and with boundless rapacity and unabashed 
 impudence forces its way into the halls of Congress 
 and solicits gifts and subsidies from the public treas- 
 ury. There is, to be sure, a more pleasing side to the 
 picture. Never before in the history of the world were 
 there so many rich men who were also rich toward 
 God, spending their millions for schools and colleges, 
 for libraries and hospitals, for open parks and pleasure 
 grounds, for Churches and missions. But this fact, 
 while it mitigates the evils of the existing conditions, 
 does not in any way abate the need of wide remedial 
 measures. Capital must be taught its duties, and 
 where it will not voluntarily learn them must be 
 forced into line by the strong arm of the law. Nor
 
 60 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 less must labor be instructed that, while it may properly 
 organize for worthy ends, it has everything to lose and 
 nothing to gain by repudiating religion, trampling on 
 law, and seeking to secure its ends by methods that 
 are abhorrent to right reason and a menace to the 
 peace and permanency of society. 
 
 (3) Certain particular forms of business which are 
 not merely capable of abuse but are positively evil in 
 themselves have secured such a standing before the 
 law, and such a patronage from all classes of citizens 
 as makes them more to be dreaded than pestilence or 
 earthquake. Chief of these is the liquor traffic. Itjs 
 wholly and incurably bad. Society could better afford 
 to license at every street corner a^ den of cobras than 
 to give its sanction to the indiscriminate sale of strong 
 drink. The open saloon is a breathing hole of hell. 
 IF thrusts temptation into the very faces of the inex- 
 perienced and the unwary and operates day and night 
 as a manufactory of drunkards. The gambling hell 
 and the brothel are its almost invariable accompani- 
 ments. Very often, also, it is a center of political pow- 
 er, part of that machine which sometimes under the 
 name of one party and sometimes under the name of 
 another fills the offices and controls the revenues of 
 our municipalities. Always organized, always at work, 
 without scruple, without honor, it counts for more in 
 the election of mayors and aldermen than the intelli- 
 gence, decency, and piety of the larger cities combined. 
 Set up by the extrajudicial defiance of an express stat- 
 ute in our regular and volunteer armies, it is slaying 
 more of our young men than the bullets of their ene- 
 mies and ^ruining the characters and blasting the hopes
 
 Salutations to Our Twin Sister of the North. 61 
 
 of thousands besides. We jrrnst pjitjt dowji, or it will 
 guj us down. The abolition of this national evil can- 
 not be effected by fanatical means. What is needed in 
 opposing it is^ perfect sanity combined with undying 
 determination. Let not those of us who are enlisted 
 for the war fall into the inexcusable folly of denounc- 
 ing and vilifying one another. Whoever is willing to 
 help in any way ought to be welcomed as an ally, and 
 not treated as an enemy simply because he cannot pro- 
 nounce our shibboleths. We are all aiming at the 
 same end. In some sections it may best be accom- 
 plished by one policy, and in others by another. I am 
 warranted in saying that but for the horde of ignorant 
 and purchasable voters who are sometimes corralled 
 into droves of five hundred and marched to the polls 
 like so many cattle the doggeries could be closed in 
 every Southern State to-morrow. Even as it is, by far 
 the larger part of our territory is already under some 
 form of prohibition, and the battle goes bravely on. 
 
 (4) There is reason to fear that we are suffering 
 from a serious decay in the purity of family life. The 
 Christian doctrine that marriage is the union of one 
 man and one woman for life, indissoluble except for the 
 one cause that defeats its very end and design, is not 
 held in such honor as it once was. The records of our 
 divorce courts are a burning shame. Worst of all, it 
 is not solely nor even chiefly among the lowly and the 
 ignorant that the disregard for the sanctities of the 
 marriage bond is found. Among the very richest of 
 the land occurrences of recent years have disclosed a 
 state of sexual morality that would scandalize a Hot- 
 tentot and put an Australian Bushman to the blush.
 
 62 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 Vice is none the less hideous when it arrays itself in 
 purple and fine linen, feeds on crystallized violets, and 
 seeks to redeem its loathesomeness by the charm of 
 accomplished manners. We must guard our homes. \ 
 Blessed be God for the thousand sweet and beautiful i 
 households in crowded cities and quiet villages and 
 remote country places, watched over by the holy angels ; 
 of peace and love, and into which the base satanic no- / 
 tions of this wicked world find no entrance ! 
 " (5) It must be allowed that many indications show 
 an increasing lack of respect for law and order. The 
 strong often defy it and trample it under foot with 
 contemptuous indifference, and the weak evade its ob- 
 ligations by all sorts of cunning schemes. This tend- 
 ency must be corrected, else we shall presently feel 
 the very foundations rocking and swaying beneath 
 us. That awful enormity, the mob, is only a symptom. 
 Though sometimes it may be the uprising of an out- 
 raged community, yet usually it is the self-assertion 
 of lewd fellows of the baser sort. Under no circum- 
 stances can it be defended, justified, or tolerated. 
 ^Society goes to pieces in the very day in which courts 
 and juries become too corrupt or^ too^ feeble to 3-T 
 minister justice or surrender their functions into the. 
 hands of the rabble. A clarified public opinion, rising 
 up in its might, must demand that the judiciary and 
 the executive branches of the government exercise 
 their authority with such impartiality, fairness, up- 
 rightness, and courage as to take away the last excuse 
 for irregular and illegal methods of punishment. The 
 broad shield of the law must be thrown over the prop- 
 erty and person of every citizen in the land, from the
 
 Salutations to Our Twin Sister of the North. 63 
 
 humblest negro that plows his blind mule in the Black 
 Belt of Alabama to the proudest millionaire that rides 
 in his automobile down Michigan Avenue; and from 
 every class, too, there must be exacted that unques- 
 tioning and absolute obedience which the dictates of 
 common sense and the higher motives of patriotism 
 alike require. 
 
 (6) But our chief danger, after all, is to be looked 
 for not outside but inside the Churches. I am not 
 going to indulge in railing accusations, nor to intimate 
 that organized Christianity throughout the world is in 
 a condition of total or partial apostasy from Jesus 
 Christ, for 1^ do not believe any such thing to be the 
 case. Since the day when the Lord of glory, "who liv- 
 eth, and was dead, and behold he is alive for evermore," 
 ascended to the height of his mediatorial throne, there 
 has never been a time when a larger percentage of his 
 disciples diligently endeavored to adjust their lives to 
 the pattern presented in his teaching than now. The 
 world contains a multitude of faithful souls which no 
 man can number and who walk before God in unspot- 
 ted garments. But there is also, as there has ever been, 
 an immense company of merely nominal Christians who 
 have only a name to live while they are really dead. 
 To thrust them forth from the Church is to give them 
 over finally to the devil. We must care for them as 
 well as we can, bearing with them as long as they do 
 not fall into flagrant sins, and even then exercising 
 discipline with that tender charity which "hopeth all 
 things, believeth all things, endureth all things, and 
 thinketh no evil." It is true that they add little or 
 nothing to our fighting strength, and sometimes they
 
 64 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 are a positive hindrance to great achievements. What 
 shall we do ? There is only one answer. By all possi- 
 ble means we must stimulate and quicken the general 
 life of the Church till every individual member shall 
 feel its vibrant pulsations. There is no magical way of 
 curing the prevailing ills. Ecclesiastical enactments 
 cannot do it. Worldliness is subtle, elusive, persistent. 
 It laughs at the most stringent statutes that are framed 
 to suppress it and slips like an invisible spirit through 
 the finest meshes of prohibitory legislation. Our only] 
 resource is to fall back upon the simple directions of/ 
 the gospel. What we need is a return to the old' 
 paths, to the devouter study of the Scriptures, to the' 
 habit of intense and fervent private prayer, to the 
 observance of family worship, to a more diligent at- 
 tendance upon all public means.
 
 III. 
 
 A MESSAGE TO THE MOTHER CHURCH OF 
 METHODISM. 
 
 5
 
 "For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether 
 we be Jews or- Gentiles, whether we be bond or free ; and have 
 been all made to drink into one Spirit." (i Cor. xii. -13.)
 
 A MESSAGE TO THE MOTHER CHURCH OF 
 METHODISM. 
 
 [Fraternal address delivered before the British Wesleyan 
 Conference, Sheffield, England, 1903.] 
 
 Mr. President, Venerable Fathers of the Platform, 
 and Brethren of the Conference: The reading of my 
 credentials, to which you have just listened, makes it 
 almost unnecessary for me to say that I am come to 
 you as the official bearer of fraternal salutations from 
 the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal 
 Church, South. But I cannot forbear to add that I 
 count it a distinguished honor to have been sent on 
 such an errand, and that I am deeply regretful of my 
 inability to discharge its obligations in a thoroughly 
 becoming manner. Nevertheless I draw much com- 
 fort from the settled conviction that I am in the house 
 of my friends, and that I may safely look for a lenient 
 and generous judgment at your hands upon whatever 
 defects may appear either in the substance of my mes- 
 sage or in the form of its utterance. Reenforced by 
 this conviction, I shall venture to speak without reserve 
 the things that are in my heart. Bred as I was among 
 a people who hold to the creed that sincerity is the 
 first elernent in all true manhood, I should be ashamed 
 to go back and face the great constituency that has 
 commissioned me hither if I could so far forget my- 
 self as to be otherwise than frank and open in your 
 presence. 
 
 It is barely possible that in trying 1 to be explicit I 
 
 Wflfe
 
 68 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 shall fall into collision with some of your prejudices 
 and prepossessions. Nothing is farther from my 
 wishes, however, than a catastrophe of that sort. For 
 a vague and shadowy rumor which may have no basis 
 in reality has reached my ears to the effect that it is 
 not altogether safe to stir up the latent belligerency of 
 your natures. And even if the shadow of this appre- 
 hension were not upon me, I am still committed to the 
 doctrine that gentle courtesy consorts well with out- 
 spoken candor, and that it is not at all necessary to be 
 rude in order to be honest. 
 
 It is my first duty, Mr. President, and not my least 
 pleasant one, to thank you for the men of light and 
 leading whom you have from time to time sent to our 
 General Conference. The last of these, Rev. F. L. 
 Wiseman, was present with us at Dallas/ Tex., two 
 years ago. No man more alert in mind, more facile in 
 speech, and more genial in manner has ever stood 
 upon our platform. He came and saw and conquered. 
 If he did not bring off as booty everything that was in 
 sight, it was simply because he was too magnanimous 
 to take advantage of his opportunity. He certainly 
 brought our respect, our admiration, and our brotherly 
 love. The worthy gentlemen who preceded him have 
 both been since elected to the presidency of this Con- 
 ference, and we take it for granted that he too is set 
 down, if not in the book of fate, at least in the unpub- 
 lished Agenda, to go the same way. Our next General 
 Conference, Mr. President, is to meet in May, 1906, 
 at Birmingham, Ala., in the heart of the coal and iron 
 Industrie^ of the South and in the midst of an intelli- 
 gent and progressive Methodist population. We shall
 
 A Message to the Mother Church of Methodism. 69 
 
 hope to receive from you at that time a representative 
 of like quality with those that have gone before. With- 
 out the slightest hesitancy I feel authorized to promise 
 him in this public way a reception quite warm enough 
 to meet his most sanguine expectations. The ther- 
 mometer will probably stand at about ninety degrees 
 Fahrenheit, and the temperature of our hearts will 
 register an equal level. 
 
 And now, Mr. President, as a sort of prophylactic 
 against possible misapprehensions, let me state in the 
 most definite possible terms that from my heart's core 
 out to my finger tips and in every fiber of my being I 
 am an American, loving with a passionate affection 
 every foot of soil in the great republic, and reverencing 
 more than any poor words of mine can possibly express 
 the starry flag which is the outward and visible symbol 
 of its authority. At the same time, seeing that I am 
 from the South and that I belong to a Church which 
 unhesitatingly publishes in its very name the geograph- 
 ical sphere of its operations, I shall offer no apology 
 for confining myself chiefly to the discussion of affairs 
 in that particular part of the United States. 
 
 Am I wrong in supposing that your judgment in 
 regard to the South has been made up in large part on 
 the testimony of those who, to put it mildly, held no 
 brief in our behalf? At any rate, as it appears to us, 
 the majority of those who have spoken and written 
 about us have hardly set us in a fair light before the 
 world. That we are a little sensitive in regard to our 
 reputation is no doubt true, and it can scarcely be con- 
 sidered a fault that we cherish a just regard for the 
 opinions of mankind. To give a concrete example of
 
 70 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 what I mean, let me say that not a great while ago I 
 reread, after seeing it indorsed in the stately columns 
 of the Spectator as of unimpeachable authority, Prof. 
 Goldwin Smith's "History of the United States." 
 But this second reading served only to fortify the 
 conclusion which I had reached about the book some 
 years ago namely, that, though written in exasperat- 
 ingly good English, it is as perfect a mixture of crude 
 ignorance and Pharisaical malignity as the literature 
 of our common tongue can show. What Professor 
 Smith has to say about the South may be summed up 
 in a single sentence something like this: That but for 
 its political connection with tHe more intelligent and 
 progressive North, it would long ago have drifted back 
 into a state of fossilized semibarbarism. "Ye shall 
 know them by their fruits. Do men gather gra'pes of 
 thorns, or figs of thistles?" To this test and adjudi- 
 cation we are willing to submit without a murmur. 
 Professor Smith himself was never in the South. He 
 is not, therefore, in a position to speak from personal 
 observation. But the record of the facts is writ large 
 in the life of the nation, and so is open to the inspection 
 of all honest and fair-minded students. If anything 
 in human annals is susceptible of proof, it is this : that 
 the men of the South, from the beginning of the colo- 
 nial days down to the present time, have contributed 
 their full share to the prosperity and the glory of their 
 country. 
 
 From the South came George Washington, pater 
 patriae, whom the Methodist Times insists on class- 
 ing with the Puritans, but who was really a Cavalier 
 in every drop of his blood, a sort of transfigured and
 
 'A Message to the Mother Church of Methodism. 71 
 
 glorified English country gentleman whose nature had 
 been broadened by the ample spaces and the liberal at- 
 mosphere of the New World, of whom John Richard 
 Green truly says that "no nobler figure ever stood in 
 the forefront of a nation's life," and who was so 
 unassailably great that not even gruff old Thomas 
 Carlyle, advocatus diaboli as he was, could fulfill his 
 promise to "take George down a peg or two ;" Patrick 
 Henry, the supreme orator of the Revolutionary era, 
 not an ignorant and briefless barrister as prejudice has 
 painted him, but a diligent reader of great books and 
 a thinker who grappled the law and the reasons of it 
 with the unrelaxing vigor of a giant ; Thomas Jeffer- 
 son, the author at thirty-three of the Declaration of 
 Independence, and later of the Statute for Religious 
 Freedom in the State of Virginia, and by far the most 
 erudite and versatile of all our Presidents ; James Mad- 
 ison, "the father of the Constitution," a publicist whose 
 knowledge ranged broadly and deeply over the whole 
 field of history; John Marshall, the great Chief Jus- 
 tice of the Supreme Court, who dwarfs all his suc- 
 cessors in comparison, and by whom more than by any 
 other one man the written Constitution was converted 
 from a tentative theory into an actual working plan of 
 government ; Andrew Jackson, son of a Carrickfergus 
 immigrant, whose brilliant victory at New Orleans on 
 January 8, 1815, almost the only substantial land vic- 
 tory that we gained in that miserable war, made it 
 certain that thereafter nobody would venture in times 
 of peace to search an American ship on the high seas ; 
 and in later years, when unhappy civil discords issued 
 in a gigantic war between the States, Robert E. Lee
 
 72 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 and Stonewall Jackson, those Christian knights with- 
 out fear and without reproach, who may be held up in 
 the face of all the world with the deliberate challenge 
 to produce their like. Quite recently I have gone 
 through the autobiography of Field Marshal Lord 
 Garnet Wolseley, who as a young British officer spent 
 some weeks in 1862 in General Lee's camp. Speaking 
 of General Lee, he says : 
 
 He was the ablest general and, to me, seemed the greatest 
 man that I ever conversed with ; and yet I have had the priv- 
 ilege of meeting Von Moltke and Prince Bismarck, and upon 
 one occasion had a very long and interesting conversation with 
 the latter. General Lee was one of the few men that ever 
 seriously impressed and awed me with their natural, their 
 inherent greatness. His greatness made me humble, and I 
 never felt my own individual insignificance more keenly than 
 in his presence. He was indeed a beautiful character, 'and of 
 him it might truthfully be written, "In righteousness he did 
 judge and make war." 
 
 Of Stonewall Jackson, General Wolseley adds: 
 
 What a hero ! And yet how simple, how humble-minded a 
 man ! In manner he was different from General Lee, and I 
 can class him with no man that I have ever met or read of in 
 history. Like the great commander whom he served with 
 such knightly loyalty, he was deeply religious, but more aus- 
 tere, more Puritan in type. Both were great soldiers, yet 
 neither had any Gothlike delight in war. 
 
 These succinct and comprehensive eulogies are elab- 
 orated at great length by the late Colonel Henderson, 
 of your army, in his judicious, painstaking, and careful 
 work on "Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil 
 War." Even Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, President of 
 the United States, does not hesitate to affirm that
 
 A Message to the Mother Church of Methodism. 73 
 i 
 
 "General Lee was unquestionably the greatest of all 
 the great soldiers that have been produced by our 
 English-speaking race, and this in spite of the fact that 
 his last and greatest antagonist, General Grant, may 
 himself claim to rank with Marlborotigh and Welling- 
 ton." These men and a multitude like them who of 
 acknowledged right sat in the seats of the mighty did 
 not come by accident. On the contrary, they grew by 
 normal processes out of the social, civil, and religious 
 conditions in which they were born; and they were 
 fairly representative and exponential of the people to 
 whom they belonged a people not without serious and 
 regrettable faults and failings, yet fit on the whole to 
 claim kinship with their English-speaking brethren in 
 every part of the globe; conservative in all their in- 
 stincts and convinced that true and permanent progress 
 must come, not by cataclysmal fits and starts, but by 
 that slow and orderly evolution of society in which 
 liberty "broadens down from precedent to precedent ;" 
 caring little for great wealth and nothing at all for the 
 vulgar and ostentatious luxury that goes along with 
 it, but aiming at homely comfort and finding intense 
 delight in the possession and enjoyment of competent 
 means; free from the hypocrisy of a merely formal 
 politeness on the one hand and from unsocial incivility 
 on the other ; not particularly solicitous to enlarge the 
 range of their close acquaintance, but still gracious to 
 all strangers; maintaining a kindly and tolerant atti- 
 tude toward their dependents, a self-respecting but 
 courteous deportment toward their equals, and more 
 than a little skeptical as to the existence of any class 
 anywhere that might rightfully claim to be their su-
 
 74 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 periors ; loving their own homes and families with a 
 passionate devotion, keenly sensitive as to the sacred- 
 ness of the blood bond between themselves and their 
 closer or more distant kinsmen, and patriotically at- 
 tached to their whole country ; holding their heads erect 
 and unafraid in the presence of men, spontaneously def- 
 erential to women, and bowing with an unquestioning 
 faith before the Majesty of the Eternal. Such, in brief, 
 they were; and such, despite the transforming influ- 
 ences of these commercial days, they still are in the 
 warp and woof of their being. 
 
 "With ardent hearts and ever-open hands, 
 
 Candid and honest, brave and proud they grew, 
 Their lives and habits colored by fair hands, 
 As clouds give waters hue." 
 
 May I quote once more and this time from Senator 
 Hoar, of Massachusetts, one of the cleanest and ablest 
 of our modern statesmen ? He says : 
 
 My life, politically and personally, has been a life of almost 
 constant strife with the leaders of the Southern people, yet as 
 I grow older I have learned not only to respect and esteem 
 but to love the great qualities which belong to my fellow 
 citizens of the Southern States. They are a noble race. We 
 may well pattern from them in some of the great virtues 
 which make up the strength as they make the glory of free 
 States. Their love of home, their chivalrous respect for 
 woman, their courage, their delicate sense of honor, their con- 
 stancy, which can abide by an opinion or a purpose or an 
 interest of their States through adversity and through the 
 years and through the generations, are things from which the 
 people of the more material North may take a lesson. And 
 there is another thing: covetousness, corruption, the low 
 temptation ^oi money has not yet found any place in your 
 Southern politics.
 
 A Message to the Mother Church of Methodism. 75 
 
 It was in such a soil as this, Mr. President, that 
 Methodism had its original and most congenial home 
 in America. Even were it true and I do not believe 
 it to be true that the first New World congregation 
 of Methodists was organized in John Street, New 
 York, the undeniable fact remains that Maryland and 
 Virginia soon became the strongholds and the radiating 
 centers of its power. The first American bishop, Wil- 
 liam McKendree, was a Virginian who had been an 
 officer in the Revolutionary army and had the militant 
 temper in his blood, a good soldier of Jesus Christ, 
 possessing all the holy fervor and untiring zeal of 
 Francis Asbury, with a natural breadth of view and a 
 faculty of constructive ecclesiastical statesmanship 
 which Asbury did not possess. Most of the bishops 
 and a full proportion of the leaders and preachers of 
 that period came from the same quarter. In the un- 
 divided American Methodism the South always fur- 
 nished a due share of the intellectual and spiritual force 
 and did an honorable part of the work. 
 
 Our itinerants, obedient to the law which sent them, 
 not where they most preferred to go, but where they 
 were most needed, virtually covered the whole land 
 and reached all classes of society from the highest to 
 the lowest. The majority of them in the beginning 
 were men of limited culture, and not a few made sad 
 havoc of the King's English. But there were many 
 who in the face of the gravest difficulties became sound 
 scholars, able expositors of the Word of God, and 
 convincing and persuasive preachers; and now and 
 then a man arose among them with that gift of splen- 
 did eloquence, that commanding and victorious speech
 
 76 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 which in every country and in every age fails not to 
 catch the ears and charm the hearts of the multitude. 
 At one end of the line governors, senators, congress- 
 men, judges, lawyers, physicians, merchants, and 
 planters heard the call of the gospel by the lips of these 
 consecrated evangelists and heeded it, and at the other 
 end the poorest and lowliest of the settlers in their log 
 cabins and the masses of the negro slaves in the cotton 
 fields and the rice swamps were led in triumph by 
 them as captives of Christ. The result is that through- 
 out the great stretch of territory below the Ohio and 
 the Potomac Methodism is to-day the dominant type 
 of religion. In my native State of Tennessee there 
 are more Methodists than there are members of any 
 other denomination, Romanist or Protestant. Our 
 latest and best historian in a well-considered chapter 
 affirms that the Methodist circuit riders actually cre- 
 ated the civilization of the State. You will be pleased 
 to learn, I am sure, that in Georgia, the colony of Ogle- 
 thorpe and Wesley and the last of the original thir- 
 teen, there is scarcely a city, town, village, or country 
 community without an effective Methodist organiza- 
 tion. And even in far-off Texas, yet scarcely sixty 
 years a member of the Federal Union, there are ap- 
 proximately 250,000 communicants in our Churches. 
 In the mountains of North Carolina and Kentucky, in 
 the swamps of Arkansas and Louisiana, on the fertile 
 prairies of Missouri, and on the treeless plains of New 
 Mexico and Arizona go where you will, you will 
 find them singing the Wesleyan hymns and bearing 
 glad testimony to the blessed experience of salvation 
 from sin. And how strangely uniform that testimony
 
 'A Message to the Mother Church of Methodism. 77 
 
 is ! The sweet undertone of it is the same beneath all 
 skies. 
 
 Of the infinite toil and sacrifice by which these 
 achievements have been secured, I have little time to 
 give details. You know what it costs to spread the 
 kingdom of God anywhere, and especially under the 
 difficult and exacting conditions that exist in a new 
 country and among a restless, energetic, and self- 
 willed people. The men who did it in America, though 
 their names be not blazoned by any historian, nor com- 
 memorated by any orator, nor sung by any poet, nor 
 carved in marble by any sculptor, are entitled to be 
 reckoned among the true heroes of the world "the 
 messengers of the Churches and the glory of Christ." 
 I speak the truth before God and lie not when I main- 
 tain that there is no chapter in the records of the uni- 
 versal Church that more fitly deserves to be written in 
 illuminated letters than that one which tells how our 
 missionaries, not by the use of secular or sensational 
 methods, but by the proclamation of a pure and un- 
 adulterated gospel transformed hundreds of thousands 
 of besotted African pagans into Christian men and 
 women. The chief leader in this great movement was 
 William Capers, of South Carolina, the first fraternal 
 delegate from American Methodism to this Confer- 
 ence. Not by his own election, but by inexorable 
 providence, he was himself a Christian master. 
 Though born to wealth and social position, he was smit- 
 ten with an infinite compassion, like that of the Christ 
 himself, for the poor creatures whom the cupidity of 
 English and Yankee men-stealers had brought to the 
 shores of America. On the marble shaft which rises
 
 78 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 above his grave in the capital of his native State is this 
 brief inscription : 
 
 WILLIAM CAPERS, 
 
 BISHOP OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, SOUTH, 
 FOUNDER OF THE MISSIONS TO THE SLAVES. 
 
 When the Civil War began we had hundreds of 
 picked men devoting themselves exclusively to the task 
 of evangelizing their colored brethren, to say nothing 
 of the still larger number who were giving a part of 
 their time and effort to the same work. They consci- 
 entiously believed that they could draw no warrant 
 from the New Testament for stirring up a servile in- 
 surrection, and they were altogether certain that they 
 had no commission to foment a crusade of reformation 
 by assassination ; but with a fidelity that never wa- 
 vered, though it was hindered by many obstacles and 
 exposed to many sneers, and moving on the exact lines 
 laid down by Richard Watson in his famous letter of 
 instructions to your own West Indian missionaries, 
 they did vindicate the quality of their motives by 
 bringing uncounted thousands to the knowledge of 
 God. At the date which I have just mentioned we had 
 207,000 communicants of African blood, besides a host 
 of probationers and Sunday school scholars, the larg- 
 est and, I undertake to maintain, the best body of 
 converted heathen in all the world, though our Baptist 
 brethren were little behind us in the zeal and success 
 of their labors. Against all the allegations of unfaith- 
 fulness to our trust which an ignorant fanaticism has 
 thrown in our faces I set these inexpugnable facts and 
 figures and am content to let the case rest just there.
 
 'A Message to the Mother Church of Methodism. 79 
 
 That we ought to have done better I shall not deny, 
 and we are perfectly willing to be reminded of it by 
 anybody that has done better. 
 
 Suffer me, Mr. President, to go a little farther with 
 my chronicle. The War between the States, the most 
 violent civil convulsion of modern times, ended in a 
 sort of universal upheaval and dislocation. The South 
 was defeated, impoverished beyond conception, and 
 terribly humiliated, but still held an unexpended re- 
 serve of spirit which was to become the working cap- 
 ital of its future operations. Then came the horrors 
 of reconstruction. The thing which Edmund Burke 
 declared to be impossible was actually done: an in- 
 dictment was framed against a whole people who, 
 without being allowed to plead, were adjudged guilty 
 and subjected to the most appalling penalties. The 
 cruel and fatuous experiment was tried of putting a 
 race that had more than a millennium of English his- 
 tory in its blood under the domination of a race whose 
 great-grandfathers were Congo savages. Taxation 
 rose to the limit of confiscation. The carpetbagger 
 and the scalawag went to the chief places of power, 
 and there followed a carnival of colossal stealing. 
 Unable for a time to help ourselves, we had no course 
 left us but to endure the infliction in dumb and patient 
 perhaps I ought to call it impatient agony. 
 
 But while other leadership failed or stood in doubt 
 the Church rallied to her standards. One-third of her 
 total membership was gone, the best of it buried on the 
 battle field, and the remainder drifted away from the 
 anchorage of the faith. The colored people, intoxi- 
 cated, as was natural, by their new freedom and played
 
 8o Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 upon by emissaries from without, deserted us within a 
 year to the number of 150,000, either setting up for 
 themselves or else going where there was the promise 
 if not the potency of abundant loaves and fishes. It 
 was openly and exultantly published in certain reli- 
 gious newspapers that we were ecclesiastically dead, 
 and next of kin were not lacking with an eager ap- 
 petite for administering upon our shrunken estate. 
 Prophets of evil said that we should never be able to 
 got another General Conference together, and then 
 laid themselves out to secure the fulfillment of their 
 own prediction. When the Conference of 1866 did 
 meet, it gathered from a desolate land and from 
 Churches every one of which was filled with widows 
 and orphaned children. It really looked as if the end 
 had come. But there were men at the helm who be- 
 lieved in God and were not afraid. They counted up 
 their numbers, a bare 450,000, and then, unrestrained 
 by any superstition as to a fixed and divinely authori- 
 tative theory of ecclesiastical government, they reso- 
 lutely set to work and readjusted the machinery to suit 
 the changed conditions that had been thrust upon them. 
 To make a long story short, what has been the out- 
 come of their courage ? The General Minutes for the 
 current year may answer that question. The total 
 number of our communicating members, including the 
 traveling and local ministers, is 1,566,828, a gain for 
 the year of 31,766, and for the period since 1866 of 
 over 1,100,000, or nearly 300 per cent inside of a sin- 
 gle generation. These are gathered into 47 Annual 
 Conferences, 295 districts, 5,208 pastoral charges, and 
 18,561 separate societies or congregations. The total
 
 A Message to the Mother Church of Methodism. 81 
 
 number of traveling preachers is 6,220, an increase 
 for the year of 151, and of local preachers 4,806, a 
 decrease of 10. The total number of Sunday school 
 scholars and teachers is 1,088,896, an increase of 45,- 
 285. The total number of Epworth Leaguers is 123,- 
 325, an increase of 6,746. We have 15,090 houses of 
 worship valued at $26,604,777, an increase in value 
 of $1,401,744; 4,453 parsonages valued at $4-59 8 >356, 
 an increase of $455,798. The total amount paid to 
 ministers of all classes was $3,107,689, an increase of 
 $108,237.13. The total amount raised for missions 
 and Church extension, in regard to which I am happy 
 to inform you that we are feeling the definite thrill and 
 enthusiasm of a new interest, was $799,313.94, an in- 
 crease of $84,083.95. The total amount raised for 
 superannuated preachers was $192,029.31, an increase 
 of $14,821.24. The educational statistics I am not able 
 to present in detail ; but I am prepared to say that our 
 schools and colleges, though much hampered and re- 
 stricted by their lack of adequate equipment and en- 
 dowment, are doing more satisfactory work than ever 
 before. One result of our Twentieth Century Move- 
 ment was the securing of subscriptions to the amount 
 of nearly $2,000,000 for strengthening this arm of 
 service. 
 
 Rightly or wrongly, all elementary education in 
 America has been taken over by the several States 
 and is becoming more and more purely secular in 
 character. The States are also making an effort to 
 monopolize the higher forms of intellectual training. 
 In many of the State universities the faculties are 
 made up largely of noble Christian scholars and a 
 6
 
 82 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 genuine Christian temper prevails. In others there is 
 an attitude of easy indifference or of open contempt 
 for religion. It is becoming quite customary to sneer 
 at the little Church colleges as "preacher factories." 
 As acute a student of our institutions, however, as 
 Mr. Bryce bears ungrudging testimony to the fact 
 that they have had much to do in toning up the in- 
 telligence and the morals of the communities in which 
 they are situated. We do not mean to abandon them. 
 On the contrary, it is our fixed purpose to strengthen 
 them in every possible way. Leaving all other con- 
 siderations out of view, they have a large and definite 
 value as feeders of our ministry. While they cannot 
 compete with the great universities in offering the 
 broadest scholastic opportunities, they do afford good 
 facilities for fundamental training. We are so far 
 from being ashamed of them that we point to them 
 as our jewels. 
 
 Among the many other schemes that we now have 
 on hand is one to raise $5,000,000 as a permanent 
 endowment fund to supplement the various Conference 
 endowments and the annual collections for the super- 
 annuate preachers and their widows and orphans. A 
 fine beginning has already been made, and we feel 
 entirely confident of securing in due time the entire 
 sum. 
 
 Our Publishing House is doing well, isending out 
 millions of copies of its various periodical publications 
 and issuing and circulating many valuable books. 
 During the coming year the Agents will erect new 
 buildings at a cost of at least $150,000. 
 
 I am glad to say that we are on good terms with
 
 'A Message to the Mother Church of Methodism, 83 
 
 nearly all other Christian communities with all, in 
 fact, that are willing to be on good terms with us and 
 that our relations are especially pleasant with our sis- 
 ter Episcopal Methodism in the Northern States, which 
 is, past all dispute, one of the most potent forces for 
 righteousness in the Protestant world, and for the 
 continued welfare of which we pray with devout 
 hearts. A scheme for federation with this body, look- 
 ing to the abatement and removal of all unseemly ri- 
 valries and jealousies and to cordial cooperation in mat- 
 ters of common interest, was inaugurated by our Gen- 
 eral Conference ten years ago and is now beginning 
 to bear fruit. One of its best consequences is the 
 preparation of a joint hymnal, catechism, and order of 
 worship for at least 5,00x3,000 American Methodists. 
 
 The question of organic union comes up once in a 
 while, but it has not yet advanced beyond the academic 
 stage. Whether it would be wise to attempt to bring 
 so large a number of Christian people, living in so vast 
 a territory, under the absolute legislative control of one 
 General Conference, may be safely doubted. It is quite 
 possible to confuse a mere lust for ecclesiastical empire 
 with zeal for the kingdom of God. A centralized ecu- 
 menical Church, grown fat and proud of its enormous 
 bulk, is in perfect harmony with the traditions and 
 tendencies of Romanism, but utterly out of tune with 
 all the true conceptions of Protestantism. But the 
 essential unity of believers, the unity of the Spirit in 
 the bond of peace, must be emphasized and cultivated. 
 Since the Shepherd is one, the flock is likewise one; 
 and this is none the less the case because of its being 
 housed in many separate folds.
 
 84 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 I have been asked more than once, Mr. President, 
 how it is that in a democratic country we have adopted 
 a strong episcopacy. My answer to that question is 
 that it is just exactly our extreme democracy which 
 has rendered episcopacy expedient among us. As a 
 matter of course, we scout the very thought of resting 
 it on divine right, except in so far as we believe that 
 inside the limitations of New Testament principles 
 every Church has the inalienable divine right to frame 
 its own form of government to suit its own necessities. 
 We rejoice, Mr. President, in the proven truth that 
 Methodism, being essentially a religion of the Spirit, 
 is able to retain its vigor under any form "lest one 
 good custom should corrupt the world." You may 
 depend upon it, moreover, that if our bishops should 
 in the general opinion cease to administer their office 
 with wisdom, unselfishness, and gentle strength, we 
 should soon get rid of them, not by anarchic and revo- 
 lutionary measures, but in an orderly and constitutional 
 manner. 
 
 A counterpoise to this particular feature of our 
 Church polity is the increasing influence of laymen in 
 all our councils. They sit in equal numbers with the 
 ministers in the General Conference and vote on all 
 questions. In the Annual Conferences, which with us 
 have no legislative authority but are purely administra- 
 tive in character, they are represented by four delegates 
 from each district (one of whom may be a local preach- 
 er), and they participate without restriction in all the 
 proceedings, except a very important exception 
 such as affect ministerial character. 
 
 I need not tell you how strong is our antipathy to
 
 'A Message to the Mother Church of Methodism. 85 
 
 everything like successionalism or sacerdotalism. We 
 are believers in the historical continuity of the Church 
 of God the continuity of thought and life. But we 
 reject, root and branch, the notion of tactual succes- 
 sion and thank God from the bottom of our hearts that 
 we are not in it. The true succession is in sound doc- 
 trine and holy living. "The Church is where the 
 Christians are" and it is nowhere else. 
 
 With all the forms of sacramentalism we are almost 
 impatient. The advocates of it tell us with an air of 
 superior learning that "priest is only presbyter writ 
 short," a fact which we might be presumed to know. 
 But by a piece of juggling that can scarcely be called 
 honest they forthwith proceed to thrust into the word 
 the meaning of iepcvs and saccrdos, and seem a little 
 surprised and hurt that we insist on taking cognizance 
 of the trick. While reverencing the two simple sacra- 
 mental badges of the faith, we maintain that the free 
 spirit whose movements are as unfettered as those of 
 the viewless wind is not tied to them and, indeed, does 
 often work apart from them. We rejoice with St. 
 Paul that we are sent "not to baptize," not to make 
 baptism or any other rite or ceremony our chief con- 
 cern, "but to preach the gospel." The epithet of 
 "preaching institute" which Isaac Taylor fixed upon 
 Methodism so long ago we wear as a badge of honor. 
 
 And what a version of the gospel it is that we hold 
 in trust ! How small is the modification that it is nec- 
 essary for us to make, even in the outward form of 
 Wesleyanism, to render it adaptable to the needs of 
 the present day! As our Bishop Paine used to say: 
 "We have less to take back than any of them." We
 
 86 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 carry no burden of closet theology that needs to be 
 explained by being explained away and that calls 
 for apology in the minds of plain people. The mar- 
 row and substance of our message at once commends 
 itself to the common sense of the world. Let us stick 
 to it. 
 
 I would, Mr. President, that I might stop just here. 
 But I am forced to concede that, in spite of our abun- 
 dant prosperity, we have much to disturb and distress 
 us. The atmosphere is increasingly impregnated with 
 the germs of doubt. A feeling of uncertainty has taken 
 possession of the minds of a great many people, and 
 they are raising the question as to whether, after all, 
 we have not been building on the sand instead of on 
 the rock. Very often they are not enemies of Chris- 
 tianity, but simply weak believers without that hgroic 
 strain in their faith which has our Lord's promise oi 
 speciaj blessing. 
 
 Among other causes which have wrought to produce 
 this state of affairs is the general dissemination of the 
 views advanced by the higher critics of the Holy 
 Scriptures. A thoughtful scholar may accept for him- 
 self most of these views without at all surrendering his 
 established Christian convictions. The law of charity 
 forbids me to think otherwise. But the masses of the 
 people, when they are told that they must no longer 
 regard the Bible as being the Word of God but as 
 simply containing the Word of God in solution with 
 many purely human elements, are naturally staggered 
 and unsettled. "What, then, are we to do?" they ask. 
 "Who shall help us to discriminate what is divine and 
 authoritative from what is human and without binding
 
 A Message to the Mother Church of Methodism. 87 
 
 force on the intellect and the conscience?" The minis- 
 ter who can make light of a question like this, carrying 
 as it often doe_s_a burden of tearful agony, has the 
 heart of a fiend in him. 
 
 Of course we cannot suppress investigation. We 
 are Protestants and not Romanists. "Light and more 
 light" is our watchword. Whatever is proved true 
 \y_e are bound to accept, no matter how much the effort 
 may cps.t us. But let us not be rash. There is a good 
 deal of foolery mixed up with this higher criticism. 
 The leader who gets too far ahead of the procession 
 ceases to be a leader and becomes a solitary individual 
 going his own gait. There is no want which the 
 Church just now feels more keenly than the want of a 
 sufficient number of profound, well-balanced, and de- 
 vout scholars without even a trace of the pride of 
 learning and with a keen and solemn sense of their 
 responsibility to God, who shall be able to find safe and 
 solid marching ground for those of us w r hose duties 
 lie in the sphere of active labor rather than in the pur- 
 suit of exact and minute learning. Personally, I feel, 
 no. trepidation as to the final issue. The things which 
 cannot be shaken will remain as a heritage to our 
 children and our children's children. But I am gravely^, 
 f concerned to arrest, if it may be, the disintegrating 
 ' effect of the new and often more than doubtful teacl> 
 x jng upon the present generation. 
 ~~This attitude of mental indecision concerning which 
 I have spoken is accompanied, as we might naturally 
 expect, by an increasing spirit of worldliness. And 
 who shall define this spirit ? Subtle, elusive, persistent, 
 it laughs at the impotent endeavors of prohibitive leg-
 
 88 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 islation, and slips through the meshes of the carefulest 
 statutes that are framed to restrain it. In the presence 
 of it the higher and finer graces all wither away and 
 die. The outward decency which it often maintains 
 only makes it the more dangerous. When it puts on 
 purple and fine linen and fares sumptuously every day, 
 what rude prophet of the Lord shall dare to call it in 
 question ? The manifestations of worldliness are many. 
 In the large cities, and slowly also in our towns and 
 country places, there is a growing disregard of the 
 Lord's day. The blessed and holy Sabbath which I 
 knew as a boy, when a hush and stillness like that of 
 eternity came over the whole community, is largely 
 gone, and in its place there has come in too many in- 
 stances a day of strenuous pleasure-seeking, of empty 
 and idle amusement. It needs no prophet to forecast 
 the damage which we are sure to suffer from this 
 charge. There is an increasingly eager struggle for 
 wealth. The South, which has been tested in every 
 other way, is to be tested again at this point. We 
 survived the loss of $4,000,000,000 worth of property 
 in 1861-65 and the almost complete stagnation of the 
 ten years that followed without serious hurt to our 
 character. Whether we shall be able to stand the re- 
 newed prosperity that comes from cotton crops worth 
 more than half a billion a year, to say nothing of our 
 other immense gains, is an open question. The sanc- 
 tity of family life among us is also in peril, less per- 
 haps in the South than elsewhere, but enough so to 
 fill us with the deepest concern. The facility for di- 
 vorce and the frequency of its practice causes us to 
 blush. Among some of our richer folk there is a laxity
 
 A Message to the Mother Church of Methodism. 89 
 
 of view and of conduct in this regard that would dis- 
 grace a Hottentot or a Digger Indian. 
 
 The liquor business with us is wholly and irredeem- 
 ably bad. In addition to its other iniquities, which are 
 enough to brand it before God and men, it goes into 
 politics, controls municipal nominations and elections, 
 and becomes an organized agency of public corruption. 
 Our attitude as a Church toward it is one of open, 
 unqualified, and eternal opposition. In the South, be- 
 cause of its relations to race troubles as well as for 
 other reasons, we have had to take it by the throat. 
 In the State of Mississippi, for example, and very 
 largely through the influence of our Bishop Galloway, 
 it has been driven from over sixty of the seventy coun- 
 ties. The same general policy, mutatis mutandis, pre- 
 vails all the way from Virginia to Texas. 
 
 The race question is a living issue with us in more 
 forms than one. Though the dominant strain of our 
 blood is English, we are yet a sort of hodgepodge of 
 nationalities. Our power of assimilation has been im- 
 mense. In the past most of the immigrants have been 
 of a kind that we could easily digest and incorporate 
 English, French, Germans, Scandinavians, and Irish. 
 In these days we are getting more than half a million 
 yearly, chiefly Neapolitans, Hungarians, Bohemians, 
 and Poles a fact which gives us thought and pause. 
 The negro problem confronts us throughout the South. 
 Concerning it I shall make a few remarks. 
 
 I. Ninety-five per cent of the negroes are living on 
 terms of absolute friendship with their white neigh- 
 bors, and are earning a better living by their daily labor 
 than is enjoyed by any other peasantry in the world,
 
 90 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 You cannot find one among the 10,000,000 of them but 
 would turn up his nose a difficult task at the wages 
 offered to the imported mine workers in South Africa. 
 
 2. The impoverished white South has taxed itself 
 to the extent of $150,000,000 to provide schools for 
 the negro children. Not one of them all is debarred 
 from acquiring an elementary education. 
 
 3. Very slowly, yet, as I believe, quite steadily, the 
 race is making progress. It is not the equal of the 
 white race either in intellectual force or in moral ca- 
 pacity ; and it never will be, for God has not built the 
 universe on a dead level. Not uniformity but variety 
 is the law of his working. Yet individual negroes show 
 themselves worthy of all honor, and the great body of 
 them may advance indefinitely in many ways. 
 
 4. The two races will remain distinct and separate, 
 more so, arid not less so, as the years go by,. It is the 
 universal opinion of those who have studied the whole 
 subject most thoroughly that anything which directly 
 or remotely leads to the production of a mongrel breed 
 puts in peril the best interests of both races. 
 
 5. I have said that ninety-five per cent of the negroes 
 are doing well, and I stick to it. But there is a rem- 
 nant of untamed tropical savages among them, and 
 they make the trouble and furnish the pretext for 
 those irregular and lawless acts of retaliatory ven- 
 geance which are a standing reproach to our civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 What the udtimate result is to be, I know not. Nor 
 is the man alive who can make a satisfactory forecast. 
 In spite of all our difficulties and dangers we are full 
 of hope. We are living in a better world than our
 
 A Message to the Mother Church of Methodism. 91 
 
 fathers occupied, and we trust to make it better still 
 for our children. Our faith in a living God who is still 
 on the throne renders it impossible for us to be pessi- 
 mists. Not till we became atheists shall we lose heart. 
 Animated by the recollection of his help in all the 
 crises and emergencies of the past, and sustained and 
 cheered by the miracles of his grace in the present, we 
 shall lengthen our cords and strengthen our stakes for 
 the future. Tinging ahy_ays larger thought of him, 
 setting higher standards of character and conduct for 
 ourselves, seeing visions and dreaming dreams of the 
 universal spread and sway of his kingdom in the earth, 
 we shall move right on in our work with fervent 
 prayers ever rising from our hearts and jubilant songs, 
 louder and sweeter than the sound of many waters, 
 breaking from our lips.
 
 IV. 
 THE RELIGIOUS NEWSPAPER.
 
 "What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light: and 
 what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops." 
 (Matt. x. 27.)
 
 THE RELIGIOUS NEWSPAPER. 
 
 [Address delivered before the Ecumenical Conference of 
 1891, at Washington, D. C] 
 
 Mr. President: When Dr. Edward A. Freeman, the 
 historian of the Norman Conquest, was appointed to 
 the Chair of Modern Languages in Oxford University, 
 he found himself, so he tells us, greatly puzzled to 
 determine the exact limits of the province that had 
 been assigned him. The best authorities, moreover, 
 gave him scant assistance in reaching a satisfactory 
 conclusion. Baron Bunsen, for example, contended 
 that modern history really began with the call of Ab- 
 raham. Another eminent scholar stoutly insisted on 
 drawing the line at the outbreak of the French Revo- 
 lution. After much thought, Dr. Freeman professed a 
 readiness to compromise between these extreme views 
 by accepting the first Olympiad as the proper starting 
 point. As a matter of fact, he entered the stream of 
 events at a point about tw r elve hundred years lower 
 down. 
 
 Saving the gracious presence of the Program Com- 
 mittee, may I not say that the topic which is now up 
 for discussion is equally indefinite in character? The 
 religious press by itself offers a wide field for consid- 
 eration. When we add to this the religious uses of tfie 
 secular press, we have staked off more ground than we 
 can possibly occupy in the brief limits allowed. In 
 view of these things, I take it for granted that the 
 Program Committee had it in mind that each speaker, 
 
 (95)
 
 g6 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 instead of adhering strictly to the lines laid down by the 
 essayist, should be at liberty to dwell upon any such as- 
 pect of the general subject as might commend itself to 
 his taste or judgment. The particular topic, therefore, 
 on which I shall speak is "The Religious Newspaper." 
 If I barely touch the various points which I bring for- 
 ward, you may understand that it is because the time 
 will not allow me to do more. 
 
 That Methodism has never been indifferent to the 
 religious newspaper needs no proof. If proof were 
 needed, it could be commanded in abundance. Should 
 I call the roll of the men that in the past have been 
 assigned by it to editorial work, you would no doubt be 
 startled. Pardon me if I confine myself here to my 
 own Church. Of the Christian Advocate, with 'which 
 I have the honor to be connected, the following 
 gentlemen have been editors : John Newland Marfit, 
 Irishman and orator (wo w_ords, Mr. President, for 
 one thing) ; Thomas Stringfield, whose militant temper 
 made him a brave soldier under Andrew Jackson at 
 the age of sixteen, and who spent the larger part of 
 his ministerial life in smiting, hip and thigh, the various 
 forms of Calvinism ; John Berry McFerrin, a genuine 
 product of the Scotch-Irishry, the great tribune of our 
 American Church, who stood squarely against all the 
 enemies of Methodism and of his Methodism, but the 
 dream of whose closing years and the prayer of whose 
 dying hours, as I know, were that all fraternal strifes 
 might cease and all fraternal misunderstandings be 
 perfectly adjusted; Holland Nimmons McTyeire, the 
 greatest man, take him all in all, that I have ever 
 known, whose career of ever-increasing power and use-
 
 The Religious Newspaper. 97 
 
 fulness contradicted the current maxim that extreme 
 precocity means early decay, editor of the New Orleans 
 Advocate at twenty-seven, of the Nashville Advocate 
 at thirty-two, and bishop at forty-one, on whose granite 
 tombstone is cut the simple inscription, "A leader of 
 men, a lover of children"; Thomas O. Summers, as 
 bluff and hearty an Englishman as ever set his face 
 toward the New World, behind whose loud and genial 
 bluster there lay the kindest of human hearts, an om- 
 nivorous reader of all sorts of books, knowing espe- 
 cially John Wesley's sermons and Charles Wesley's 
 hymns by heart, and so extremely orthodox that Dr. 
 Albert Taylor Bledsoe once charged him, though un- 
 justly, with measuring all things in heaven and earth 
 by Watson's "Institutes"; and Oscar Penn Fitzgerald, 
 of whom I dare not say all the thoughts that are in 
 my heart, but of whom I shall say this, that the ex- 
 quisite delicacy of his literary touch is equaled only by 
 the perfect brotherliness of his temper. Were I to go 
 to the other of our papers, I should, of course, mention 
 William Capers, scholar and gentleman, first fraternal 
 delegate from America to British Methodism, whose 
 fitting epitaph records the two facts that he was "a 
 bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and 
 founder of the missions to the slaves"; William M. 
 Wightman, courtly, cultivated, Christlike; Leroy M. 
 Lee, the nephew of that Jesse Lee who once upon a 
 time preached on Boston Common, and who could hit a 
 tremendous blow and follow it up with a succession of 
 others in the same place; Thomas E. Bond, Jr., the 
 greater son of his great father, a man of science and 
 man of letters, the most erudite, incisive, and resource- 
 7
 
 98 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 ful of American Methodist editors; Linus Parker, a 
 gift of New York to New Orleans, whose editorials 
 were Addisonian essays in finish and elegance, and who 
 modestly shunned notoriety as much as common men 
 seek it ; John C. Keener, who nevej said a stupid thing^ 
 and never did a cowardly one j and John J. Lafferty, 
 a true wizard of the ink horn and magician with words. 
 I wish I could go farther in this direction, but I cannot. 
 The developments that have taken place in secular 
 journalism in the last quarter of a century are indeed 
 amazing. To accomplish what has been done, money 
 has been spent like water and the best brain of the 
 world has been called into use and service. That the 
 religious newspaper, though it has also made very 
 gratifying progress, has not kept an equal pace nor 
 reached an equal degree of excellence is an unques- 
 tionable fact. It is still susceptible of vast improve- 
 ment. To secure this improvement as rapidly as pos- 
 sible is the duty of all concerned. Every agency em- 
 ployed in the interest of the kingdom of Christ ought 
 to be of the highest possible character. It was fit that 
 the initial gifts which our Lord received after he "be- 
 came incarnate for us men and for our salvation" 
 should be "gold, frankincense, and myrrh." We must 
 set up an ideal standard of excellence for the religious 
 press, and require our publishers and editors to aim at 
 reaching it. They will not at once succeed, but the 
 effort to do so will have its due effect. Here, as in 
 all departments of religious activity, the empirical 
 method must be dropped, and into its place must be 
 put a rational and controlling conception of the ends 
 sought to be secured, This much premised, let me say :
 
 The Religious Newspaper. 99 
 
 1. That the religious newspaper must be under the 
 control of the Church. There are some intelligent 
 persons who assure us that what they are pleased to 
 call an unmuzzled and independent press is a prime 
 necessity of healthy ecclesiastical growth. This as- 
 sumes that an official press is both muzzled and de- 
 pendent. I could easily show the fallacy of such an 
 assumption, but I choose to refute it by a concrete 
 instance. If it were true, the official editors would 
 simply echo one another in endless iteration ; but it is 
 recorded somewhere in the ancient history of the Meth- 
 odist Episcopal Church that when a certain grave 
 question in which the better three-fourths of our hu- 
 manity were much concerned came up for settlement, 
 Drs. Buckley and Warren and Smith ranged them- 
 selves definitely on one side and Drs. Moore and Ed- 
 wards and Fry on the other. Without pausing longer 
 I wish to say that every argument which can be used 
 to show that the Church should exercise some sort of 
 effective supervision over her pulpits can also be used 
 to show that she should be able to lay her directing 
 hand upon the press. Independent journalism is on 
 the outside ; it stands on its own merits. As a stimulus 
 and gadfly it has its values; but decrying ecclesiasti- 
 cal machinery as it does, it has no right to use this 
 machinery to promote its own private interests. 
 
 2. The religious newspaper ought not to be con- 
 ducted "for revenue only," or chiefly, or at all. When- 
 ever it comes to be considered as an instrument for 
 money-making, either for an individual owner or for 
 a company of stockholders or for a Church, it neces- 
 sarily suffers some subtraction from its power for
 
 loo Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 good. I sincerely doubt whether it ought ever to be 
 allowed to make more than just enough to pay its own 
 way. Whatever profits may accrue from its publica- 
 tion should be speedily returned in the form of better- 
 ments. From this general statement two practical in- 
 ferences are to be drawn. 
 
 First, there are probably not a dozen religious news- 
 papers in the United States that have each an editorial 
 staff fully equal to the highest demands. The miser- 
 able economy which grinds the life out of a few men 
 by laying impossible tasks upon their shoulders in or- 
 der that dividends may be large ought to cease. Hard- 
 headed men of the world are not guilty of such folly, 
 and the Church ought by this time to have learned 
 wisdom enough to avoid it. Every editor in chief 
 should be surrounded and supported by a full corps of 
 competent assistants. Imagine one man from week to 
 week writing leaders and paragraphs, summarizing the 
 world's news, reviewing books and periodicals, answer- 
 ing queries, clipping the best things from his exchanges, 
 reducing the bulk and improving the quality of swollen 
 communications, editing obituaries, carrying on an 
 extensive correspondence, rearing a family in the fear 
 of God, and cultivating his personal piety! There is 
 no man within the range of my acquaintance whose 
 nervous, intellectual, and moral resources are equal to 
 such an undertaking. 
 
 In the second place, and on the same line, the use of 
 the columns of a religious newspaper for advertising 
 purposes ought to be most scrupulously guarded. At 
 this point" I am happy to say that there has in recent 
 years been a great change for the better. Whether the
 
 The Religious Nezcspaper. 101 
 
 change has resulted from an improved moral sensitive- 
 ness on the part of publishers or from the external 
 pressure of public opinion, it would be difficult to tell. 
 There is still no little room for improvement. What 
 is more common than to see the columns of a Church 
 journal loaded down with puffs of patent medicines 
 which profess to be sovereign cures for all the ills that 
 flesh is hear to, but which are, in fact, the veriest hum- 
 bugs, and which must be known to the editors and 
 publishers as such ? How does it look when two pages 
 front each other, one lauding the merits of a "consump- 
 tion cure" and the other insisting with most unctuous 
 entreaty upon the blessedness of the "higher life"? 
 There is an ex-editor in this body who, when a rive- 
 thousand-dollar check was offered him for space in 
 which to insert a standing advertisement of a commod- 
 ity of doubtful quality, answered: "No; not if you 
 would make it fifty thousand." Shall a mercenary cu- 
 pidity be longer allowed to disgrace the cause of Christ 
 at this point ? Shall we, while preaching that godliness 
 is gain, act upon the principle that gain is godliness? 
 Has not the time fully come for repentance, for refor- 
 mation, for amendment ? 
 
 3. The religious newspaper ought not to be turned 
 into a mere bulletin board for the recording of current 
 events. True, inasmuch as it is a newspaper it must 
 give a full and specific account of whatever important 
 events are taking place in any part of the world ; and 
 inasmuch as the Christianity of which it is the exponent 
 lays claim on every department of healthy secular life, 
 it must not be indifferent to transactions of a political, 
 commercial, scientific, or artistic character. But at the
 
 IO2 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 same time it must sift and winnow the great mass of 
 details, throw aside whatever is ephemeral in character, 
 and publish only what is of general significance and 
 permanent value. It need hardly be said that every- 
 thing should be excluded that cannot go with perfect 
 propriety into a Christian home. Sensational features 
 are a blot upon even our "enterprising" secular journal- 
 ism. In connection with our religious press they are 
 not to be tolerated for one moment. 
 
 4. On the other hand, the religious newspaper is 
 equally not a quarterly review. This fact limits its 
 scope in one direction as much as the fact which we 
 have just been considering does in another direction. 
 It must be able to discuss even the greatest questions 
 of science, philosophy, and religion, but in a brief and 
 popular way. There are some excellent and intelligent 
 people who do not believe that this is a possibility, but 
 I am not of the number. Even the highest and 
 most abstract themes can be presented in such a fashion 
 as will make them apprehensible by the common mind. 
 The technical language of the books and the schools 
 can be translated into the ordinary speech of everyday 
 life. The people of the nineteenth century will not 
 read a long and elaborate article in a daily or weekly 
 paper. Three columns of "Trichotomy," "to be con- 
 tinued in the next issue," will cut down the subscrip- 
 tion list. In preparing the dishes which are to furnish 
 forth our feasts, we must, within limits at least, con- 
 sult the tastes of the guests that are to sit at our boards. 
 It is not worth while to supply an abundance of food 
 which we know they will not eat. The same general 
 principle will condemn what is know r n as "the blanket
 
 The Religious Newspaper. 103 
 
 sheet," which is likely to be a mere hodgepodge or 
 omnium gatherum, characterless and profitless. Not 
 quantity but quality is the thing to be aimed at. An 
 ounce of attar of roses is worth a hundred gallons of 
 the scented waters of the ordinary drug store. 
 
 5. The religious journal is not a pulpit. This is a 
 very widely spread delusion. Once in a while, under 
 the influence of it, an eloquent and ambitious preacher 
 seeks and finds an editorial post. No sooner is he 
 safely fixed in his place than he lifts up his voice and 
 begins to discourse as if he had an audience of ten 
 thousand souls listening to him. After he has cut up 
 a few dozen of his old sermons into longitudinal sec- 
 tions for editorial purposes, he is likely to find out his 
 mistake. Somehow or other the people do not respond 
 to him as they did when he stood before them in his 
 own proper person. The sorry stuff which sounded 
 well enough when set out with fine tricks of voice and 
 manner becomes "stale, flat, and unprofitable" when 
 committed to the faithful keeping of cold types. The 
 habit of mind which is superinduced by preparation 
 for the pulpit is essentially different from that which 
 is required on the tripod. This is saying nothing 
 against either the pulpit or the tripod, but only insist- 
 ing that two valuable and important branches of reli- 
 gious service are distinct from each other in their 
 methods, though they wholly agree as to their ultimate 
 aims. 
 
 6. The religious newspaper goes its full length for all 
 just, refojrms. It must b<Ta leader of the Lord's hosts 
 if it is to do its full work, not merely catching and 
 reflecting a public opinion that already exists, but ere-
 
 IO4 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 ating and guiding such opinion in all right directions. 
 If this were the time and place, I could name manifold 
 instances in which the denominational organs have led 
 the way on great and grave issues. But the religious 
 paper must be concerned also in regard to secular re- 
 forms. The editor that is silent in the face of the rav- 
 ages^ of the liquor traffic ought to be cashiered. The 
 same thing may be said of him who has nothing to say 
 concerning that slimy octopus, the Louisiana Lottery. 
 But there must be discrimination. The paper that 
 shouts itself hoarse over every proposed change in 
 social or political matters soon loses influence. There 
 are reforms and reforms. There must, therefore, be a 
 due proportion, no riding of hobbies, but a judicious 
 and balanced interest in all human affairs. I wish 
 especially to enter a protest against the delusion that 
 a religious paper can best advance the interests of the 
 kingdom of Christ by becoming the mouthpjece jDf any 
 political party ; nay, it would not be wise for it to do 
 so even were that party formally to incorporate in its 
 platform of principles the Ten Commandments, the 
 Apostles' Creed, and the Lord's Prayer ! 
 
 7. The religious newspaper, in brief, must be devout 
 but not sanctimonious, courageous but not pugnacious, 
 enterprising but not sensational, alert but not pert, 
 literary but not pedantic so bright and sweet and 
 brave and strong and pure that the question of its cir- 
 culation will be one requiring only smallest thought.
 
 V. 
 
 THE NEW DEMANDS UPON METHODIST 
 AUTHORSHIP.
 
 "Therefore every scribe which is instructed unto the king- 
 dom of heaven is like unto a man that is a householder, which 
 bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old." (Matt, 
 xiii. 52.)
 
 THE NEW DEMANDS UPON METHODIST 
 AUTHORSHIP. 
 
 [Address delivered before the Ecumenical Conference, Lon- 
 don, 1901.] 
 
 Mr. President: I am asked by the Program Commit- 
 tee to set forth in ten short minutes what are the new 
 demands on Methodist authorship. To accomplish this 
 task in anything like a satisfactory manner is an evident 
 impossibility. All that I can hope is to furnish a few 
 bare suggestions. If these suggestions prove at all 
 helpful in the way of stimulating thought and provok- 
 ing discussion, I shall be abundantly satisfied. That 
 Methodist ministers should have ever done anything 
 valuable in the way of authorship is really a matter of 
 wonder. The opportunities that they enjoy for book- 
 making are scanty almost beyond belief. As soon as 
 any man appears among us with a little more than 
 common intellectual force he is put to such steady daily 
 work that he has no leisure left for scholarly pursuits. 
 It has been so from the beginning, and appears likely 
 to be so to the end. The result is that those of our 
 brethren who have achieved much in the field of letters 
 have done so by a diligent use of snatched intervals 
 between routine drudgeries. It is the implicit belief of 
 the people called Methodists that there is no end to the 
 wojrking power of thejr ministers, and none to their 
 versatility. What other Church would ever dream of 
 transferring a man who has been only a busy and suc- 
 cessful pastor to the business secretaryship of a Church 
 
 (107)
 
 io8 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 extension board? Or to the presidency of a classical 
 or theological college ? Or to the editorship of a great 
 newspaper ? Or to the command of the channel fleet ? 
 What other Church would expect him, in the midst 
 of such multitudinous engagements, to write a treatise 
 on the drift of scientific investigation or on the present 
 aim and probable outcome of biblical criticism ? I am 
 not saying that the state of affairs concerning which I 
 thus speak is wholly evil. As a matter of fact, it is not 
 wholly evil. Out of it has come much good. The 
 strenuous life which it demands is in many respects a 
 spiritually healthy life. Nevertheless, it must be ap- 
 parent to all observant minds that until the conditions 
 are somewhat altered we cannot expect our commun- 
 ion to produce a great and fruitful literature. Pro- 
 vision must be made for the more elaborate and sys- 
 tematic training of our superior youth before they are 
 called upon to assume the active responsibilities of their 
 high vocation, and in some way or other a broader 
 margin must be granted them for the prosecution of 
 their studies after they have once been inducted into 
 their office. If there is any master in Israel who can 
 devise an effective plan for compassing these ends, he 
 will be fairly entitled to a monument and will probably 
 get it. 
 
 But while the status quo remains we must, neverthe- 
 less, make the most of it. The Church in every age is 
 bound by all considerations to do its own thinking. To 
 go on indefinitely accepting and repeating the formulae 
 of the fathers, as if they possessed some magical virtue 
 and were quite too sacred to be touched or modified in 
 any way, is to commit an act of supreme folly. Every-
 
 New Demands upon Methodist Authorship. 109 
 
 body that has an outlook upon the course of history 
 is aware of that inevitable process by which words that 
 originally incarnate and represent a living truth have 
 a natural tendency to harden and crystallize into the 
 expression of a dead dogma. I have sometimes thought 
 that if Mr. Wesley could only know the extent to 
 which many of his followers have fallen into the habit 
 of repeating the ipsissiina verba of his teachings, as if 
 they were a final and conclusive statement of the truth, 
 he would turn over in his grave and groan ; for he him- 
 self, far from being the slave of traditions, was the 
 freest and boldest mind of his generation. He made 
 diligent use of all available material from every source, 
 but he called no man master and played the parrot to 
 no school of critics or theologians. Holding fast the 
 form of sound words does not mean the abdication of 
 one's personal right to consider, to weigh, to sift, to 
 reconstruct, to reject. The ultimate problems of reli- 
 gion are eternal. They are always emerging with fresh 
 aspects and calling for a new hearing. It is impossible 
 for us to appropriate the best products of former in- 
 quiry without vigorous original research. To grasp 
 the full significance of any existing tenet it is necessary 
 for us to know the circumstances under which it was 
 first framed, and to put ourselves, as far as may be, 
 into the mental atmosphere and attitude of the men who 
 framed it. Is it too harsh a judgment to affirm that the 
 greatest enemies of a conservative orthodoxy are those 
 belated dogmatists who still cling with devout stupidity 
 to the very letter of the creeds and symbols of other 
 days? The Methodist who insists on measuring every- 
 thing in heaven and earth by Watson's "Institutes" or
 
 no Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 Wesley's Sermons is a_ pestilent breeder of heresy. 
 And what shall I say of that one who, with the com- 
 mentaries of Meyer and Godet and Lightfoot and Elli- 
 cott and Westcott and the noble volumes of our own 
 Joseph Agar Beet in his hands or in his sight, still 
 stoutly affirms that the dictum of Adam Clarke is the 
 end of the law on a matter of exposition? We are 
 living in the twentieth century ; and unless we wish to 
 incur the just suspicion of idiocy, we must gather and 
 use all that is offered to us by the master workmen who 
 are toiling with such infinite diligence in this end of 
 the ages to find out whatever may be discovered con- 
 cerning the mind and purpose of God toward our lost 
 world. 
 
 What I have said might be said with a considerable 
 measure of pertinency at any time and in any place. 
 But at this time and in this place it deserves to receive 
 a special emphasis. Two great movements, more or 
 less related to each other, are passing over the world. 
 The doctrine of evolution, which in spite of the mate- 
 rialistic and atheistic forms it sometimes assumes uri; 
 doubtedly contains large elements of truth, is gaining 
 an ever-wider acceptance ; and the science of historical 
 criticism, that is^a science in spjte of the arrogant and, 
 ignorant skepticism with which it is often propounded., 
 is likewise commanding the attention and respect of 
 scholars everywhere. These facts render it imperative 
 that those who would speak to their fellow men in in- 
 telligible and understandable terms must discard much 
 of the terminology with which they have long been, 
 familiar and clothe their message, if not in a new, at 
 least in an altered dress, While we cannot too ear-
 
 New Demands upon Methodist Authorship, in 
 
 nestly insist upon the propriety of teaching the gospel 
 in terms of the gospel, we shall be wise if we likewise 
 remember that we must teach it in terms that come 
 home to the business and the bosoms of the struggling, 
 suffering, and sinning men and women who are throng- 
 ing about us on every hand and crying out, though not 
 always in articulate tones, for guidance and help. Let 
 there be no craven fear that in following this course we 
 shall get away from the New Testament or forfeit any- 
 thing of that gjeat inheritance which has been brought 
 down to us from distant years. 
 
 I confess a deep personal regret that, owing partly 
 to the circumstances which I have above mentioned 
 and partly to a right and jealous regard for the honor 
 of long-established and well-accredited truths, our 
 Methodist ministers have not had a full share in the 
 critical and theological discussions of recent times ; and 
 I sincerely trust that in the future we shall show our- 
 selves as worthy and as competent to be heard in these 
 fields as we have been in other spheres of life and 
 thought. As a matter of course, we dare not forget 
 that evangelism, the direct offer of salvation to the 
 world, is our chief business. Bishop Galloway cor- 
 rectly put the case in the sermon that opened the pro- 
 ceedings of this body : "Ou gospel is a proclamation 
 and not a discussion, a verity and not a speculation." 
 That high and pregnant sentiment doubtless finds an 
 echo in all our hearts. But the fact remains that the 
 intellect h^s its rights in^ religion, and that a living 
 faith will always be courageous enough to confront 
 without flinching ever}' issue that may be raised and 
 to probe to the core and center every distressing and
 
 H2 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 paralyzing doubt that may be thrust upon its notice. 
 _If our brightest young men show an inclination _to_ 
 explore untried territory, let us not warn them off 
 with an ominous shake of the head and an intimation 
 that they are treading on dangerous ground ; but rather 
 let jus bid them Godspeed in their glorious adventure. 
 There doubtless is occasion for speaking now and then 
 a word of caution and moderation to them. Some of 
 them may be puffed up with fleshly wisdom, and some 
 may even go so fast and so far as to cast away the 
 confidence that they have in Christ Jesus. But if they 
 have the root of the matter in them, if by blessed ex- 
 perience they know God and Jesus Christ whom he 
 has sent, if they are steadied and strengthened by the 
 assurance in themselves that they have passed from 
 death unto life, then they are comparatively safe. 
 After perhaps a little wavering they will plant their 
 feet upon the solid rock and abide steadfast when the 
 rains descend and the floods come and the winds blow 
 upon them. In any event, while wrong thinking is 
 perilous, not to think at all is absolutely fatal. I have 
 taken it for granted that all mental activity of a reli- 
 gious sort will express itself, in a larger or smaller 
 degree, in a written literature. If any one chooses to 
 call in question this assumption, he is welcome to his 
 opinion. 
 
 I have not now either the time or the inclination to 
 contradict him. Were more space at my command, I 
 should be glad to add something as to the ability and 
 duty of Methodism to show its gifts in those forms of 
 literature which are not distinctly religious in charac- 
 ter, but which, nevertheless, contribute to the edifica-
 
 Kew Demands upon Methodist Authorship. 113 
 
 tion and enrichment of the world's life. There is 
 scarcely a branch of our widespread denomination that 
 does not contain men capable of using their pens with 
 fine effect in many directions. It is, for example, a 
 cause for congratulation that a Methodist minister in 
 one of the far-off colonies of Australia I refer, of 
 course, to Mr. W. H. Fitchett should have brought 
 forth so vivid a narrative of the way in which at the 
 beginning of the century England saved Europe. Is 
 it to be taken for granted that the spirit of minstrelsy 
 is dead in us, and that we shall never have a great poet ? 
 And may we not expect that in due course of time 
 some one shall come to glorify the romance of the 
 itinerancy in a story that will make its appeal to the 
 heart of mankind by its high and enduring worth? 
 There is much in the history of Methodism for the 
 past hundred years that lends itself most admirably 
 to artistic treatment and narration. Shall we not look 
 also for reviewers and essayists to arise? Are we 
 doomed to everlasting barrenness in this respect ? God 
 forbid ! In the meantime let our Publishing Houses 
 keep a lookout for every sign of literary activity and 
 give it their hearty encouragement. 
 8
 
 VI. 
 
 AT THE GATHERING OF THE TRIBES.
 
 "All the saints salute you." (2 Cor. xiii. 13.)'
 
 AT THE GATHERING OF THE TRIBES. 
 
 [Address of welcome at the Fourth Ecumenical Conference, 
 Toronto, Canada, October, 1911.] 
 
 My Methodist Brethren from Beyond All Seas: The 
 greetings that you have already received have been 
 both so numerous and so cordial that it would surely 
 be a great work of supererogation for me to add many 
 words. But as the special representative of the Meth- 
 odist Episcopal Church, South, with its nearly two 
 million members, I must stand up and salute you. 
 
 There is at least one good reason why I should have 
 been chosen to discharge this pleasant duty, for I am 
 a man with lines of racial and ecclesiastical heredity 
 reaching outward and backward into many lands. Of 
 my four great-grandfathers, one was an unmixed Ger- 
 man with the touch of Martin Luther on him, one was 
 an unmixed Frenchman well drilled in the decrees of 
 the Council of Trent and obedient to them, one was 
 an unmixed Englishman and a most stubborn Baptist, 
 and one was of mixed breed with the blood of Hu- 
 guenot refugees and English churchmen flowing in 
 equal currents through his veins. As for myself, I am 
 a perfectly homogeneous product of all these mingled 
 elements, an American from the top of my head to the 
 soles of my feet, and a Methodist twenty-four hours 
 out of every day from my heart's core to my finger 
 tips. As such I greet you to-day. 
 
 You are welcome, brethren beloved, in the name of 
 the Lord. We are devoutly thankful for the good 
 
 (117)
 
 n8 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 Providence that has been over you since you left your 
 distant homes, and that has brought you safe over so 
 many weary leagues of land and water to our great 
 decennial gathering; and we earnestly pray that the 
 same kindly Providence may be over the households 
 and the Churches that you have left behind you. 
 
 It is our ardent hope that while we are here we may 
 all "sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus" 
 and get a fresh sense of what is meant by "the com- 
 munion of saints." And why should there not come to 
 us again and again during these days of Conference that 
 blessed experience which came to John Wesley in 
 Aldersgate Street on the evening of May 24, 1738, en- 
 abling him to say : "I felt my heart strangely warmed ; 
 I felt I did trust Christ, Christ alone, for my salva- 
 tion; and an assurance was given to me that he had 
 taken away my sins, even mine, and had saved me 
 from the law of sin and death"? For, O brethren, 
 while we need intellectual enlargement and social stim- 
 ulus and many other blessings, we need most oj all^ 
 the direct touch of^God upon us^jthe vision of his up- 
 lifted face, and the sound of his sweet forgiving 
 voice. If this experience should ever become wanting 
 or. scarce among us, then we should have no further 
 justification for our existence as an organized body of 
 Christians. 
 
 Our sole stock in trade is our religion. When that 
 goes, we shall be the most poverty-stricken people on 
 the face of the earth; for we shall have nothing left 
 to fall back upon no long-stretching centuries of 
 history, no ivy-clad cathedrals, no monumental vol- 
 umes of theology, no elaborate ritual of worship.
 
 At the Gathering of the Tribes. 119 
 
 God himself, consciously known, worshiped, adored, 
 and loved through Jesus Christ, is our only and our 
 everlasting portion. 
 
 If after the Conference is over you should wish to 
 travel, the continent is open before you, free, thank 
 God, every foot of it. Nor is there a region on all its 
 ample face, from the outermost rim of settlement in 
 the Far North to the remotest villages along the South- 
 ern coast, and from the Atlantic shores to the Pacific, 
 where you will not find a company of the spiritual chil- 
 dren of John Wesley ready to give you a warm and 
 generous reception. Individually, we may not be as 
 good as we ought to be I have a grave fear that we 
 are not but there are lots of us and more a-coming. 
 
 As a matter of course, you will feel at home those 
 of you who are English, at any rate in Canada, this 
 beautiful land of the snows and the aurora borealis, for 
 here there is blent and fused with the sturdiest Amer- 
 icanism an undying love for the crown and kingdom 
 of old England. And of course you will feel at home 
 in the United States also ; for it has been a full hundred 
 years, lacking only three, since Andrew Jackson and 
 his Tennessee volunteers went to New Orleans and gut 
 an empjiatic perio_d to our last unbrotherly war. God 
 grant that in all the ages to come there may never be 
 another muster of opposing armies between these two 
 branches of our mighty English-speaking race ! Amen 
 and amen ! 
 
 We are your brothers. Our fathers marched to- 
 gether with yours out of the forests of Northern Ger- 
 many and threw aside their heathen gods to accept the 
 white Christ. There is nothing great in your history
 
 I2O Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 that does not equally belong to us. Your ancient her- 
 editaments of language, literature, liberty, law, and 
 faith we share in common with you. In the course of 
 three hundred years we have picked up some new 
 things on our own account. Look around you ; and if 
 you see anything that you want, take it and welcome. 
 Between us and not to be told in Gath nor published 
 in the streets of Askelon we have some things that I 
 wish you would take and keep or, better still, drop into 
 the sea as you go home. 
 
 You need have no fear that we shall seek to annex 
 you. All that we desire is to enmesh you in that mys- 
 tic web of Christian love which stretches, stronger 
 than steel cables, through all lands and all centuries 
 and holds together in a glorious unity the hearts of 
 those who can truly say that Jesus is Lord. 
 
 Once more, and with added emphasis, welcome, wel- 
 come, welcome.
 
 VII. 
 
 SOME CONDITIONS OF ORGANIC UNION.
 
 "So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one 
 members one of another." (Rom. xii. 4.)
 
 SOME CONDITIONS OF ORGANIC UNION. 
 
 [Remarks following Bishop Cranston's paper before the 
 session of the Methodist Joint Commission on Federation and 
 Union, Baltimore, Md., November, 1911.] 
 
 Mr. President: I am very sorry that the Commis- 
 sioners from the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 
 are not in position at the present time to make a writ- 
 ten statement of their views in regard to the matters 
 that are brought up for consideration in the paper just 
 read by Bishop Cranston for the Commissioners of the 
 Methodist Episcopal Church. But neither Bishop Wil- 
 son nor Bishop Denny could be with us at our meeting 
 last night, and we were unwilling to take formal and 
 definite action without their presence and help. Nev- 
 ertheless, speaking for myself and representing what I 
 believe to be the spirit of my Church, I am prepared 
 to utter my mind with all freedom and, as I hope, 
 without any trace of unchristian prejudice. It is my 
 rooted conviction that the very first step toward secur- 
 ing a brotherly adjustment among the different bodies 
 of American Methodists is to be found in a frank and 
 full exhibition of the real difficulties that lie in the 
 way of such a result. It ought to be possible for us 
 to open our minds to one another. If we are too sensi- 
 tive to listen to plain speech, then we are in no mood 
 for fraternal negotiations; and the sooner we adjourn 
 and go home, the better it will be. Were it possible 
 for me to practice any evasion or reserve on so im- 
 portant an occasion as this is, then I should count 
 
 (123)
 
 124 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 myself utterly unworthy of the great honor that my 
 Church has bestowed upon me in sending me hither. 
 
 Let me say, then, with all the courtesy that I can 
 command, and yet with the utmost possible explicit- 
 ness, that we are not in the least embarrassed or con- 
 fused by your proposition for union. There was never 
 a time in our history when we were unwilling to give 
 due and proper consideration to any advances from our 
 sister Churches. In the very beginning of our separate 
 history, and without waiting for the settlement of all 
 outstanding differences, we sought honorable fraternity. 
 Our offer, rejected in 1848, was never withdrawn, but 
 remained open till 1874, when, to our very great joy, 
 it was frankly accepted on the very terms that were 
 originally attached to it. 
 
 Twenty years later, thinking that the time had fully 
 come for a still closer rapprochement, we originated 
 the scheme for federation, out of which much has al- 
 ready come, and to which we confidently look for still 
 greater things. It will be a deep satisfaction to me till 
 my dying day that in the providence of God I was 
 a member of the special committee of the General 
 Conference of 1894 which was appointed to deal with 
 the whole matter, and that I wrote every word of the 
 report which was adopted without the slightest modi- 
 fication by that body, and then passed on to the General 
 Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 
 
 There is still another fact of history not so well 
 known that also ought to be mentioned here. The 
 convention of 1845, which completed the organization 
 of our branch of the Church, passed a resolution to 
 the effect I regret not having the exact words at
 
 Some Conditions of Organic Union. 125 
 
 my command that the Methodist Episcopal Church, 
 South, would always be ready under proper conditions 
 to treat with the Methodist Episcopal Church on the 
 subject of reunion. It was not in the minds of the 
 great men who composed that assembly to shut them- 
 selves up blindly against the developments of the fu- 
 ture. They did not know what the future might bring 
 forth, and they solemnly put themselves on record as 
 being prepared to meet any fresh emergency in a ra- 
 tional and Christian way. 
 
 In line with their promise, and by the express direc- 
 tion of our General Conference that met in Asheville, 
 N. C., during May of the current year, we are here 
 present before God to hear and to weigh whatever 
 offer you may have to make. It is, indeed, a source 
 of gratification to us to confer with men who manifest 
 so much of the mind of Christ as you have done since 
 we came together. 
 
 While I am on this point, and to keep the history 
 straight, I may as well add that the assertion so often 
 printed and lately repeated by one of the leading jour- 
 nals and also by one of the bishops of the Methodist 
 Episcopal Church, that in the past we have time and 
 again declined overtures for union, is absolutely with- 
 out foundation in fact. Xo such overture has ever at 
 any time been presented to us by anybody that had the 
 slightest authority to do it. I am not at all unmindful 
 that in the run of the years several fraternal messengers 
 have rather gratuitously advised us to "come back to 
 our mother" ; but that is quite another story, and no- 
 wise contradicts the truth of what I have just said. 
 Even now, my beloved brethren, it is not a direct but
 
 126 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 only a constructive invitation that reaches us. Yet not 
 wishing to give any occasion to the enemy to blaspheme, 
 we have responded to it without hesitation. 
 
 My own heart is most profoundly concerned for the 
 real unity of American Methodism. Confronted as we 
 are by a thousand open or secret foes of the faith, it 
 is a thing of supreme concern that we should array 
 ourselves in solid columns and with unbroken front. 
 If we are Christians, we must come to a perfect under- 
 standing and a harmonious cooperation. Less than 
 this is less than our Lord has a right to expect of us. 
 Individually, I do not shy even at "organic union." 
 The phrase, like most other forms of speech, is an 
 elastic one, and may mean one thing or may mean an- 
 other. Of course I shall claim the right to put my own 
 interpretation on it. What that interpretation is will 
 come out later. You need have no fear that I shall 
 palter with words in a double sense. 
 
 But if there is to be any closer union than now ob- 
 tains, several things are necessary. 
 
 I. All the existing compacts, including those that 
 were framed by the Cape May Commission and those 
 that have since been framed by the Joint Commission 
 on Federation must first be honored, not in the breach, 
 but in the observance of them. It is not worth while to 
 enter into any new covenants till we are ready both in 
 the letter and in the spirit to observe the old ones. The 
 Church that is faithless in one engagement will, if in- 
 terest or convenience require it, be faithless to another, 
 and does not deserve to be trusted. If it be said in an- 
 swer to this dictum that General Conferences cannot 
 always control the actions of their agents or enforce
 
 Some Conditions of Organic Union. 127 
 
 the terms of their own voluntary contracts, then it only 
 remains to further affirm that General Conferences 
 which are so impotent are practicing a fraud when they 
 make such compacts. This language is perfectly gen- 
 eral in its scope, and hits only those, but all those, who 
 are in the way of it. Here I stand stubbornly, and 
 from this position I will not budge an inch. 
 
 2. Negotiations must not proceed upon the supposi- 
 tion, express or implied, that denominationalism as 
 such is schismatic or sinful. Schism, in the New Tes- 
 tament meaning of the word, is not separation from 
 a Church, but a chronic and malignant quarrel inside 
 of it. Some Protestants, including a few Methodists, 
 have actually stolen the argument of the Romanists and 
 the High Church Episcopalians concerning union, and 
 are using it as if it were a new discovery. Do they not 
 see that they are thereby canceling their own right to 
 an ecclesiastical existence? If their contention be true, 
 then it follows that Luther, Calvin, Knox, and Cran 
 mer were all wrong and their Roman antagonists all 
 right. Nay, the most of the pleas that are used to 
 bolster up the plan for what is called "the reunion of 
 Christendom" would, if logically followed out, land us 
 inevitably in the conclusion that Protestantism should 
 abjure its past record and make a speedy peace with 
 Rome. But there is nothing in the New Testament to 
 justify any such view. Not one of the classical pas- 
 sages that are quoted to sustain it has any such force. 
 Our Lord, for example, never said that his sheep should 
 all become of one fold. It was worth the revision of 
 the New Testament to get that false translation out of 
 John x. 16. What the Lord did say was this : "Other
 
 128 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also 
 must I bring, and they shall hear my voice ; and there 
 shall be [not one fold, but] one flock and one shepherd." 
 The unity of the flock depends not on the unity of the 
 fold, but on the unity of the shepherd. It would be an 
 impossible thing to make one fold large enough to hold 
 all of Christ's sheep. Equally fallacious is the use that 
 is sought to be made of our Lord's high priestly prayer 
 in John xvii. and of the great paragraph on "the seven 
 unities" in Ephesians iv. But I have not time to notice 
 them now. The conception of a world-wide Church, 
 under one authoritative head, whether that head be a 
 pope, a council, a general assembly, or a general con- 
 ference, is at war with the whole genius of Protestant- 
 ism. That conception was not in the Primitive Church 
 any more than it is in the. New Testament. I do not 
 believe that during the first century anybody ever 
 dreamed of it. It came later, along with a flood of 
 other errors and heresies. Human nature being what 
 it is, such a Church as this would inevitably grow proud 
 of its own bulk and obesity, and in the course of time 
 would become, first arrogant, then persecuting, and 
 finally rotten and corrupt. Denominationalism within 
 due limits, which men are to determine for themselves 
 and nobody else is to determine for them, is one of the 
 greatest safeguards of Christian purity. Not even as 
 an ideal to be realized in the remote future do I look or 
 pray for the abolition of it. Where the Spirit of the 
 Lord is, there is liberty; and where there is liberty, 
 there is sure to be diversity. 
 
 3. We shall make no real progress toward the goal 
 in view as long as we insist that the past separations
 
 Some Conditions of Organic Union. 129 
 
 among the Methodists have been wicked or evil. As 
 I look at it, the providence of God has been in them 
 all. The separation of the Methodist Protestants in 
 1824-28 was accompanied, it is true, by a great deal of 
 unchristian acerbity on both sides. That, of course, 
 was wrong. But good came out of it. We are all in- 
 debted, largely indebted, to our Protestant brethren; 
 and we have all paid them the homage of imitation. 
 The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in 1866 fol- 
 lowed their example by giving laymen an equal repre- 
 sentation in the General Conference and effective rep- 
 resentation in the Annual Conferences, and the Meth- 
 odist Episcopal Church moved later on the same tracks. 
 Still more earnestly do I hold to the opinion that the 
 separation of 1844 "which was by consent and mu- 
 tual" was an epochal incident in the history of Amer- 
 ican Methodism and a real contribution to the growth 
 of the kingdom of God in these United States. The 
 General Conference which met in that year was not, 
 as is commonly believed, made up of angry disputants. 
 Having read the records again and again and with the 
 greatest care, I declare that, in my judgment, a more 
 serious, conscientious, and devout company of men 
 never met together on this continent. They moved 
 slowly and acted reluctantly with heartaches and hot 
 tears on their cheeks. The anger, the irritations, the 
 unchristian conflicts came later and might have been 
 avoided. But the separation was designed to promote 
 peace and brotherhood. Not even Charles Elliot, the 
 author of "The Great Secession," was ever able to an- 
 swer his own able speech in favor of it. It simply 
 could not be avoided. Conditions had arisen which 
 9
 
 130 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 would have wrecked the Methodism of the North if it 
 had remained in alliance with the South, and, as 
 Stephen Olin pointed out in burning words, would 
 have wrecked the Methodism of the South if it had 
 remained in alliance with the North. As things turned 
 out, the two Churches were set in right alignments 
 with their own sections. God was surely in it, ill spjte. 
 of tlje. human follies that accompanied it. 
 
 4. I go a step farther still and make bold to say that 
 any attempt at the present time to bring about a union 
 by pressure would be foolish and futile. The advocates 
 of union must understand that they have no legitimate 
 instrument but persuasion, and that even this they must 
 use in a spirit of love. Let those who fear God, and are 
 controlled, not by a lust for ecclesiastical empire, but by 
 zeal for the extension of his kingdom, beware how they 
 try to create division in the ranks of any Church that 
 is not willing to merge itself in a larger organization. 
 Any such move would provoke hot and righteous in- 
 dignation, and would work an indefinite postponement 
 of the day of a complete unification. The sad experi- 
 ence of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church ought 
 surely to teach us a lesson here. The result of a pre- 
 mature effort to force an unwilling element in that 
 communion whether a majority or simply a large 
 minority into an alliance that it did not relish has 
 ended in a long series of scandals. The same thing on 
 a much more exaggerated scale would occur if a sim- 
 ilar attempt were made to rush the consolidation of our 
 Methodisms. The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 
 when it moves, and whichever way it moves, will move 
 of its own unforced accord, and not in broken detach^
 
 Some Conditions of Organic Union. 131 
 
 ments, but in a solid body, 2,000,000 strong. The sug- 
 gestion that it may become necessary to reach the lay- 
 men by going over the heads of the ministers is, if 
 serious, sinister; and if not serious, silly. Our minis- 
 ters and laymen have marched together too long to 
 split up into opposing camps now. That will come to 
 pass on the day after the Greek calends. 
 
 5. If a real, vital, and permanent union is to be 
 effected, each separate Church must be ready to make 
 some concessions, and this too not on trifling points 
 but on matters of real importance. There must be 
 no blinking this fact and no policy of shiftiness or 
 maneuvering for advantage. Those who are most ea- 
 ger for union ought to be the first to say how far they 
 are willing to go to obtain it. The mere intimation 
 that either one of the Churches should absorb the other, 
 retaining meanwhile all its own prized peculiarities, 
 would be an impertinence. If organic union ever be- 
 comes a reality, it will consist not in the mere enlarge- 
 ment of any existing Church, but in the creation of a 
 new Church. The Southern Methodists do not wish 
 to absorb anybody, and they are not going to be ab- 
 sorbed. Many of us, at any rate, before submitting to 
 that will camp out under God's kindly stars. 
 
 6. As a matter of course, the largest Church going 
 into the new organization would have the greatest 
 weight and influence. That would be natural and 
 proper. But it would also be natural and proper for 
 the minority bodies, simply because they are minori- 
 ties, to insist in advance on the safeguarding of their 
 reserved rights by stipulations of organic law. Ma- 
 jorities can take care of themselves; it is minorities
 
 132 Methodist Federation and Union. 
 
 that must have protection. Nor would it be sufficient 
 simply to formulate a constitution. The question as 
 to who shall interpret the constitution is one of equal 
 importance. From our standpoint, an omnipotent 
 General Conference that may sit one day as a legisla- 
 ture to enact laws and the next day as a supreme court 
 to pass upon their constitutionality is simply a despot- 
 ism tempered by religion. The fact that it is made up 
 of good men does not alter the situation. Good men 
 are sometimes rash and foolish. The liberties of a 
 Church, as truly as those of a nation, are too valuable 
 to be trusted to the precarious guardianship of any 
 unrestricted synod or conference. Somewhere on the 
 outside there must be lodged a power of- arrest. 
 Whether it should lie in a suspensive veto by the ex- 
 ecutive with ultimate appeal to the whole body of the 
 ministry and chosen representatives of the laity, or 
 should take on some other form, is an open question. 
 But that it must exist in some form is not an open 
 question. On this ground somebody will be compelled 
 to do a considerable amount of yielding. Either one 
 Church or the other must modify its theory and prac- 
 tice. 
 
 7. Let me conclude by adding that the vast altera- 
 tion which the Methodist Episcopal Church has made 
 in the original conditions of membership are a stum- 
 blingblock to some of us. As we read the Discipline 
 of that Church, it requires belief in the Twenty-Five 
 Articles of Religion from all candidates. This is a 
 departure from original Methodism. The Twenty-Five 
 Articles are very good. I do not want to alter them, 
 lest we should get something not so good. But I am
 
 Some Conditions of Organic Union. 133 
 
 opposed to thrusting them down the throats of imma- 
 ture believers, or of mature ones either for that mat- 
 ter. John Wesley never would have dreamed of doing 
 it. Following the noble catholicity of the English re- 
 formers, he cut all the creeds out of the ordination 
 ritual for ministers all of them. It is inconceivable 
 that he should have exacted any of them from laymen. 
 Equally objectionable to some of us is the demand that 
 is made of candidates that they should profess saving 
 faith. Not that we would belittle saving faith, not at 
 all ; nor that we would cease to urge the pursuit of it 
 on all our people ; but that we would not insist on the 
 conscious attainment of it as a sine qua non of Church 
 membership. Of old the Methodists took in seekers 
 after religion and gave them the ordinances. The new 
 Methodism that declines to do so seems to us to par- 
 take more of the nature of a Puritan conventicle than 
 of a catholic Church. Nor can it be successfully main- 
 tained that its membership, on the average, is either any 
 more orthodox in its belief or any more devout in its 
 piety than that of the Methodisms that still cling to the 
 usage of the fathers and founders. 
 
 8. That some of you will be found demanding sur- 
 render from our Church in some important respects, 
 I do not doubt. Be it so. Speak out your minds, 
 brethren. It will not offend us in the least. We de- 
 sire you, in fact, to tell us what in your judgment we 
 ought to give up. We shall listen to you respectfully, 
 and either comply with your wishes or else seek to 
 show you why we cannot conscientiously do so.
 
 THE BATTLE OF THE LORD. 
 
 HARK ! the trumpet blast is ringing 
 Till it fills both earth and sky, 
 
 And the sons of God are gathering 
 For the battle that is nigh. 
 
 With their banners to the breezes, 
 And their armor gleaming bright, 
 
 They are marching, they are coming; 
 They are eager for the fight. 
 
 Who shall stay their onward movement? 
 
 Or shall bid them sound retreat? 
 They have set their hearts on victory; 
 
 They shall never know defeat. 
 
 Rides the Lord himself before them, 
 Girt with sword upon his thigh; 
 
 At the shining of his kingly face 
 All his craven foes shall fly. 
 
 Hail we then the glorious Leader, 
 Cheer we all the gallant host; 
 
 With uplifted hearts and voices 
 Let us make triumphant boast. 
 
 For the day of days is coming, 
 And the kingdom is at hand; 
 
 And the glory that the prophets spoke 
 Breaks in billows o'er the land. 
 
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