The Young People's Wesley Part 14

The 65,000 has repeated itself about 91 times, or once every 13 months during the last century. The percentage of gain is 8,977. If the population had increased at the same rate it would now be 476,000,000 instead of 76,300,000. The average annual gain has been 58,350.

The gain in preachers in the Methodist Episcopal Church is indicated as follows:

The gain for the century is 17,413. The 287 have been multiplied by 62; average annual gain, 174.

The beginning in a sail loft in 1766, the erection shortly afterward of a church costing $3,000, gave no more promise of ecclesiastical wealth than it did of growth in members.h.i.+p. Our 27,000 churches, worth $116,000,000, show a development of resources as wonderful as a miracle. It takes now between $23,000,000 and $24,000,000 a year to carry on the work of the Methodist Episcopal Church, to say nothing about its universities, colleges, and hospitals. The consecration of wealth is truly stupendous. Methodists have not been stingy.

Methodism was ninth among Protestant denominations in number of churches in 1775, and third in number of communicants in 1800. It soon advanced to first place in numbers, and easily holds this place at the end of the century. It was only a handful of corn on the top of the mountains at the beginning. How wonderfully has G.o.d multiplied it!

It is pertinent to ask, How did it win its success?

Not by immigration, as many other Churches did. Roman Catholics came here from Europe by hundreds of thousands. The Lutheran, Reformed German, and Presbyterian Churches gained immensely by the streams of immigration. But Methodists and Baptists have grown out of American soil and drawn their chief strength from the surrounding elements.

Not by proselytism. We have lost hundreds of thousands of converts; we have gained comparatively few in return from the denominations we have fed. We would like to hold all who are converted at our altars, but we do not feel that our losses have impoverished us, though they have enriched our neighbors.

Not because of wealth, social prestige, ecclesiastical antiquity, or what an historian calls "the aristocracy of education and position." Other Churches had these; we began with nothing but a needy field and earnest men, full of the Holy Ghost and flaming with zeal for the Gospel.

Not by our machinery and methods. These were powerful, even providential, aids; but if we ever come to depend on these alone Methodism will be a great system of enginery, with wheels, pulleys, cogs, and joints, all silent and inert, because the boilers are cold. It was not our itinerancy, our cla.s.s meetings, our Conferences, or our methods which gave us success.

Our hosts have been won, by the power of the Gospel manifested in a real, religious experience, from the vast cla.s.ses of unconverted persons. We have regarded these, wherever we found them, as legitimate prey. We count it a special honor that our millions are trophies won for Christ from the ma.s.ses of G.o.dless, indifferent, unconverted persons. The late Dr. John Hall once said that he specially honored the Methodist Church for the importance it attaches to conversion.

The power of Methodism is spiritual in its nature.

I do not believe a greater boon could be asked for our Church in the twentieth century than that it might continue to regard it as its special task to call men and women to repentance and insist upon an experience such as our fathers enjoyed and we profess.

When John Wesley lay dying in 1791 there were only four Methodist schools in England--three small ones at London, Newcastle-on-Tyne, and Bristol, and the Kingswood School, near Bristol. The latter is still doing most excellent work at Bath. English Methodism has no university or college empowered to grant degrees. It sadly lacks secondary schools.

The Leys School at Cambridge is its nearest approach to a reputable American college. But it has a good share in the elementary education of the people. Colonial Methodism excels in respect to secondary and higher education. Of American Methodism in general, and of the Methodist Episcopal Church in particular, it may be said, in this respect, "Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all." Whilst some of our colleges are somewhat prophetic, yet the long list of our inst.i.tutions and the honorable records they have made place us in the front rank of American educators. It has been well said that "The Methodist Episcopal Church began the century with the ashes of one college." In 1900 it had 56 colleges and universities, 60 academies and seminaries, 8 inst.i.tutions exclusively for women, 4 missionary inst.i.tutions and training schools, 25 schools of theology, and 99 foreign mission schools--228 in all. These schools have more than 3,000 instructors, and about 50,000 students. The total value of property and endowment is about $30,000,000. "The Board of Education" in 1873 began its n.o.ble work of placing the first steps to these inst.i.tutions very near to the feet of any young man or woman who has the ability to climb them, whether a Methodist or not. President Warren, of Boston University, puts our educational work in the strongest possible light, and in the briefest s.p.a.ce, thus: "The Banner Church in Education."

That the Methodist Episcopal Church is indeed "the banner Church in education" the following facts bear witness:

From 1784, the year of its organization, to 1884, the Methodist Episcopal Church established 225 cla.s.sical seminaries and colleges; in other words, established a cla.s.sical seminary or college every fifth month through a hundred toilsome years. No other organization in human history ever made so honorable a record in the higher education, or was ent.i.tled to celebrate so jubilant a centennial. If we go back through the stormy period of the Revolution to the first feeble beginnings of American Methodism in 1766, we must add to the above-mentioned 225 inst.i.tutions belonging to the Church the 58 known schools of more private owners.h.i.+p, to get the true aggregate of Methodist inst.i.tutions for the higher education, namely, 283, a little more than one for every fifth month through the first 118 years of our existence as a Church, infancy included.

Is it not time to bury the ancient allegation that the early Methodists were indifferent or hostile to learning? If the long-standing slander must live on to the end of time, let us once in a hundred years lift it gently into the pillory of ec.u.menical publicity and placard it as an instructive example of immortal mendacity.

CONCLUSION.

What shall we now say of universal Methodism?

Of the millions reached by her ministry we have heard. The sun never sets on her domain, for it is "from the rivers to the ends of the earth." Her people are found in every land and are at home in every zone. "All climates embrace them--the winters of Hudson's Bay, and the sun-scorched plains of India. The Pacific waves break upon their sh.o.r.es, and peaks crowned with eternal snow shadow their dwellings." As she enters upon the twentieth century there should be no "wrinkle upon her brow, no haze in her vision, no stoop to her form, no halt to her step, giving signs of wasted energy or declining vigor;" and this will be her history if the anointing of her founder abides upon her. Her sanctuaries will be Bethesdas, and her prayer meetings Bethels. "She will gather in the street Arab, and send missionaries to Orient fields of toil and death." Her doctrines will be as when Wesley died; her philanthropy as broad, her relations to other churches as catholic, as when he said, "The world is my parish."

Methodism is to be the friend of all and the enemy of none. So long as she maintains her power the world needs her, and she will not perish. So long as she believes in conversion, and effectually preaches it, she will not perish. So long as she believes in holiness of heart, and proclaims it "clearly, strongly, and explicitly," she will not perish.

So long as she believes in the Holy Ghost and the baptism of fire, and possesses it in its fullness, she will not perish, but will go forth all aglow with the "dew of her youth bright as the sun, fair as the moon, and terrible as an army with banners." She has the true doctrine and a flexible economy; now let her cultivate the spirit and maintain the tireless energy of her founders, and doctrines and Church shall be the doctrines and Church of the future, even till Christ comes.

"When he first the work begun, Small and feeble was his day: Now the word doth swiftly run; Now it wins its widening way: More and more it spreads and grows, Ever mighty to prevail; Sin's strongholds it now o'erthrows, Shakes the trembling gates of h.e.l.l."

FOOTNOTES:

[A] _Some Heretics of Yesterday_, pp. 294, 295.

[B] _Wesley Family_, vol. i, p. 65.

[C] _Life of Wesley_, pp. 24, 25.

[D] _The Christian Advocate._

[E] _Works_, vol. ii, p. 24.

[F] _Works_, vol. vi, p. 718.

[G] _Ibid._, p. 525.

[H] _Sermons_, vol. ii, p. 50.

[I] Wesley's _Notes_ on 1 Cor. 15.

[J] _Works_, vol. i, p. 454.

[K] _Notes_ on Matt. 25. 41.

[L] _Some Heretics of Yesterday_, p. 300.

[M] Wesley's _Works_, vol. 1, p. 344.

[N] _Works_, vol. vi, p. 746.