The centenary of American Methodism ...

Front matter

THE

CENTENARY

OF

Part I. What Is Methodism ? — The Question Historic- Ally Answered

CHAPTEE I.

ITS ORIGIN, FOUNDERS, AND EARLY PROGRESS IN ENGLAND.

Its Historical Stand-point 11

Sketches of John and Charles. .

Wesley 11

Susannah Wesley 11

Studies and Eeligious Inquiries

of the Wesley s 13

John Wesley's Charities 20

Sketch of Whitefield: 21

Conversion of the Wesley s 25

Peter Boehler 31

Luther on Faith 33

Beginning of the Methodist Mission < 38

Eeligious Condition of England. 43

Eemarkable Scenes 48

Lay Preachers 51

The first Society 52

Persecutions 53

Whitefield in America 55

Eesults 57

CHAPTEE II.

ORIGIN, FOUNDERS, AND PROGRESS IN AMERICA.

The Irish Palatines 64

Philip Embury 66

Methodism in New York 69

Barbara Heck 69

Captain Webb 70

Outspread of Methodism 75

Page

Eobert Strawbridge 77

Early Local Preachers 79

CHAPTEE HI.

EARLY EVANGELISTS.

Eobert Williams 83

John King 87

Boardman and Pilmoor 89

Wright and Asbury 90

Asbury's Character 91

Eankin and Shadford 95

Other Preachers 96

The Eevolutionary War 96

CHAPTEE IV.

RAPID PROGRESS.

Methodism in the West 102

Episcopal Organization 102

Methodism in New England. . 103

In Canada 103

Its Native Ministry 104

Subsequent Progress 105

Eemarkable Statistics 106

Comparative Strength in different parts of the Country 107

CHAPTEE V.

ITS PRACTICAL SYSTEM.

"The United Society" 109

The " Class Meeting " 109

"General Eules" 109

Church Officers 110

Circuits, Districts, Conferences 111

CONTENTS.

Page

Vigor of its System 113

Its Origin and Development. . 114 Lay Representation . * . 120

CHAPTER VI.

ITS DOCTRINAL SYSTEM.

Articles of Religion 125

Arminianism 127

Page

Witness of the Spirit 128

Christian Perfection 130

Catholicity of Methodism 134

Examples of Wesley's Liberality 139

Scientific Theology 140

Watson and Warren 140

Relative Position of Methodist Theology 140

PAST II.

"WHAT HAS METHODISM ACHIEVED ENTITLING IT TO THE PROPOSED COMMEMORATION?

ITS SUNDAY-SCHOOL ENTERPRISE.

Early Methodism and Sunday- Schools 171

Wesley adopts the Institution. 172 Asbury introduces it into

America 173

History of the Methodist Sunday-School Union 175

Its great Success 176

Results— Statistics 176

Chapter V. Its Missionary Labors

Early Methodism and Missions 180

Bishop Coke and Missions 181

Great Success 184

History of Methodist Missionary Society 187

Foreign Missions 191

German Methodism „ . . 196

Present Condition of Methodist

Missions 198

Results — Statistics .198

Chapter VI. Its Loyalty And Patriotic Serv- Ices

Wesley and the Revolution. . . 201

His change of Opinion 201

His Letter to British Cabinet

Ministers . , 201

Methodist E. Church first recognizes the New Government 203 Important change of its Article 203 Methodism asserts the National

Sovereignty 203

Address to Washington 205

His Reply 207

The Antislavery Controversy. . 208

CONTENTS.

Page

New York East Conference 209

Services in the War 209

President Lincoln's Testimony 210

Chapter VII. Summary View

Great Numerical Growth 213

Statistics of the M. E. Church. 213

Membership and Ministry 213

Educational Institutions 213

Page

Church Property 218

Book Concern 214

Sunday-School Union 214

Missions 214

Methodist Episcopal Church

South 214

Aggregate 215

Other Methodist Bodies 215

General Aggregate 216

Bishop Janes on the Actual

State of Methodism 217

PAST III.

ITS CAPABILITIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES FOR THE FUTURE.

Its Wealth 225

Demands upon it 225

Prospective Population of the

Country 226

Area of the Bepublic 229

Educational Eesponsibilities . . 230 Proportion of Juvenile Population 230

Ministerial Education 232

Church Architecture 233

Beligious Art 234

Eeunion of Methodist Bodies. 236

Church Care of its Children. . 238

Significant Statistics 238

Pastoral Care of Children 239

Spiritual Mission of Methodism 241

The Centenary Memorial 242

CENTENARY

OF

AMERICAN METHODISM.

Introduction

The American Methodists propose to celebrate, in the year 1866, the completion of the first great cycle of their history, its centenary jubilee. From Maine to California, from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, they will assemble in their churches for religious ceremonies and pecuniary offerings. What entitles Methodism to this solemn, this national commemoration ?

In answering this question it is proposed to show :

First, "What is Methodism.

Second, "What it has achieved that commends it to such general and grateful recognition.

Third, What are its capabilities for the future, and the consequent responsibilities of its people.

It is not designed to discuss these propositions in

INTRODUCTION.

the way of dissertation, but, as far as possible, in a historical form such as shall present the general scope of Methodism, as a historical, a doctrinal, and a practical system; so that the inquirer, who may have heretofore given it no studious attention, shall be able to appreciate its real character and claims.

PART I.

WHAT IS METHODISM ?

CHAPTEE I.

ITS ORIGIN, FOUNDERS, AND EARLY PROGRESS IN ENGLAND.

Methodism has been described as "a revival Church in its spirit, a missionary Church in its organization;" a resuscitation of the spiritual life and practical aims of primitive Christianity. This is its genuine standpoint, the only one from which its history and its theological and practical systems can be interpreted. It is implied not only in the characteristic features of its progress, doctrines, and economy, but in the individual history of its founders and other principal agents.

John "Wesley, its chief apostle and legislator, was born June 14, 1703, in the Ep worth Kectory, Lincolnshire, England. Charles "Wesley, one of its ablest preachers, and the author of its Psalmody, now its virtual liturgy throughout the world, was born there, December 18, 1708. Susanna Wesley, their mother, who has been called " the real foundress of Methodism,' 5 was distinguished by her rare intellect, her piety, and her domestic management. Her system of household education has been the wonder, if not the admiration, of most historical writers on Methodism. It was her custom to retire with each of her children once a week, for religious conversation and prayer. She has recorded that, on these occasions of devout self-recollection, she felt a peculiar solicitude for her most celebrated child. "When not yet seven years old he had providentially been saved from a terrible death. The rectory was burned down at night; all its inmates, except John, had escaped, but he was sleeping in a room which the flames rendered inaccessible. The rector and his family knelt on the ground, in the light of their burning home, and committed the soul of the child to God, when suddenly he appeared at the window of his chamber. A peasant, mounting on the shoulders of another, rescued him at the instant that the roof fell in ; two minutes of delay would have deprived the history of the world of the name and achievements of its most remarkable modern religious character. "I do intend," said his grateful mother, in one of the recorded meditations of her weekly retirement and prayer with him, "I do intend to be more particularly careful of the soul of this child that thou hast so mercifully provided for, than ever I have been, that I may do my endeavor to

EARLY PROGRESS IN ENGLAND.

instill into his mind the principles of true religion and virtue. Lord, give me grace to do it sincerely and prudently, and bless my attempt with good success."

In advanced life John "Wesley recorded the admiration with which he recalled this faithful mother; the skill with which she managed, with little assistance, and in no little poverty, the daily affairs of her family, comprising thirteen children, all of whom, that attained responsible years, became devoted Christians, and " died in the Lord ; " her household school, commenced daily with singing and prayer, and conducted solely by herself with academic regularity; her devotion as family priestess to religious duties ; her daily evening hour of retired prayer and converse with her children severally; the prudence and zeal with which she conducted in the absence of her husband a sort of Sunday public worship, in the rectory, for the villagers as well as her family.

It was inevitable that such a training should have impressed, for life, the minds of such men as the two Wesleys. They bore from the rectory tendencies which the world could never reverse. John left the home for the Charterhouse School, London, when eleven years old, and entered Oxford University in his seventeenth year. Charles went to the Westminster school when about eight years of age, and in due time joined his brother at Oxford. Their vigilant mother maintained a frequent correspondence with them. " ]STow," she wrote, " in good earnest, resolve to make religion the business of your life ; for, after all, that is the one thing that, strictly speaking, is necessary. All things besides are comparatively little to the purposes of life. I heartily wish you would now enter upon a strict examination of yourself, that you may know whether you have a reasonable hope of salvation by Jesus Christ. If you have, the satisfaction of knowing it will abundantly reward your pains; if you have not, you will find a more reasonable occasion for tears than can be met with in any tragedy." And now the influence of the saintly example and instructions of this extraordinary woman was made manifest, not only in the uprightness of the general moral conduct of her sons, and their success in study and collegiate honors, but in their extraordinary spirit of religious inquiry and devotion. John was the first to reveal this effect; but his conversations with his brother soon awoke a responsive sympathy in the heart of the latter. They perceived that the religious life is the supreme interest of man, that all else should be subordinated to this, and that without it human life must be a failure, the saddest of problems, nay, a mixed farce and tragedy. They perceived further, not in uncharitableness, but deep self-abasement, that the habitual

EARLY PROGRESS IN ENGLAND.

Christian life of their country, as well as of themselves, was generally, if not universally, incompatible with the standard of spiritual life prescribed by Christianity and exemplified by the original Church, In fine, the very genius of Methodism, as not an ecclesiastical, nor a theological, but a vital and practical system, was foretokened in the moral history of these young and earnest inquirers.

John gave himself to the best religious reading he could command. Three authors became now his habitual companions, next to his Greek Testament. Bishop Taylor's " Holy Living and Dying," Kempis's " Imitation," and Law's " Serious Call " and " Christian Perfection," agreed with those convictions of the thoroughness and sanctity of the Christian life, which had struck into his inmost consciousness ; but these three most remarkable writers, perhaps, since the apostolic age, on Spiritual Christianity, failed in an essential point. They delineated accurately a genuine spiritual life, but did not show the requisite means of its attainment. " They preserve a complete silence," says a good authority, "respecting the faith by which the conscience is purged from dead works, and the very thoughts of the heart are made pure, and therefore leave the reader in the hopeless attempt to practice Christian holiness while he is under the power of sin. He is required to love God with all his heart, but he receives no information concerning the manner in which he is to be saved from the condemnation to which he is liable on account of his past sins, and the carnal mind which is enmity against God." In fine, the great Pauline doctrine of " Justification by Faith," which was the most potential truth of primitive Christianity, and by which Luther restored apostolic life to the Church, was generally inert, if not practically ignored, in the English Church of the day. The "Wesleys were now, and for some years, feeling after it as in the dark ; they were to find it at last, find it by the help of Luther, its great restorer, and with it begin the " Religious movement of the eighteenth century, called Methodism."

The history of their inner life, at this time, is an exceedingly interesting study, and is important as a preliminary and an exponent of their subsequent public life as founders of Methodism. Bishop Taylor's teachings respecting purity of motive, deeply impressed the mind of John "Wesley. " Instantly," he says, " I resolved to dedicate all my life to God, all my thoughts and words and actions, being thoroughly convinced that there is no medium ; that not only a part but the whole must be a sacrifice to God or to myself, that is, in effect, to the devil." This became the characteristic maxim of his whole subsequent life. He could not accept some of Taylor's sentiments, and his dissent led him more definitively to doctrines which were to be vital in the theology of Methodism. The bishop, like most religious teachers of his day, denied that the Christian could usually be sure of his acceptance with God. Wesley replied : "If we dwell in Christ and Christ in us, which he will not do unless we are regenerate, certainly we must be sensible of it. If we can never have any certainty of our being in a state of salvation, good reason it is that every moment should be spent, not in joy, but in fear and trembling; and then, undoubtedly, in this life we are of all men most miserable. God deliver us from such a fearful expectation ! Humility is, undoubtedly, necessary to salvation ; and if all these things are essential to humility, who can be humble, who can be saved ? That we can never be so certain of the pardon of our sins as to be assured they will never rise up against us, I firmly believe. "We know that they will infallibly do so, if we apostatize; and I am not satisfied what evidence there can be of our final perseverance, till we have finished our course. But I am persuaded we may know if we are now in a state of salvation, since that is expressly promised in the Holy Scriptures to our sincere endeavors, and we are surely able to judge of our own sincerity." Here was not only his later doctrine of the " Witness of the Spirit," but a clear dissent from the Calvinistic tenet of

* final perseverance." His proclivitv to Arminianism became quite decided about this time. "As 1 understand faith," he wrote, " to be an assent to any truth upon rational grounds, I do not think it possible, without perjury, to swear I believe anything unless I have reasonable grounds for my persuasion. Now that which contradicts reason cannot be said to stand upon reasonable grounds ; and such, undoubtedly, is every proposition which is incompatible with the divine justice or mercy. "What, then, shall I say of predestination ? If it was inevitably decreed from eternity that a determinate part of mankind should be saved, and none besides, then a vast majority of the world were only born to eternal death, without so much as a possibility of avoiding it. How is this consistent with either the divine justice or mercy? Is it merciful to ordain a creature to everlasting misery ? Is it just to punish a man for crimes which he could not but commit % That God should be the author of sin and injustice, which must, I think, be the consequence of maintaining this opinion, is a contradiction to the clearest ideas we have of the divine nature and perfections." His mother confirmed him in these views, and expressed her abhorrence of the Calvinistic theology. God's prescience, she argued, is no more the effective cause of the loss of the wicked than our foreknowledge of the rising of to-morrow's sun is the cause of its rising. She prudently advised, however, abstinence from these speculations as "studies which, tended more to confound than to inform the understanding."

He visited his father's parish at Epworth, and in its rural retirement became more than ever infected with the mysticism of Kempis and Law. He was inclined to the recluse life of the Catholic saints ; it was, he says, " the decided temper of my soul." He proposed to himself a secluded school in the Yorkshire Dales, but his vigilant mother checked him, predicting that God would open for him a more important career in the world. He made a journey of some miles to converse with " a serious man," of whom he had heard. " Sir," said this man, as the frank and anxious inquirer stood before him, "you wish to serve God and go to heaven, but remember you cannot serve him alone ; you must, therefore, find companions, or make them ; the Bible knows nothing of solitary religion." He returned to Oxford and found them ; for his brother, led by his influence, had gathered about him a group of devoted students, and the " Holy Club " was already organized. Its members were soon derisively called "Methodists," for the systematic regularity of their lives, and especially of their religious observances. John immediately became their leader by the tacit recognition of his superior capacity and character. They studied together the Greek Scriptures, the classics, and theology ; they fasted twice a week, and received the Lord's supper every Sunday. Wesley drew up for them a severe system of self-examination, worthy of a monastic order. They devoted certain hours to the instruction of poor children, the visitation of the sick and prisoners. Wesley himself now began that course of practical charity to the poor which continued to be one of the distinctions of his remarkable life. In a printed sermon he says : " When I was at Oxford, in a cold winter's day, a young maid (one of those we kept at school) called upon me. I said, 6 Tou seem half starved. Have you nothing to cover you but this thin linen gown ? ' She said, ' Sir, this is all I have.' I put my hand in my pocket, but found I had scarce any money left, having paid away what I had. It immediately struck me, 'Will thy Master say, Well done, good and faithful steward f Thou hast adorned thy walls with the money which might have screened this poor creature from the cold ! O justice ! O mercy ! Are not these pictures the blood of this poor maid? See thy expensive apparel in the same light ; thy gown, hat, headdress ! Everything about thee which cost more than Christian duty required thee to lay out is the blood of the poor ! O be wise for the time to come ! Be more merciful ! more faithful to God and man ! more abundantly adorned with good works ! ' "

When his income from his college fellowship was but £30 a year he gave away £2 ; when it was £60 he still confined his expenses to £28, and gave away £32 ; when it reached £120 he kept himself to his old allowance, and gave away £92. Besides giving himself wholly to the public good, and laboring as devotedly as any other man of modern times for the moral welfare of the poor, he gave away, it is computed, a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, the proceeds of his publications, etc. The last insertion in his private journal, written with a trembling hand, reads thus : " For upward of eighty-six years I have kept my accounts exactly. I will not attempt it any longer, being satisfied with the continual conviction that I save all I can and give all I can ; that is, all I have."

"With such rigor did these earnest young men seek self-purification and peace of soul. They were treated with contempt by their fellow-collegians, especially as they marched together to their weekly sacrament ; but their number increased, and the germ of the future and world-wide growth of Methodism was already planted within the learned pale of Oxford.

In 1735 a young man joined them, whose fame, as an apostle, was to fill the English realm in both hemispheres. He was born in Gloucester, in 1714, and spent his early life in poverty, ignorance, and vice. When about fifteen years old he became a " common drawer " in an inn at Bristol, (which, was kept by his mother,) wearing, as he says, his " blue apron and his snuffers," and " washing and cleaning rooms." " If I trace myself," he adds, "from my cradle to my manhood, I can see nothing in me but a fitness to be damned; and if the Almighty had not prevented me by his grace, I had now either been sitting in darkness, and in the shadow of death, or condemned, as the due reward of my crimes, to be forever lifting up my eyes in torments." Yet he was a youth of the 1 largest soul and the most susceptible moral sensibili ties. Religious books fell into his hands ; he sought improvement both of heart and head ; he made his way to Oxford, where he was now struggling for his education in the humble condition of a servitor, or "poor student." Kempis and Alleine's "Alarm" here deepened his religious solicitude, and, groping in the thick spiritual darkness which surrounded him amid so much intellectual light, he fell into pitiable anguish and not a few superstitious extravagances. His mental struggles seemed at times to impair his faculties ; his memory failed ; he describes himself as feeling like a person bound in iron armor ; he chose the poorest food that he could subsist on, and the meanest raiment, " dirty shoes, patched garments, and coarse gloves," for the mortification of his baffled soul. He almost daily suffered some insult from his fellow-students. When h© knelt in prayer he felt a .

EARLY PROGRESS IN ENGLAND.

mysterious and insupportable " pressure on soul and body," and often spent hours in these intercessory agonies while the sweat dripped down his person. " God only knows," he says, " how many nights F have lain upon my bed groaning under what I felt. Whole days and weeks have I spent in lying prostrate on the ground, in silent or vocal prayer." For forty days, during Lent, he tasted nothing but coarse bread and sage tea, except on Saturdays and Sundays. He resorted to solitary places seeking rest and finding none ; he spent the hours of night praying under the trees, and trembling with cold and mental anguish, till the bell of the college called him to his chamber, where the remaining hours, till dawn, were passed in tears and prayers. Of course his health failed under these errors ; a long sickness disabled him to pursue them, and in his helpless prostration he was led to apprehend clearly the doctrine of justification by faith. " God," he says, " was pleased at length to remove the heavy load, to enable me to lay hold on the cross by a living faith, and by giving me the spirit of adoption to seal me, as I humbly hope, even to the day of everlasting redemption. O ! with what joy, joy unspeakable, even joy that was full of glory, was my soul filled, when the weight of sin went off, and an abiding sense of the pardoning love of God, and a full assurance of faith, broke in upon my disconsolate soul ? Surely it was the day of my espousals, a day to be had in everlasting remembrance. At first my joys were like a spring tide, and, as it were, overflowed the banks; go where I would I could not avoid the singing of psalms almost aloud ; afterward they became more settled, and blessed be God, saving a few casual intervals, have abode and increased in my soul ever since."

Such was George Whitefield's initiation into the " Holy Club," the Methodistic band at Oxford. He was to pioneer their public career in England and all along the British colonies of North America, the most eloquent, the most flaming preacher that the Christian Church has known since its apostolic age ; a man whose native genius for oratory, heightened by saintly piety, was to shake with an unprecedented sensation, and awaken, as in a moral resurrection, nearly the whole British empire ; to extort unwonted admiration, and compliments from Hume, Bolingbroke, Garrick, "Walpole, and Chesterfield ; to attract in his private ministrations at the mansion of the Countess of Huntington, the nobility of the Court, while it swept like a hurricane over throngs, ten, twenty, forty thousand strong, on the hillsides, and in the market-places of England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and North America, startling them to tears, sobs, and irrepressible cries of anguish and penitence. He seems indeed the providential man for the approaching religious crisis. His moral struggles, even the superstitious rigors which came so near destroying him, prepared him to meet and counsel similar cases, in the general religious agitation which was about to set in, to appreciate and assert the true Christian life as "the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free." "With a heart incandescent with divine fire, palpitating with those generous sympathies that render all the world kin and give to the orator irresistible control of the popular mind, he combined an imagination as sublime as that of the Hebraic prophets, and the most extraordinary oratorical aptitudes of voice and gesture. Garrick said he could make his hearers weep or shout with exultation, merely by his varied pronunciation of the word Mesopotamia ; Hume said he would go twenty miles to hear him ; Chesterfield opened for him his own chapel at Bretby Hall, and theatrical actors resorted to his preaching to study the secret of his unrivaled power. A peasant hearer best characterized perhaps that indescribable power when he declared that Whitefield " preached like a lion."

The Wesleys had a longer preparatory moral struggle. Failing to find rest to their souls in their religious observances and painful self-discipline at Oxford, they resolved to seek it in entire self-sacrifice as missionaries in the ends of the earth. They went in 1735 to Georgia, to preach to the Indians and the colonists of Oglethorpe. On their passage they found that their faith could not sustain them in the perils of storms ; though their Moravian fellow-passengers — humbla peasants and artisans — sang hymns of hope and joy in the expectation of sudden death. John Wesley conversed with them, and saw clearly that he had not yet attained similar piety. On reaching Georgia he was hospitably received by its little Moravian community ; Spangenberg, one of their pastors, put to him a searching question : " Does the Spirit of God bear witness with your spirit that you are a child of God V\ ■ Wesley was arrested by the inquiry and knew not how to answer it. " Do you know Jesus Christ ?" continued Spangenberg. " I know he is the Saviour of the world," responded Wesley. " True," replied Spangenberg, " but do you know that he has saved you ?" " I hope he has died to save me," rejoined Wesley. Spangenberg only added, " Do you know yourself?" " I do," answered Wesley, " but I fear," he writes, " they were mere words." He lodged with these devout men, and was much impressed with the singular simplicity and purity of their daily life. He witnessed with admiration their ecclesiastical counsels, the election and ordination of a bishop, and writes that as he sat in their little but dignified synod, he forgot the seventeen centuries which had passed since the days of the apostles, and seemed to be in one of those

EARLY PROGRESS IN ENGLAND.

assemblies where form and state were unknown, but where Paul the tentmaker, and Peter the fisherman, presided with the demonstration of the spirit and of power.

Yet even here, amid the pure light of the primitive faith, which these good men had kindled in the wilderness, " he comprehended it not," but sought peace to his troubled soul in ascetic self-denial and the "merit of works." He read daily prayers at five o'clock in the morning, preached and administered the communion at eleven, and read the evening service at three. He refused all food but bread and water, slept on the ground, taught the children in a school, and went barefooted that he might encourage his poor scholars. He was severe to others as well as to himself ; his rigors broke down the patience of the people, and he at last retreated from the field discomfited and in despair. His brother had failed in a similar manner, and had returned to England. John followed him about fifteen months later. As he came in sight of Land's End, England, he wrote in his journal : " I went to America to convert the Indians, but O ! who shall convert me? "Who, what is he that will deliver me from this evil heart of unbelief? I have a fair summer religion ; I can talk well, nay, and believe myself, while no danger is near ; but let death look me in the face and my spirit is troubled, nor can I say, to die is gain. I think verily, if the Gos pel be true, I am safe ; for I not only have given and do give all my goods to feed the poor — I not only give my body to be burned, drowned, or whatever else God shall appoint for me, but I follow after charity — though not as I ought, yet as I can — -if haply I may attain it. I now believe the Gospel true. I show my faith by my works, by staking my all upon it. I would do so again and again a thousand times, if the choice were still to make. "Whoever sees me, sees I would be a Christian. Therefore are my ways not like other men's ways ; therefore I have been, I am, I am content to be, a by-word, a proverb of reproach. But in a storm I think, "What if the Gospel be not true ? Then thou art of all men most foolish. For what hast thou given thy goods, thy ease, thy friends, thy reputation, thy country, thy life ? For what art thou w r andering over the face of the earth ? a dream ? a cunningly-devised fable ? O ! who will deliver me from this fear of death? "What shall I do? Where shall I fly from it? Should I fight against it by thinking, or by not thinking of it ? A wise man advised me some time since, 6 Be still, and go on.' Perhaps this is the best ; to look upon it as my cross ; when it comes to let it humble me, and quicken all my good resolutions, especially that of praying without ceasing ; and at other times to take no thought about it, but quietly to go on in the work of the Lord." On the 1st of February, 1738, he was