The doctrines and polity of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South

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THE

DOCTRINES AND POLITY

OF THK

METHODIST EPISCOPAL
CHURCH, SOUTH.

PART FIRST

BY REV. WILBUR F.'TILLETT, D.D.,
Dean of the Theological Faculty of Vanderbilt University.

PART SECOND

BY REV. JAMES ATKINS. D.D.,

Sun,day School Editor.

Nashville, Tenn.; Dallas, Tex.:
PuBLisBiNQ House of the M. E. Chcbch, Sooth.
Bmith & Lauar, Aoentb.
1906.

CoPTRtOHTKO BY

BioHAM & Smith, Agkktk
1903.

CONTENTS,

PART FIRST.

The Doctrines of the Methodist
Episcopal Chubch, South.

Paqe

Preface 2

I. Introduction: The Distinguishing
Doctrines and Features of Meth-
odist Theology 3

II. The Holy Scriptures 12

III. The Doctrine of God 23

IV. The Bible Doctrine of Man 36

V, Christ the Redeemer 46

VI. The Doctrines Pertaining to Per-
sonal Salvation 57

VII. The Doctrine of the Future Life 70

VIII. The Doctrine of the Church 83

PART SECOND.

The Polity of the Methodist
Episcopal Chubch, South.

Preface 92

I. The General Rules. .,.,,., 93

(iii)

IV COWTENTS.

Paok

II. The Conferences of Methodism 118

General Boards 125

III. The Itinerancy 128

IV. Our Ministry 138

V. Our Connectionalism 144

VI. Fields of Work 156

Missions 156

Woman's Home Mission Society 162

The Sunday School 165

The Board of Church Extension 168

The Epworth League 169

The Board of Education 171

Statistics of the Methodist Episcopal

Church, South 172

PART FIRST.

THE DOCTRINES

OF THE

METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH,
SOUTH.

By Rev. Wilbur F. Tillett, D.D.,

Dean of the Theological Faculty of Vanderbilt

University.

PREFATORY NOTE.

To write a brief treatise that shall cover the
entire range of Christian doctrine, and yet be
neither a bare and dry skeleton, on the one hand,
nor a dull, superficial statement of mere common-
places, on the other, is the difficult task that has
been assigned to the author in this little volume.
In trying thus to combine brevity, clearness, and
completeness the author has kept constantly in
mind the class of readers for whom the volume
is intended — viz., Sunday school teachers, can-
didates for the ministry, and Bible students gen-
erally, who desire to know what are the cardi-
nal doctrines of the Bible as it is interpreted by
the great body of evangelical Christian believers.

That the doctrines of the Bible, rightly in-
terpreted, and the doctrines of Methodism,
rightly stated, are one and the same, this writer
steadfastly believes, and in that faith this trea-
tise has been written, and is now sent forth in
the humble hope that it may give to those who
read ^it a greater faith in their faith, and thus
enable them the better to give to others a reason
for the hope and the faith that is in them.

WlLBTTK F. TiLLBTT.

Introduction.

THE DISTINGUISEINO DOCTRINES AND FEATURES
OF METHODIST THEOLOGY.

Methodism represents a distinct system of
Christian doctrine, and also a type of Church
polity. Methodists are not one the world
over in their ecclesiastical polity: some are
episcopal, some presbyterial, and some congre-
gational. But all Methodists are practically
a unit the world over in the type of theology
which they hold. Most of the cardinal doc-
trines of Methodism are held in common with
all evangelical Christian Churches. Such,
for example, are the inspiration and divine
authority of the Holy Scriptures, the Triuni-
ty of the Godhead, the divinity of Christ, the
fall of man and the universal sinfulness of the
race, justification by faith, the necessity of
regeneration, the future and eternal existence
of all men after death, and many other simi-
lar doctrines of the highest significance.

But there are certain other doctrines which,
though not held exclusively by Methodists,
have at least been more strongly emphasized

(3)

4 THB DOCTBINIIS OF METHODISM.

in the faith and preaching of Methodism than
in any other branch of the Christian Church,
Among these may be mentioned the follow-
ing: the moral free agency and accountability
of man, the unlimited atonement of Christ,
the witness of the Spirit testifying to the re-
generate man of his acceptance with God, the
possibility of apostasy, and the attainability
of entire holiness in this life.

Methodism has been the instrument in the
hands of God of saving during the century
and a half of its existence not less perhaps
than fifteen to twenty millions of immortal
souls. This result, which is without a prece-
dent in the history of the Christian Church,
is to be attributed in no small degree to the
intensely earnest and practical character of
its theology. " It was not new doctrine but
new life that the Methodists sought for them-
selves and for others," says Bishop McTyeire
in the opening sentence of his "History of
Methodism." But the history of the Chris-
tian Church has established the fact that
progress in the spiritual life and maintenance
of sound doctrine are vitally related to each
other.

The doctrinal system of Methodism is some-
times designated as "Arminian theology."

INTRODUCTION. 5

This designation connects it with the name of
James Arminius (1560-1609), a noted theolo-
gian of Holland. As Martin Luther and his
fellow-reformers, although reared in the
Church of Rome, were led by their enlight-
ened convictions to protest against what they
considered the corrupt practices and false
teachings of this Church, and were for that
reason called Protestants, so James Arminius
and his associates, although first instructed in
the strict teachings of high Calvinism, felt com-
pelled to utter a remonstrance against certain
extreme Calvinistic doctrines concerning pre-
destination, election, reprobation, etc., and
were for that reason called Remonstrants.
The celebrated "five points" of Calvinism,
setting forth the peculiar and distinctive doc-
trines of that system of theology, were offset
by the no less distinctive "five points" of
Arminianism, viz.: ( 1 ) Conditional election —
that is, God elected to salvation those who, he
foresaw, would freely repent of their sins and
believe in Christ, and to reprobation those
whose willful impenitence and unbelief .he
foresaw. (2) Jesus Christ died alike for all
men, but only those who repent and believe
will secure the- saving benefits of his atoning
death. (3) The ability of fallen man to re-

6 THE DOCTEINBS OF METHODISM.

pent and believe is of grace and not of nature,
and spiritual renewal or regeneration is en-
tirely of the Spirit's operation. (4) Never-
theless divine grace and the influence of the
Spirit are not, as Calvinism affirms, irresistible;
but may be resisted by man, who is a moral
free agent, and who, though he may be con-
victed of sin against his will, is never con-
verted against his will. (5) The possibility
of a truly regenerated man falling away from
his saved estate and being finally lost was first
left an open question, but was soon decided,
as the logic of the system required that it should
be, in the affirmative.

The doctrinal system of Methodism is also
designated as "Wesleyan theology." This
designation associates it with the names of
John and Charles Wesley. John Wesley
(1703-1791) was perhaps the greatest reform-
er, preacher, and evangelist that has ever ap-
peared in England. Methodism is but one of
the many results that have come from his life
and labors. John Wesley's theology was in-
tensely evangelical and practical, and, like
that of the apostle Paul, was to a large extent
colored by his own religious experience. He
accepted the system formulated by James Ar-
minius and the Remonstrants of Holland, in

IXTBODUCTION.

all the points wherein that system differed
from Calvinism. But he did something more
for it than accept it. Arminian theology, as
it was formulated by the Remonstrants, was,
as an intellectual system of doctrine, logical,
self-consistent, and true; but it was cold; it
was lacking in the warmth and intensity of
spiritual life; it needed to be quickened by
the faith and the fire of an evangelical experi-
ence. This is exactly what John Wesley did
with it and for it. He carried it, as it were,
to the altar, and there it was baptized with
the Holy Ghost; and, surcharged with evan-
gelical life and converting power, it was sent
forth upon its world-wide mission of evangel-
ization. In Methodism we find the doctrines
of Arminius put into practice as living truths,
made matters of personal religious experience,
and utilized as mighty spiritual forces for
saving souls and spreading the kingdom of
Christ. In Wesleyan theology the intensive
power of the gospel to save each individual
from all sin is as much emphasized as is its ex-
tensive power to save all sinners, whoever
they may be and whenever and wherever
they may live.

In 1784 John Wesley reduced the thirty-
nine Articles of the Church of England to

» THE I>OCTKINES OF METHODISM.

twenty-five in number, and abridged and otli-
erwise altered some of those which he retained.
These he sent to America by Thomas Coke,
whom he had ordained bishop, and they were
accepted as the general creed of Episcopal
Methodism in America. They have ever
since occupied a foremost place among our
doctrinal standards.

John Wesley's sermons also have always
been numbered among the leading ' ' doctrinal
standards" of Methodism. They may be
lacking here and there in the accuracy and
uniform self-consistency of doctrinal state-
ment that we have a right to expect in works
of dogmatic theology, but what they lack in
these respects they more than gain in the
spiritual power that belongs to them as
sermons glowing with a living Christian ex-
perience and setting forth the great truths
that pertain to man's salvation. Richard
Watson's "Theological Institutes" may not
be altogether up to date, but they have in
them a theology that is well adapted to the
world's conversion and upbuilding in the spir-
itual life. Adam Clarke, the first great repre-
sentative commentator of Methodism, showed
by his able and scholarly expositions of the
Holy Scriptures how thoroughly faithful to

INTRODUCTION.

the Bible were the doctrinal teachings of
Methodism.

Charles Wesley, the poet-preacher and the-
ologian, rendered a service to the theology of
Methodism scarcely less important and far-
reaching than that of his brother John. He
gave happy expression in verse to all the
great doctrines of Christianity, and he was
especially happy in the hymns which he wrote
embodying the more distinctive doctrines of
his faith. These hymns became at once im-
mensely popular with the people, and gave
wings, as it were, to the doctrines they em-
bodied. A sermon put into a song doubles
its power for good. Nor did these doctrinal
hymns of Charles Wesley simply meet a local
and temporary need; they have an abiding
value, and have carried, in the most effective
manner possible, the doctrines they contain
into the hymnals of all Christian Churches
the world over. While John Wesley's hymns
are not numerous, and are mostly translations
from other languages, they are in no way in-
ferior to those of Charles Wesley either in
poetic merit or doctrinal value. It is in por-
traying those doctrines which are matters of
religious experience that the Wesleyan hymns
are richest both in variety and in intensity of

10 THJ£ DOCTBINES OF METHODISM.

utterance. The great reformation in Germa-
ny in the sixteenth centuiy owed much to the
fact that Luther was a poet as well as a
preacher, and embodied all his leading doc-
trines in simple and popular hymns that were
adapted to the common people as well as in
sermons and theses that were adapted to the
learned. But the Wesleyan reformation owed
even more to its hymns. " Let me write the
songs of a people," said one, "and I care not
who may write their laws; I will govern
them." " Let me write the hymns of a
Church," said another, "and I care not who
may write her creeds and ponderous volumes
of theology; I will determine the faith of her
membership." The Methodist hymn book
has always been reckoned among the doctri-
nal standards of the Church. It has ever
been one of the most effective of the agencies
employed for . indoctrinating the people in
that type of evangelical Christian faith which
is known the world over as Methodist theology.
But the designation of Methodist theology
as "Ai-minian " and "Wesleyan " must not be
misunderstood. Methodist theology is first
of all and above all biblical. Every evangel-
ical Church recognizes the Bible as the source
and foundation of its theology. It is after

INTBODUCTION. 11

all simply a question of the proper interpreta-
tion of the Bible. Calvinism is a logical and
self-consistent system of doctrine which finds
its starting point and its determining princi-
ple in the eternal decrees of Jehovah, and in-
terprets the entire revelation contained in
the Bible in accordance with that doctrine.
Methodism also has a logical and self -consist-
ent system of doctrine which in like manner
is based upon the Bible, but it finds its start-
ing point and determining principle in two
doctrines that mutually necessitate and sup-
port each other — viz'. , the moral free agency
of man and the unlimited atonement of Christ;
and we may say that every other doctrine of
Methodist theology is a logical outcome of
these two doctrines. Methodism, therefore,
claims that its theology is the theology of the
New Testament, the theology of Christ and of
Paul. It is that simple and primitive type of
theology which began to be preached in its
completed form on the day of Pentecost, and
has never since been without its true witness-
es in any age of the Church's history. It has
needed, however, to be restated and reformu-
lated ever and anon. Such was the service
rendered by James Arminius and John Wes-
ley, and by others before and since their day.

n.

The HoiiY Scriptures.

What doctrine does Methodism hold con-
cerning the Holy Scriptures? This is best
answered by first asking another question:
What does the Bible teach concerning itself?
The Bible teaches, we answer, that "All Scrip-
ture is given by inspiration of God, and is
profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for cor-
rection, for instruction in righteousness: that
the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly
furnished unto all good works." It teaches
that "prophecy came not in old time by the
will of man: but holy men of God spake as
they were moved by the Holy Ghost; " and that
"God, who at sundry times and in divers
manners spake in time past unto the fathers
by the prophets, hath in these last days spo-
ken unto us by his Son." Moses is represent-
ed as having received directly from God the
Ten Commandments, which are with us to
this day, and whose high moral character
well befits their claim of a divine origin.
"The word of the Lord came unto me, say-
ing," is the preface with which the proph-
ets begin their messages. These remarkable
(12)

THE HOLY SCKIPTURES. 13

claims demand of us that we make serious in-
quiry as to their import. If this Book is
what it claims to be, no man can afford to ig-
nore oi: neglect its teachings. ' ' These [things]
are written," says St. John, in concluding the
fom-th Gospel, and it is in a sense equally
true of all Scripture, "that ye might believe
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and
that believing ye might have life through his
name."

These quotations cover the three main
questions which we need to ask concerning
the Bible, and suggest the proper answers to
them: (1) Where did the Bible come from?
We answer that it is divine in its origin, in
that its cardinal and distinguishing doctrines
were revealed by God to man. (2) How did
God reveal these facts and doctrines? We
answer: Through certain chosen men whom
the Holy Spirit inspired as trustworthy or-
gans for the communication of the divine
will. (3) What purpose are these inspired
Scriptures designed to fill in the divine econ-
omy as it concerns man? We answer: They
are a divinely provided guide for man in all
matters of a moral and spiritual nature, espe-
cially such as pertain to his faith and conduct
here and his life in the world to come. Thus

14 THB DOCTRINES OF METHODISM.

we have the three theological terms, revela-
tion^ iTisjpiration^ and the canon^ answering
the three questions as to the whence^ the how^
and the what of the Holy Scriptures.

God reveals something of himself and of
his will through nature and providence, but
this general revelation has always proved in-
adequate to meet man's spiritual needs, being
insufficient to impart a true and satisfactory
knowledge of God, of the way of salvation,
and of the immortality and destiny of the
soul. That religious knowledge which fallen
man needed but could not secure from nature,
God has supplied in a supernatural manner by
revelation. ' It is these divine or supernaturally
revealed facts and truths which, as collected
together within the Bible, constitute it a di-
vine Book. Nevertheless, the Bible is not
wholly divine; it is rather divine-human, for
much that is contained in it is human in its ori-
gin and did not need to be divinely revealed.
This unrevealed portion of the Bible is, in fact,
the larger portion. It is, however, a faithful
and trustworthy record, quite as much as is
that portion which records the divine revela-
tions. The human elements furnish the lit-
erary and historical framework for holding
the divinely revealed truths. The divine rev-

THE HOLY SCBlPTirBBS. 15

elations contained in the Bible are of trans-
cendent importance, and so far give character
to the volume as a whole that it is common,
and not inappropriate, to designate it as the
Book of Revelation.

What is the evidence that the Bible contains
supernatural revelations ? The divine authori-
ty of the Bible depends upon the truth of the
claim that it contains supernatural revelations;
and if this be true, the claim ought to be sup-
ported by supernatural evidence. And it is.
The prophets who claimed to have received
divine revelations proved the truth of their
assertions by working miracles. When Moses,
for example, announced to the childi'en of Is-
rael in Egypt that he had received a revela-
tion and a command from God in the desert,
they immediately and very naturally demand-
ed proof of such a claim. The God who had
given the revelation had provided for this
reasonable demand, and empowered him to
work miracles. In some instances the vindi-
cation of the divine claim on the part of the
prophet was found in the fulfillment of pre-
dictions which he uttered concerning the fu-
ture. In yet other instances the revelations
annoimced by the prophets as coming from
God were self-evidencing — that is, were in

16 THB DOCTRIirBS OF METHODISM.

their nature so thoroughly accordant with the
moral character of God and man's religious
needs that they carried their own evidence in
them, and hence did not need to be supported
by miracles or predictions. Our reason, there-
fore, for believing that the Bible contains di-
vine revelations is found in part in the mira-
cles the prophets and the apostles wrought,
in part in the fulfillment of their predictions
of future events, in part in the intrinsic moral
excellence of the doctrines taught, and finally
in the uplifting and ennobling moral influence
the Bible has had upon the character of all
the nations and individuals that have believed
and followed its teachings.

But the passages of Scripture which were
quoted above seem to teach not only that God
has made revelations of his will from time to
time, but that it was his will that a trustwor-
thy record should be made of these revelations.
They imply that the Holy Spirit exercised an
influence upon those who wrote the books of
Holy Scripture such as cannot be claimed for
the writers of any other books. This special
influence of the Holy Spirit upon the minds
of the biblical writers was designed to prevent
them from making hurtful mistakes in the
statements they should give of the great mor-

THE HOLY SCBIPTTTBBS. 17

al and spiritual truths of religion, and in an
important sense to make their words God's
words, and their book to be God's Book.
This is what is meant by saying that the bibli-
cal writers were ' ' inspired. " St. Peter speaks
of a certain scripture " which the Holy Ghost
spake by the mouth of David." The author
of the Epistle to the Hebrews uses inter-
changeably the expressions "the Holy Ghost
testifieth " and "one [that is, the writer] in a
certain place testifieth." In other words,
what the inspired writer says God says.

To affirm that the biblical writers were in-
spired does not mean that they lost their hu-
man individuality and freedom, and were
turned into machines. The inspired proph-
ets and apostles were not shorthand report-
ers. Only in a few instances do they tell
us that they wrote down the very "words
which the Holy Ghost teacheth." In the Ten
Commandments we have the very words of
God. But as a rule the expression of the
thought, even when it was revealed, was de-
termined by the individual writer, whose
style and other mental peculiarities may be
seen everywhere in his writings. There may
be several accounts of the same events, all
differing in the words used, and yet all be
2

18 THE DOCTRINES OF METHODISM.

equally true and accurate. The great pur-
pose of inspiration is to secure truth in the
records, not uniformity and sameness of state-
ment. The four evangelists record very much
the same events, and yet they differ both in
literary style and, as a rule, in the words used;
but all are equally true and equally inspired.
The various books of the Bible are as genu-
inely human and as thoroughly marked by the
individual characteristics of their human au-
thors as if they had been v^ritten by unin-
spired men. To recognize the distinctly hu-
man element in the Bible is not to detract
from its moral value, but rather to add to its
value for man's guidance, even as the human-
ity of Christ makes him a better Saviour than
if he had possessed no human nature at all.
Truth is none the less true because uttered by
human lips. Christ is none the less divine be-
cause he had a genuinely human nature.

But the strongest of all arguments in proof
of the doctrine of biblical inspiration is the
manner in which Christ refers to the Scrip-
tures, and the absolute divine authority which
he attributes to them. To him and to the
apostles they were none other than God's own
words. Our Lord made distinct reference to
David's inspiration when he asks: " How then

THE HOLY SCRIPTUBES. 19

doth David in spirit call him Lord^ " If the
Old Testament was written by divinely in-
spired men and possessed of divine authority,
how much more the New, which was the full
and final expression of the revealed will of
God! We believe in the New Testament
chiefly because of what it tells us of Christ;
and in the Old Testament chiefly because of
what Christ tells us of it — tells us by the way
he used it and appealed to it as the very word
of God. Perhaps the best possible definition
which we can give of the Holy Scriptures is
drawn from their relation to Christ, thus:
"By the Holy Scriptures we mean, (1) those
ancient sacred books of the Jewish Church
which Christ and his inspired apostles used
and appealed to as of divine authority; and
( 2) those sacred books of the New Testament
which set forth the life and teachings of our
Lord, and which were written by or under the
direction of his apostles." Christianity be-
lieves in the Person first, and in the Book sec-
ond. It is the divine-human Person that makes
the Book, not the divine-human Book that
makes the Person. Christianity could live
without a Book, but it coukl not live — indeed,
it could not be at all — without the Person of
Christ.

20 THE DOCTRINES OP METHODISM.

The Canon of Holy Scripture, then, is noth-
ing more nor less than that collection of sacred
books which were written under the guidance
of the Holy Spirit, and the primary object of
which was to meet man's moral and religious
needs. They incidentally contain history, bi-
ography, chronology, philosophy, science, etc.,
but they were not written primarily to teach
any of these things, and the entire accuracy
of their statements concerning questions of
this kind is a matter of absolute insignificance
as compared with the great moral principles
and spiritual truths that are the distinguishing
features of the Christian religion. It is in
reference to these truths that we appeal to it
as the divine and authoritative word of God.

The word " canon " means, literally, a rule;
and the Holy Scriptures are a canon in that
they are a divine rule of faith and practice, a
standard of doctrine and ethics. The word
" canonical " is also applied to the Holy Scrip-
tm-es to distinguish them from books which
were not regarded as inspired and of divine
authority, such as the Old Testament Apoc-
rypha.

There is every reason to believe that the Old
Testament Scriptures, as we now have them,
are substantially identical with the Scriptures

THE HOLY SCJSIPTURKS. 21

which Christ and the apostles used. These
Scriptures of the old covenant are not called
old because they are antiquated and obsolete;
for, although the dispensation for which they
were immediately written has long since come
to an end, having served its purpose, these
ancient Scriptures have an abiding significance
and value. A large part of the Old Testament
is occupied exclusively with setting forth the
ritual and ceremonial law of the Jewish
Church, which is not now binding and has
never been since the day of Pentecost; but, so
far as they embody God's moral law, they are
of as much authority now as they ever were,
and are of equal authority with the New Tes-
tament. Inasmuch, however, as transitory
and now obsolete precepts are intermingled
with those which are of perpetual obligation,
the Old Testament must be read and inter-
preted with intelligent discrimination.

All inspired books are of importance, but
some are of more importance than others. That
portion of the Bible which transcends in mor-
al value all other parts of the Bible is the four
Gospels. Christianity is a historical religion.
Its Founder is a Person who lived at a definite
time and place, and the Gospels purport to
give a trustworthy record of the leading facts

22 THK DOCTBINKS OF METHODISM.

of his life, his sayings and doings. The whole
question as to whether or not there is a super-
natural religion in the world depends upon the
historical trustworthiness of these Gospel rec-
ords. If any records in the literature of the
world are entitled to credence, these surely
are. Paul probably wrote his Epistles many
years before the Gospels were written. Fo\ir
of the Pauline Epistles (Romans, First and Sec-
ond Corinthians, and Galatians) are univer-
sally admitted by well-nigh all classes of theo-
logians and critics to be genuine, and to come
from about the middle of the first century.
These Epistles establish the fact beyond a
doubt that Christ was at that time regarded
as a divine-human Being, who had died upon
the cross and had risen again from the dead.
These are the main facts of supernatural reli-
gion— viz., the incarnation of Christ and his
resurrection from the dead. If these are true,
the Gospels are fully confirmed, and the ex-
istence of a supernatural religion, with its su-
pernatural Christ, is established. This, we
saw at the outset, is the supreme and final end
for which the Scriptures ex^st: ' ' That ye might
believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of
God; and that believing ye might have life
through his name."

m.

The Doctrine of God.

"In the beginning God created the heavens
and the earth." It is impossible to conceive
a more appropriate sentence with which to
begin the inspired Book than these simple and
sublime words. No definition or explanation
of what is meant by God is given. A certain
knowledge of God is here presupposed. As
to how mankind came by the idea of God —
whether it is innate, or intuitive, or a deduc-
tion of reason, or a revelation in the first in-
stance and thereafter transmitted to all others
— on this point, concerning which there has
been so much speculation among philosophers,
nothing is said. While the first inspired writ-
er assumes a knowledge of God on the part of
his readers, neither he nor later writers con-
sider that knowledge complete and perfect;
for a large part of their purpose in writing, as
is plainly manifest, is to reveal facts and truths
concerning the nature, attributes, and activi-
ties of the Divine Being. To discover and
state what the Bible has revealed concerning
God is the work before us in this chapter.

The Divine Being is revealed in the Bible in

(23)

24 THK DOCTRINES OV METHODISM.

part by the names given to him. The Hebrew
originals of "God" and "Jehovah " represent,
respectively, the ideas of "power" and ' ' essen-
tial being." All religions had their "gods,"
but only the children of Israel had their "Je-
hovah." This name, by which he revealed
himself to the chosen people (Ex. vi. 3), was
derived from the verb "to be," and probably
means, "He who not only is, but who causes
things to be"— that is, the Creator. When
God called himself (Ex. iii. 14) the "I Am,"
"I Am that I Am," it was but another form
of ' 'Jehovah. " This was, however, among the
Jews — at least among the later Jews — the ' ' in-
effable Name." For some cause or other,
which is not now known, they never uttered
it or took it "between their sin-polluted lips."
In reading they always substituted for it the
word Adhonaif which is translated "Lord."
This latter title is in itself a most suitable
name for God, in that the Divine Being is not
only a God of power and One who is and causes
things to he, but he is also the Sovereign and
"Lord " of a kingdom, a God whose dominion
is over all free and rational beings.

The most significant and appropriate of all
divine names it was reserved for Christ to ap-
ply to God, and that is the name of "Father."

THK DOCTBINB OF GOD. 25

It had been used in a figurative sense before,
but Christ revealed it as his real name, the
name which, more than any other and all oth-
ers, represented his real character and his true
relationship to man. In revealing God to us
as a Father, Christ made him a lovable Being.
Hitherto he had been feared and worshiped
with awe, and obeyed from a stern sense of
duty; but Christ made God such a One as
could be loved. Christ transformed duty to
God into a willing service, a labor of love to
"our Father." The "Fatherhood of God,"
then, may be said to represent the crowning
revelation of the Bible so far as it concerns
the Divine Being.

The three truths concerning the God of the
Bible, which from the beginning of Old Tes-
tament history were most conspicuously re-
vealed and were emphatically and repeatedly
reuttered, are his unity ^ his spirituality, and
his personality. "Hear, O Israel; the Lord
our God is one Lord," is, so to speak, the first
declaration of Old Testament theology, the
first article in the faith of the chosen people.
The unity of God means that there is and can
be but one God. To affirm the existence of
many gods is virtually to deny the existence
of any real and true God. Many gods means

26 THE DOCTKINES OF METHODISM.

uo God. The Jews were surrounded by peo-
ples who were polytheists — that is, worshiped
many gods. But this declaration of the one-
ness of God does not stand alone in the Bible;
it is immediately followed by other words that
belong to the very same sentence: "and thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,
and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind."
This implies that faith in the unity of God is
an antecedent condition to loving God. Poly-
theists fear their gods, but never love them.
Only those who believe in one God are capa-
ble of exercising that highest of all creaturely
acts of worship — love.

But peoples who have not had the benefits of
divine revelations have not only multiplied their
gods; they have also materialized them. Their
deities have been generally gods of wood and
stone, the works of their own hands, and they
that made them were like unto them. Their
gods, instead of being their creators, were
their creatures. The many forms of idolatry
that have characterized and degi-aded the hea-
then nations of the earth have been a result
of the materializing of Deity. But "God is
a Spirit: and they that worship him must
worship him in spirit and in truth." Spirit
has none of the properties of matter, but has

THK DOCTKINE OF GOD. Jit

consciousness, intelligence, moral nature, free-
dom, and similar attributes, none of which be-
long to matter. Man is both body and spirit,
but that which he recognizes as his real and
true self is his spirit. There could be no finite
spirits if there were not an Infinite Spirit,
and there could be no such thing as spiritual
religion if God were not a Spirit.

But there are those who believe in the
unity and spirituality of Deity, who yet do
not believe that God is a person. They affirm
that everything is God, that God is '"''the alV
of existence. Pantheists affirm that every-
thing is, in its ultimate analysis, out one
thing, and that thing is ' ' God. " Even matter
itself is but the "visible form" of Deity.
But Deity is not a person, not a somebody,
but a somewhat, an infinite "It" — that eternal,
all-pervasive, indestructible something out of
which everything visible comes and to which
everything visible returns. But the Chris-
tian Scriptures affirm that God is a Person,
separate and distinct from everything else in
the universe. God is He, not It. All things
in the universe were made by God out of noth-
ing, and owe their existence to his will and
his creative power. If God were not a per-
son, there could be no such thing as personal

28 THE DOCTRINES OF METHODISM.

religion, nor could there be any true worship,
or any love to God, or any sense of moral re-
sponsibility. We thus see that if there is any
real and true God at all, these three things
must be predicable of him: unity, spiritual-
ity, personality. Of the God of the Bible,
and of him alone, can all these things be af-
firmed.

But God is not only "Father;" he is also
"Son." The Father and Son are both alike
divine. God is not only our Father; he is, in
a imique and peculiar sense, the Father of
our Lord Jesus Christ. Christ is revealed in
the New Testament as the eternal Son of
God. He speaks of the glory that he had
with the Father before the world began. He
claims and receives honor and worship such
as can be properly given to none but God.
A third person, called the Holy Spirit, who is
represented as "proceeding" from the Father
and as "sent" by the Son, is also represented
as possessed of divine attributes and is accorded
divine worship. In a certain sense the Fa-
ther comes first, the Son second, and the
Holy Spirit third; but these three persons
are represented as alike eternal and equally
divine. And yet in immediate connection
with the recognition of the divine character

THE DOCTRINE OF GOD.

29

of these three different Persons, our Lord
and the apostles repeat and emphasize what is
so often asserted in the Old Testament— that
there is but one God. The only mode of
reconciling these apparently discordant state-
ments is to say that God is three in one
sense, and one in another sense. These dif-
ferent Persons share one common divine na-
ture. The whole of Deity is in each divine
Person. These truths find expression in the
theological term "Trinity" or the "Triunity
of the Godhead."

It is common to speak of Tjod as possessed
of certain "attributes." The attributes of a
thing are those qualities or properties which
inhere in the thing, and which, being predi-
cated of it, serve to define it by distinguishing
it from all other things, whether similar or
dissimilar to it. A thing is never properly
defined until certain attributes are predicated
of it which do not, at least in their entirety,
belong to anything else. Among the leading
attributes which serve to define God may be
mentioned these: freedom, immutability, eter-
nity, omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience,
goodness, holiness, and love.

By freedom we mean that attribute that be-
longs to a self-conscious, rational, and moral

30 THE DOCTBINE8 OF METHODISM.

being", by virtue of which his will possesses
self -determining power, and is necessitated to
put forth its volitions by nothing outside of
itself, the real determining causei of his voli-
tions and acts being in himself. God's will is
itself the uncaused cause of all things. Of
him alone can it be said that "He doeth ac-
cording to his will in the armies of heaven
and among the inhabitants of earth." But
the infinite Divine Will created finite human
wills, who possess within certain narrow lim-
its the same kind of free and self -determining
power that the Divine Will possesses without
limits. God is the only one "who worketh
all things after the counsel of his own will."
(Eph. i.'ll.)

By the divine irmnutahility we mean that
God changes not. It is not the same as immo-
bility, but is the attribute of an ever-active
Being whose principles of action are absolute-
ly uniform in their conformity to his per-
fect moral character, "I am Jehovah, I
change not." (Mai. iii.6. ) "Thou, Lord, in
the beginning hast laid the foundation of
the earth; and the heavens are the work of
thine hands: they shall perish; but thou re-
mainest; and they all shall wax old as doth a
garment ; and as a vesture shalt thou fold

THE DOCTBINB OF GOD.

31

them up, and they shall be changed: but
thou art the same, and thy years shall not
fail." (Heb. i. 10. ) Of Christ it is said that
he is " the same yesterday, and to-day, and
forever."

The eternity of God defines his relation to
time, and means that he is without beginning
of days or end of years. There never was a^
time when he was not; there never can come a
time when he will not be. "Before the
mountains were brought forth, or ever thou
hadst formed the earth and the world, even
from everlasting to everlasting, thou art
God." (Ps. xc. 2.) He is described by
Isaiah as the "lofty One that inhabiteth
eternity." There is a sense in which it may
be truly said that all time is an "eternal
now" with God. All the events of the past
and of the f utui-e enter as fully into his con-
scious knowledge at every moment of time as
do the events of the present. But this phase
of his eternity involves omniscience.

The omnipresence of God is a term that ex-
presses his relation to infinite space. There
is no object or point in infinite space at which
he is not present at every moment. ' ' Behold,
the heaven, and heaven of heavens, cannot
contain thee," said Solomon truly. The ques-

32 THB DOCTEINE8 OF METHODISM.

tions of the psalmist, "Whither shall I go
from thy Spirit?" and "whither shall I flee
from thy presence ? " suggest their own answer.
" The eyes of the Lord are in every place, be-
holding the evil and the good."

By the omnipotence of God is meant that
he has power to do whatever he wills to do.
Man's power is limited; God's power is un-
limited. Man has to accomplish much of
what he does by working upon and through
other things; God's power is exercised im-
mediately. He wills, and it is done; bespeaks
the word of power, and it is executed. The
Scriptures tell us that "with God all things
are possible." But omnipotence cannot ac-
complish impossibilities. Whatever is a con-
tradiction in thought is an impossibility in
execution, even to divine omnipotence. Thus
God cannot, by an exercise of his omnipo-
tence, com.^^ free moral h^rngs to be moral-
ly good and holy. If he should do this, he
would destroy their free moral agency, which
is the very essence of their nature.

Omniscience is that attribute by virtue of
which God knows all things, past, present,
and future. " His understanding is infinite. "
(Ps. cxlvii. 5.) "All things are naked and
opened unto the eyes of him with whom we

THE DOCTRINE OF GOD.

33

have to do." (Heb. iv. 13.) "Known unto
God are all his works from the beginning of
the world. " (Acts x v. 18. ) That phase of the
divine omniscience which is theologically the
most important is the foreknowledge of God;
and this because of its relation to the doctrine
of election and predestination. Between divine
foreknowledge and human free agency there
is no contradiction, any more than there is be-
tween the present knowledge of God and man's
freedom in his acts. But if God, before men
were even created, chose some to salvation
and others to damnation, and then predesti-
nated them to their foreordained lot, and is
now working out his eternal decrees— in other
words, if it is God's will in eternity, and not
man's will in time, that determines who is to
be saved and who lost— then it is impossible
that men should be free and responsible for
their character and destiny. The divine wis-
dom is the omniscience of God as manifested
in the accomplishment of the highest and best
ends by the use of ihe simplest and most
effective means. The grandest display of the
wisdom of God is found in the divine method
adopted for saving a lost world— by the incar-
nation, death, and resurrection of the Lord
Jesus Christ.
3

34 THB DOCTRINES OF METHODISM.

By the goodness of God is meant that attri-
bute of the divine Nature which seeks the well-
being and happiness of all creatures. "The
earth is full of the goodness of the Lord."
(Ps. xxxiii. 5. ) But the highest well-being and
happiness of rational beings is moral and spir-
itual good. To secure this higher good in
man it is often necessary for him to suffer
physical evil. Physical evil is one of the
most effective agencies employed by God to
correct moral evil. It is no reflection, there-
fore, on the goodness of God to find that he
has made a world in which there is much that
mars the mere physical comfort of his crea-
tures. He makes "all things to work togeth-
er for good to them that love him."

By the holiness of God we mean the ab-
sence from the divine character of every-
thing of the nature of creaturely evil, and the
presence of everything that is the opposite of
evil. But holiness is not simply a passive
personal attribute; it is also active in that
God is doing everything he can, in keep-
ing with the laws of his kingdom and the
free agency of man, to save his moral crea-
tures from sin and secure them in holiness.
Justice is but a form of holiness. It is con-
cerned with man's relations to law and gov-

THE DOCTRINE OF GOD. 35

ernment, to sin and its punishment, to vir-
tue and its reward. * ' Who is like unto thee,
O Lord, among the gods? who is like thee,
glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing
wonders?" (Ex. xv. 11.)

But love is that attribute that overshadows
and swallows up all others. It is represented
as belonging in some unique sense to the very
essence of God. ' ' God is love. " ( 1 John iv.
8. ) " Herein is love, not that we loved God, but
that he loved us. " ( 1 John iv. 10. ) " God so
loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten
Son, that whosoever believeth on him should
not perish, but have everlasting life." (John
iii. 16. ) Grace is that form of the divine love
which contemplates man with an emphasis
upon his impotence and ill desert through sin,
and provides for his salvation through Christ,
The grandest expression of the love of God is
found in the gift of Christ.

We have enumerated here the more impor-
tant divine attributes. As a matter of fact,
God possesses every attribute that is conceiv-
able as belonging to a moral and holy being,
and he possesses each attribute without limit.
From these facts it follows that God is an in-
finite and perfect Being, worthy of the adora-
tion, worship, and love of all created beings.

IV.

The Bible Doctkine or Max.

If God is the chief object of divine revela-
tion, man, we may say, is the principal subject
of revelation. The inspired Scriptures are ad-
dressed to man and are largely about himself,
his nature and needs, his duty and destiny.
The Scriptures give us four views of man:
first, primitive man, in his unfallen state, as
God made him, innocent and pm-e; second,
man in his fallen state, as he made himself,
sinful and depraved; third, man in a state of
gracious ability, as Christ made him by his
redeeming work; fourth, man in a state of re-
generation or restoration to the divine image,
as the Holy Spirit is ready to make all those
who come unto God by Christ. In this chap-
ter we shall consider man as originally created
and as fallen.

The only rational account we have of man's
origin, that in Genesis, makes him to be the
last and highest product of creation; and this
is equally true whether the inspired narrative
be explained literally or as truth taught in
allegorical and symbolical form. This high-
est of God's earthly creatures is possessed of
(36)

THE BIBIiB DOCTRINE OF MAN. 3<

two natures, physical and spiritual, in one per-
sonality. Man is allied to lower animals in
his physical nature, but to the angelic world in
his spirit. His material or physical nature is
sometimes called flesh and sometimes body.
His immaterial nature is designated some-
times as soul and sometimes as spirit. It is
in man^ immaterial or spiritual nature that
we find the real seat of manhood. It is this
spiritual nature that gives him his conscious-
ness and reason, his intellect, sensibilities, and
will, his conscience, his capacity for sin on
the one hand and for holiness on the other,
his capacity for the worship and service of
God, his likeness to God, his divine sonship
and immortality. Man is represented in the
Bible as having been created in the image of
God, endowed with reason and moral free
agency, placed under moral laws, obedience to
which results in holy character, and disobe-
dience to which is sin and results in' sinful char-
acter. His life here is probationary in that his
character as formed here determines his desti-
ny in the world to come.

The supreme purpose of God in creating
man seems to have been to make possible the
highest ideal of creatarely holiness and happi-
ness. There was need in the universe of a

38 THE DOCTBINE8 OF METHODISM.

creature whose highest happiness would be se-
cured by his highest holiness; and this holiness,
in turn, would secure the highest glory of the
Creator. The holiness ojf a free being is a
higher type of holiness than any kind of holi-
ness that might characterize a being who
should be necessitated by the will of the Cre-
ator to be and do what he is and does, and the
former holiness would glorify the Creator far
more than the latter possibly could. The lat-
ter could glorify God only as a house does its
builder, while the former would glorify him as
a dutiful and obedient son does his father, a
righteous citizen his ruler, or a brave soldier
his leader. But ip order for God to make holi-
ness possible it was absolutely necessary for
him to make sin possible. But while God
made sin possible by creating free moral agents
and placing them in a state of probation, he
did not make sin actual. It was man, not
God, who made sin actual. God, we may say,
would not have made sin possible if he could
have secured the highest ideal of holiness in
man without such possibility. But there are
some things which even omnipotence cannot
do; it cannot do an impossible thing, and the
creation o/nd probation of a free being who
cannot sin are an impossibility. But the high-

THE BIBLE DOCTRINE OF MAN. 39

est ideal of the Creator as embodied in man,
the moral free agent, would have been realized
if sin had forever remained simply a possibil-
ity and had never become an actuality. That
ideal has been realized in one, and only one—
the Son of Man. But the fii-st Adam was as
free from sin when he came from the hands of
his Creator as was the infant born of the Vir-
gin. The first man was under no necessity to
sin. He was free.

We may say, then, that while man's first es-
tate was thus one of innocence and purity, two
alternatives were before him as a moral free
agent: holiness and sin. But the life and pro-
bation of the first pair had not been of long
duration before, by an abuse of their moral
freedom, innocence and purity gave place to
sin and guilt. The history of mankind, from
that time on, is the history of a fallen and
sinful race. The "fall of man" is a phrase
which is commonly used in theology to de-
scribe man's loss of original righteousness and
his coming under the dominion of sin. The
fall of Adam is regarded as the fall of the
race, because of the fact that he was not only
the natural head, but in such a sense the fed-
eral head and moral representative of the race,
which was serainally in him, that certain con-

40 THE DOCTRINES OF METHODISM.

sequences of his sin were entailed upon tiiem.
But Adam's relation to the universal sinful-
ness of the race is a matter of secondary im-
portance as compared to the undeniable fact
that all men are by nature sinful and stand in
need of a Saviour.

The Bible uses various expressions to define
the nature of sin. The essence of sin is self-
ishness, setting one's own will in opposition
to the will of the Creator, or mllful trans-
gression of the law of God. Sin is "enmity
against God." The sinner is one who has de-
throned God, the rightful ruler, from his seat
of authority in the heart, and has set himself
up as ruler instead, and the result is a state of
internal moral anarchy. The fact that the
will of the creature so often manifests its
disobedience to the commands of God, by
yielding to the solicitations of the fleshly or
animal nature, has given rise to calling sin
"the flesh" or "the carnal mind." The seat
of sin, however, is in the inner spiritual man,
in the heart, and not in the flesh. Outward
acts are sins only in so far as they are expres-
sions of inner volitions, dispositions, and
states. "Out of the heart proceed evil
thoughts." If the tree is evil, its fruit must
be evil. The look of the eye that comes

THE BIBLS DOCTRINE OF MAN. 41

from lust in the heart does not need the out-
ward act to make it sin. The decision to
commit murder, or even the hate of the heart
that may lead to murderous volition, makes
one a mui'derer in the eyes of God. There
are different degrees of guilt. There may be
sins of culpable thoughtlessness and igno-
rance, sins of surprise in which one is over-
taken in a fault, sins of deliberate choice and
malice aforethought, sins that involve the
breaking of a solemn covenant, and sins
against the Holy Ghost, in which the sinner,
by persistence in willful wrongdoing, passes
beyond the possibility of being renewed
again unto repentance, and hence beyond the
possibility of pardon. (Matt. v. 28, xv. 19;
1 John iii. 4; Rom. viii. 6-8; Mark iii. 29;
Heb. vi. 6.)

But sin is not only a voluntary transgression
of the law of God; it is also, according to the
definition of St. John, any want of conform-
ity to that law. Sins often repeated beget a
habit of sin. Sinful habits long continued in
beget sinful character. Sin in the first in-
stance always involves a consciously evil act,
but the oftener a man sins the more does sin
become to him the law of life, and the less
does the element of consciousness enter into

42 THE DOCTRINES OP METHODIgjVf.

his sinning. Whenever a man thus, by long-
continued violations of God's law, reaches the
point where conscience ceases to rebuke him
for his violation of God's law — where he
ceases to feel painfully the guilt of his sins,
where sin has become the law of life to him,
has become, as it were, the natm-al thing to do —
then he has become possessed of a sinful char-
acter. This is sometimes called acquired de-
pravity, as distinct from voluntary sin, or the
sin of nature, as distinct from willful sin.
Sinful character is the result of sinful volitions
and acts, but when character is formed it be-
comes a predisposing cause of the volitions
and acts that result — that is, a man does not
come from the hand of his Creator a bad man;
he becomes a bad man only as a result of his
own evil volitions and evil deeds; but when
he has thus become a bad man, then the re-
verse is true, and we may say of such a one
that he does evil because he is a bad man.
We thus see what willful sin is, and also its
relation to moral depravity and to sinful char-
acter.

But there is such a thing as inherited de-
pravity as well as acquired depravity. It is
commonly called original sin, and may be de-
lined as that "corruption of the nature of

THE BIBLE DOCTRINE OF MA>*. 43

every man, that naturally is engendered of the
offspring of Adam, whereby he is very far
gone from original righteousness, and of his
own natm-e inclined to evil, and that con-
tinually." That all men do from their very
infancy manifest a tendency to do wi-ong
rather than to do right; that children left to
themselves as they grow up will do that which
is morally wrong rather than that which is
right— is one of the most undeniable of all
moral facts. If the Church creeds and the
biblical writers were silent about it, we still
could not fail to recognize this universal sin-
fulness of man. As this bias to sin charac-
terizes man from his very infancy, it may
reasonably be inferred that it is inherited.
Hence it is sometimes called "birth sin."
Many think it unfortunate that it ever should
have been called "sin" or "guilt;" think
that these terms should have been reserved
for willful sin. Methodists do not believe
that the guilt of Adam's sin was imputed or
charged to his descendants in any sense ex-
cept that certain consequences of his wrong-
doing (as is more or less true of every par-
ent's wrongdoing) were entailed upon his
offspring. Nor does the inheriting of a bias
toward sin involve any culpability or guilt

44 THE DOCTBINES OF METHODISM.

whatever until a child arrives at an age of
moral accountability and can bring the sin-
w^ard tendencies of his nature under the do-
minion of grace, but refuses to do so. Then
he may justly be held responsible and punish-
able for it and its consequences.

Another phrase that is used in this connec-
tion, and is much misunderstood, is "total
depravity." It is a term that was coined by
theologians who took a view of original sin
and its effect that Methodists do not indorse.
This term and also that of "original guilt"
are quite consistent with the cardinal doc-
trines of Augustinian theology, but whenev-
er they appear in Methodist theology (as they
sometimes do) they call for definition and
explanation. There is, as we have seen,
both inherited and acquired depravity. We
believe that a man may, by persistent, willful
sin, acquire a character that is totally depraved.
But the theological phrase "total depravity"
refers to man's state as affected by the fall of
Adam and by inherited depravity, and car-
ries along with it the idea that all men in
their natural state are totally depraved and
devoid of all good. To say that sin has af-
fected every part of man's nature (body, mind,
heart, soul, spirit, etc.), that it is total, ex-

THK BIBLE DOCTRINE OP MAN. 45

tensively considered, is undoubtedly true;
l)ut to say that all men until regenerated are
totally depraved in their moral nature (a
mussa perditionis, as Augustine said), totally
devoid of all good, as bad as they can possi-
bly be — tJiat is a statement not in accord with
Methodist theolog}'. Methodists believe that
the atonement of Christ embraced all men in
its saving benefits; and that, while men are not
actually saved by it until they accept Christ
by faith, yet many of its general benefits have
extended to all men from the very beginning
of the history of the race, and precede per-
sonal salvation. There is some good in all
men, even in uuregenerate human nature,
which is therefore not to be regarded as to-
tally depraved. But, while this is true, Meth-
odist theology affirms that whatever of good
is found in unregenerate men is an effect of the
atonement, and therefore due not to nature
but to grace. If the fallen race had been
suffered to exist and propagate itself unre-
deemed, it Avould have become totally de-
praved, but God did not suffer it to go unre-
deemed. All men, as a result of the atone-
ment, have gracious ability to meet the con-
ditions of salvation.

V.

Chbist the Redeemer.

In the preceding chapter we studied man as
originally created in innocence and moral free
agency, and also as fallen, in a state of sin and
guilt. We desire now to study man as re-
deemed by Christ. Two alternatives, we may
say, were before the divine mind when man
fell into sin: either bring the race to an end
with the first fallen pair, or else, if they are
to continue to propagate themselves as fallen
and depraved beings, to place them in a salva-
ble state and provide counter forces, as it were,
that will restore the moral equilibrium of the
human will. God, in his infinite wisdom,
adopted the latter method. This is what
man's redemption by the atonement of Christ
did for him. It did not place him back where
he was before the fall; but it did accomplish
this result, that henceforth he was regarded and
dealt with as a redeemed fallen being. When
man falls, then, God does not abandon him to
sin, but in mercy provides for his salvation.
This he does by the promise of a Saviour, in
the person of his own Son, who in the full-
ness of time will become incarnate, and, by
(4S)

CHEIST THK KEDEEMER. 47

his life, death, and resurrection, will atone
for the sins of all mankind and bring such
moral forces to work on man as will help to
counteract the downward tendencies of his
fallen nature. The virtue of this divinely
provided atonement avails from the begin-
ning, and does not wait upon the actual ad-
vent and incarnation of the Son of God before
it becomes efficacious for man's salvation. A
sacrificial system of worship was employed
that was made symbolic and typical of the
great divine-human Sacrifice that was to come,
and it became, in connection with the dis-
pensation of the law, not only a temporary
channel of faith and grace to Old Testament
penitents and believers, but a "schoolmaster"
to prepare the world for, and lead it to, Christ
the Redeemer. We thus see bowman, created
in moral innocence, became man fallen in mor-
al guilt, and how man fallen became man re-
deemed. The study of man, then, is the study
of a fallen but redeemed being.

Methodists, therefore, believe in "original
gi-ace" quite as much as they do in '•'original
sin." When God decided to allow a fallen
and sinful race to propagate itself, he decided
in immediate and inseparable connection there-
with to redeem that race. Hence the history

48 THE DOCTRINES OF METHODISM.

of fallen man is the history of redeemed man.
When the first probation ended with Adam's
fall, a new and gracious probation began with
a race, fallen, it is true, but also redeemed.
"Original sin is the sin of Adam's descendants
as under a covenant of grace. What it would
otherwise have been, we can never know."
Man's gracious abilities through Christ are
quite equal to his moral disabilities thrpugh
the fall. The fallen state, with original sin
and the accompanying benefits of Christ's
atoning work, doubtless furnishes as favorable
conditions for human probation and the devel-
opment of creaturely holiness as did the un-
fallen state without the divine-human Redeem-
mer. So much for the effects of the fall on
man. And as to its bearing on God, we may
say, in the light of the New Testament Scrip-
tures, that the wisdom, goodness, holiness,
and love of God are manifested far more in the
redemption of fallen man than they could have
been by the mere creation of one or many un-
fallen beings like Adam and Eve.

" 'Twas great to speak a world from uaught.
'Twas greater to redeem."

Christ the Redeemer holds the foremost
plaoe in the theology of Methodism and all

CHRIST THE REDEEMER.

49

Other evangelical Churches. In one of our
articles it is said of Christ that "two whole
and perfect natures, that is to say, the God-
head and manhood, were joined together in
one person, never to be divided, whereof is
one Christ, very God and very man, who truly
suffered, was crucified, dead, and buried, to
reconcile his Father to us, and to be a sacri-
fice, not only for original guilt, but also for
actual sins of men." His sacrificial death is
further defined as "the perfect redemption,
propitiation, and satisfaction for all the sins
of the whole world, both original and actual;
and there is none other satisfaction for sin
but that alone." It is further said that the
Heavenly Father, "of his tender mercy, did
give his only-begotten 'Son Jesus Christ to
suffer death upon the cross for our redemp-
tion; who made there, by his oblation of him-
self once offered, a full, perfect, and sufficient
sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins
of the whole world."

Methodists believe in an unlimited atone-
ment, but they do not believe in "universal-
ism" — that is, that all sinners are actually
saved by the death of Christ. Christ has put
all men in a salvable state, and has endowed
all men with gracious ability to embrace the
4

50 THE DOCTRINES OF METHODISM.

benefits of his atoning provisions; but each
man, as a moral free agent, must decide for
himself whether or not he will be freely saved
by grace. Christ has died for all men alike,
for those who do not accept him just as much
as for those who do accept him. Some perish
for whom Christ died. The reason why one
man is saved and another lost is not because
Christ died for the one in any sense that he
did not die for the other; but wholly because
the one, in the exercise of his liberty, accepted
the atonement and complied with its condi-
tions, and the other did not. The limitation
of the atonement, then, is the work of man,
not of God. While Christ is the Saviour of
all men, he is in a special sense the Saviour of
those who accept him. He has paid in full, so
to speak, the redemption price of all who are
the slaves of sin; but no one enters upon his
purchased freedom until he complies with the
conditions of his Christian citizenship and ful-
fills those moral conditions which are the guar-
antee that his liberty will not be turned into
license; for Christian liberty does not mean
license to continue in sin.

The atonement was necessary not only to
satisfy the holiness and love of the divine
nature, but also to satisfy the immutable

CHRIST THK REDEEMER. 51

laws of the divine government. If there is a
moral Governor of the universe, there must
be a moral government; and if a moral gov-
ernment, there must be moral laws; and if
moral laws are to have any force, their viola-
tion must be punished; and if punishment is
to accomplish its purpose, it must be adequate
to hold in existence these four things that
logically precede it and depend upon it. The
governmental problem is how to save man
the sinner. The sinner must either be pun-
ished or some substitute must be found to
take his place in bearing the penalty, or, we
may say, he must either be punished or some
substitute for punishment must be found that
will be compatible with the laws of moral
government. If substitution be allowed, the
following conditions must be met: (1) It must
be voluntary; forced substitution would be un-
just to the substitute. ( 2 ) The substitute must
be himself innocent, and therefore free fi'om
obligation to suffer for himself. (3) If the
substitute is to count for more than one indi-
vidual, if he is to count as a ' 'ransom for many,"
he must possess an intrinsic superiority either
in nature or in official rank that will give to
his person a governmental value equal to the
number for whom he is substituted. (4)

52 THE DOCTRINES OF METHODISM.

Some condition must be imposed upon the
sinner that will result in the transformation
of his moral character; otherwise the crim-
inal would be turned loose upon society,
while the innocent would be imprisoned or
put to death — and no government could stand
this. (5) The principle of substitution must
be applied in such a way as to deter other
men from sin, and not, as would be the dan-
ger, so as to encourage them to go on in sin
because they would count on substitution.
If human governments could meet all these
conditions, they could afford to enlarge great-
ly upon the principle of substitution now
used to a very limited extent. But as a mat-
ter of fact they can meet none of these re-
quirements. But the divine government meets
them all. Christ is a voluntary substitute
who is entirely innocent and holy himself, is
possessed of a divine nature which gives infi-
nite value to his person; and repentance and
faith are such conditions precedent to the sin-
ner's release from liability to punifehment
that on their fulfillment God not only pardons
all past transgressions but regenerates the
sinner, breaking the dominion of sin in his
nature and making him a new creature in
Christ Jesus. This is what is known as the

CHBIST THE RBDEEMBK. 53

Christian doctrine of substitution or vicarious
sacrifice.

The following truths are here emphasized:
(1) It is the divine -human Christ who
atoned for man's sins; it was the divinity of
Christ that gave infinite value to the suffer-
ings of his human nature. (2) It is said in
the first quotation above that Christ suffered
and died "to reconcile his Father to us," but
from the language used in the last quotation
we may say that the gift by the Heavenly
Father of his only Son is an expression of
his love and an evidence that he is himself
already reconciled, and our chief work is to
get sinners reconciled to God. (3) His atone-
ment is meant to meet all kinds of sin and the
sins of all men; it is absolutely unlimited in
its power to save all sinners and to save them
from all sin. (4) The absolute impossibility
of salvation in any other way than through
the atonement of Christ.

While the divine nature and all the attri-
butes of the Triune God are exercised in re-
demption, there are three attributes that are
especially conspicuous. The necessity for
atonement is found in the holiness of God,
which must forever keep itself aloof from all
creaturely evil. Either the sinner must be

54 THE DOCTKINES OF METHODISM.

separated froni God or else separated from
his sin. The atonement makes the latter pos-
sible. The originating cause of the atone-
ment is found in the love of God. "God so
loved the world that he gave his only-begot-
ten Sou." "Herein is love, not that we
loved God, but that he loved us, and sent
his Son to be the propitiation for our sins."
Self-sacrificing love is the strongest motive
power in the universe. The best expression
of this love which the world affords is in
the case of a .father giving up his only son
and sending him forth to suffer and it
may be to die for others. It would cost a
father much less of sacrifice to go himself
than to send his son on such a mission. The
inspired writers represent the gift of Christ
as the greatest expression and proof of the
love of the Heavenly Father that it is possible
for an infinite God to give. The greatest ex-
pression of self-sacrificing love that a son can
give is to leave the comforts of his home and
go himself on a mission of mercy in which,
to save others, he will need to suffer and die.
The coming of Christ into our world to save
sinners by his death was no less his own vol-
untary act than it was an expression of God's
love. Thus the atonement is at once the

CHEIST THE REDEEMER. . 55

highest expression of love on the part of both
God the Father and God the Son. But not
only is the atonement the best possible ex-
pression of both the holiness and the love of
God, it is the wisest plan that the omniscient
mind of God could devise for saving lost men,
guarding their free agency, and at the same
time bringing to bear upon the free will the
strongest possible motives to righteousness.
It was the only possible method whereby God
could be just and yet the justifier of the un-
godly.

No doctrine of Christianity is more thor-
oughly supported by the uniform and abound-
ing teachings of the New Testament writers
than the doctrine of an unlimited atonement.
"He was wounded for our transgi'essions, he
was bruised for our iniquities: the chastise-
ment of our peace was upon him; and with his
stripes we are healed. . . , And the Lord hath
laid on him the iniquity of us all." (Isa.
liii. 5, 6.) "The Son of man is come to
seek and to save that which was lost." (Luke
xix. 10.) "God our Saviour; who will have
all men to be saved, and to come imto the
knowledge of the truth. For there is one
God, and one Mediator between God and
men, the man Christ eTesus, who gave himself

56 • THE DOCTRINES OV METHODISM.

a ransom for all, . . . who is the Sav-
iour of all men, especially of those that be-
lieve. " ( 1 Tim. ii. 3-6, iv. 10. ) " That he by
the grace of God should taste death for every
man. . . . He is able also to save them to
the uttermost that come unto God by him."
(Heb. ii. 9, vii. 25.) "Who his own self
bare our sins in his own body on the tree.
. . . Christ also hath once suffered for
sins, the just for the unjust, that he might
bring us to God." (1 Pet. ii. 24, iii. 18.)
"And he is the propitiation for our sins: and
not for ours only, but also for the sins of the
whole world." (1 John ii. 2.) These pas-
sages, rightly interpreted, justify every state-
ment that we have made above concerning
the doctrine of human redemption. Many
of these truths were very happily expressed
by John Wesley in these familiar lines:

Lord, I believe thy precious blood,
Which, at the mercy seat of God,
Forever doth for sinners plead.
For me, e'en for my soul, was shed.

Lord, I believe were sinners more
Than sands upon the ocean shore,
Thou hast for all a ransom paid.
For all a full atonement made.

VI.

The Doctrines PEKTAiNiNa to

Persoi^al Salvatiok.
If we say that " God the Father plans, God
the Son executes, and God the Holy Spirit ap-
plies," we have a formula which states with
approximate accuracy the specific work of
each of the -three persons of the Trinity in the
gi-eat work of human redemption. The exe-
cution of the divine plan of redemption was
committed to the Son, and as fulfilled it is
called the atonement. The application of the
atoning work of Christ to the actual salvation
of men is the work of the Holy Spirit, whose
gracious influences act upon and cooperate
with the free will of man. It is but another
method of stating the same great truth to say
that the originating cause of man's salvation
is the love, of God, the meritorious cause is
the sacrifice of Christ, the efficient cause is
the power of the Holy Spirit, and the deter-
mining cause is the free will of the redeemed
sinner. In this chapter we are especially con-
cerned with the two elements last named.

Personal salvation is a result of cooperation

(57)

58 THE DOCTRINES OF METHODISM.

between God and man, between the divine and
tlie human will. Although salvation is of
God's free grace, it is none the less of man's
free choice. While man cannot save himself,
neither can God save him, in keeping with the
revealed principles of his moral government,
unless man himself chooses to fulfill the con-
ditions of salvation. As a mere matter of
power, of course the omnipotent divine will
can cause the finite human will to do any-
thing, to put forth any volition whatsoever;
but such a divinely necessitated human voli-
tion could not be free, and in the matter of
personal salvation man is entirely free to ful-
fill or not to fulfill the conditions of salvation.
The Bible I'epresents God as being without par-
tiality and no respecter of persons. God our
Saviour "will have all men to be saved and to
come unto the knowledge of the truth," and is
"not willing that any should perish, but that
all' should come to repentance." Personal sal-
vation and damnation, therefore, are not de-
termined by election and nonelection in eter-
nity, but by the free will of man. The con-
dition of fallen man as affected by the atone-
ment is one of gracious ability to fulfill all
conditions necessary to salvation; but while
his present moral ability is of gi-ace, that

I'ERSOXAL SALVATION. 59

grace itself is free and not arbitrary and irre-
sistible.

If the work of personal salvation b® ana-
lyzed and separated into its various parts, it
may be said to consist of the following ele-
ments: (1) Conviction of sin, which is that
work of the Holy Spirit upon the conscience
of the sinner by which he is awakened and
made to realize his sinful and lost condition;
(2) repentance, which is such godly sorrow on
account of sin as leads to the forsaking of all
sin and the confession of sin; (3) faith, or that
belief of the mind and trust of the heart by
which the penitent sinner accepts Jesus Christ
as a personal Saviour; (4) justification, which is
something done for us, being that act of God
by which he pardons all the past sins of the
penitent believer; (5) regeneration, which is
something done in us, being that act of God by
which he breaks the dominion of the sin of na-
ture and creates us anew, which transforma-
tion is called the new birth and is followed
by adoption into the family of God; (6) the
witness of the Holy Spirit to the spirit of the
regenerate believer, testifying to his pardon
and adoption, and producing a di^^ne convic-
tion of salvation; (7) sanctification, which as
commonly defined refers to that work of the

(50 THK DOCTRINES OF METHODISM.

Holy Spirit, in cooperation with the regener-
ate spirit, which separates the soul from all
sin, carrying on the work begun in regenera-
tion, and completing it in Christian perfection.

The first six elements enumerated above
constitute "conversion," as this term is popu-
larly used. * There are three salvations spoken
of in the Bible. "Repent of thy sins and be-
lieve in the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be
saved;" this is the fii-st. "Work out your
own salvation with fear and trembling;" this
is the second, and it is a continuous, pro-
gressive work. ' ' He that endureth to the end
shall be saved;" this is the third, and refers
to final salvation at the last day. A clear
knowledge of all these doctrines may not be
necessary to salvation, but there can be no in-
telligent type of piety that is not based upon
both an intellectual and an experimental knowl-
edge of all that the Scriptures represent as
necessay to salvation.

Conviction of sin is a result of the Holy
Spirit's application of the preached word and

* If the term " sanctification " be used in its strictly
Scriptural sense, it also is included in conversion.
But the common theological use of that term refers
it to a work of grace, either progressively or instau-
taneonsiy wrought, subsequent to "conversion."

PERSONAL SALVATION. 61

the divine law to the heart and conscience of a
sinner, and is often irresistibly produced; but
while the sinner may be convicted against his
will, and in spite of efforts to the contrary, yet
he is not irresistibly converted. Under con-
viction he is free either to resist the wooings
of the Spirit or to follow the Spirit's leadings
on to repentance and faith. A moral free
agent is never more free than in that intense
and critical moment when he is irresistibly
awakened and brought to a knowledge of his
true condition. It is the most critical and re-
sponsible moment in all his life; for then it is
that his eternal destiny is hanging in the bal-
ance, and nothing but the will of the free agent
can determine which way the scales of destiny
shall be made to turn. Conviction of sin is
one of the chief offices of the Holy Spirit, as
Christ promised: "When he is come, he will
reprove [convict] the world of sin, and of
righteousness, and of judgment." (John xvi.
8. ) And he began this work on the day of his
coming at Pentecost: " Now when they heard
this, they were pricked in their heart, and said
unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men
and brethren, what shall we do ? " (Acts ii. 37. )
Repentance and faith are man's work, the
only office of the Holy Spirit here being to

62 THE DOCTRINES OF METHODISM.

graciously aid man in fulfilling these human
conditions of salvation. The necessity, na-
ture, and benefits of repentance may be shown
in these words of Scripture: "Except ye re-
pent, ye shall all likewise perish." (Luke
xiii. 3.) "Let the wicked forsake his way,
and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and
let him return unto the Lord, and he will
have mercy upon him; and to our God, for
he will abundantly pardon." (Isa. Iv. 7.) Of
faith it is said: "Without faith it is impossi-
ble to please God: for he that cometh to God
must believe that he is, and that he is a re-
warder of them that diligently seek him."
(Heb. xi. 6.) "Believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ, and thou shalt be saved." (Acts xvi.
31.) This means to accept Christ as a per-
sonal Saviour. Confession of sin and confes-
sion of Christ prove that repentance and faith
are true. Justification and regeneration, on
the other hand, are entii»ely God's work; with
them man has nothing to do, save that he per-
forms the conditions on which the pardon and
regeneration of his soul are suspended. Jus-
tification is the pardon of sin, and is condi-
tioned not on our good works but on our
faith: "To him that worketh not, but belie v-
eth on him that justifieth the imgodly, his

PERSOXAT^ RAI-VATIO^'. 63

faith is counted for righteousness." (Rom.
iv. 6.) To the penitent the promise is: "I
will f or^ve their iniquity, and I will remember
their sin no more." (Jer. xxxi. 34:.) But a
deeper work than this is necessary: "Ex-
cept a man be born again, he cannot see the
kingdom of God." (John iii. 3. ) This is re-
generation; it also is conditioned on faith: "As
many as received him, to them gave he power
to become the sons of God." (John i. 12.)

In the Calvinistic system regeneration comes
first; and faith, repentance, and justification
follow. Faith is, according to Calvinistic
theology, the first act of a regenerate soul.
Regeneration, (which is confused with "ef-
fectual calling") and irresistible grace, must
needs come first because the fallen human
race are regarded as totally depraved, as ab-
solutely dead in sin, to exact conditions of
whom would be like demanding acts of a phys-
ically dead man as a condition of imparting
life to him. If God had from -all eternity
unconditionally elected certain ones to salva-
tion, and foreordained the means and the time
of their eflScacious call and conversion; if it
were true that regeneration comes first, and
faith and repentance follow, then would the
preaching of the gospel to the unconverted

64 THE DOCTRINES OF METHODISM.

and the call of sinners to repentance and sal-
vation seem to be a useless work, and the
present mode of preaching the gospel and
pressing the claims of the Christian religion
upon the consciences of sinners could not be
justified. More faithful to Scripture is that
theology which teaches that man, though fall-
en, and in a sense morally dead, is yet recog-
nized as a living and responsible moral agent,
endowed graciously with ability to seek and
obtain salvation through divinely appointed
conditions (repentance of sin and faith in
Christ), on the fulfillment of which God gra-
ciously pardons all his past transgressions,
and so transforms his sinful moral nature as
to deliver him from the dominion of sin and
make him a new creatm'e in Christ. It is of
the greatest importance that we have true
scriptural views concerning the doctrines of
personal salvation. We should make no mis-
take in answering the question of the awakened
sinner: "What must I do to be saved?"

It may be asked why personal salvation on
God's part consists of both justification and
regeneration. Why would not justification
alone or regeneration alone suffice to make
complete the salvation of a soul? The an-
swer is not far to seek. It is because there

PERSONAL SALVATION. 65

are two kinds of sins — actual sin, or voluntary
transgression of the law of God; and the sin
of natm*e, which consists of both original sin
and the reflex influence on moral character of
repeated acts of sin, From both of these
kinds of sin man needs to be saved. Justifi-
cation, or pardon, concerns actual sin alone,
and has nothing to do with the sin of nature;
and so repentance also is of actual sins, and
not of original sin. Regeneration, on the
other hand, has to do exclusively with the sin
of nature — original sin and the habitus of sin,
or hereditary and acquired depravity. A
tendency toward disease (consumption, for
example) may be inherited, or it may be
superinduced by acts of imprudence or by
sickness, or it may be both inherited and
superinduced; and if so, the two tendencies
run together and become one. And so it is
with fallen man: he inherits a bias toward
sin; and this is strengthened by the effects of
actual sin, both alike calling for that divine
act which is designated as regeneration. If
man were simply justified, and not at the same
time regenerated, his past sins would be par-
doned; but he would be left under the domin-
ion of his sinful nature, and would necessarily
continue to sin. Hence regeneration is rep-
5

66 THE DOCTRINES OF METHODISM.

resented as "breaking the dominion of sin,"
"cleansing the moral nature," "being born
again," "created anew." Acts of sin may be
compared to the black characters written upon
a sheet of paper; the sin of nature, to discol-
oring elements that enter into the very fiber
of the paper itself. The blotting out of sins
(Acts iii. 19) is the pardon of all actual trans-
gressions, but another and different act is re-
quired to cleanse and purify the sin-polluted
nature of man. Justification and regenera-
tion always take place at the same time.

Conviction of sin is the witness of the Spirit
to the sinner's true condition, and so the wit-
ness of the Spirit to the regenerate believer
may be called conviction of salvation. It is
thus that the Holy Spirit both begins and
crowns the work of personal salvation. The
soul that undergoes all these experiences is a
genuine and a happy convert, and nothing
less than an experience of all these elements
of personal salvation entitles one either to re-
ceive from God, as a sacred seal to his salva-
tion, the witness of adoption and the assm--
ance of sonship, or to be regarded by man
as a new creature in Christ Jesus. "The
Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit,
that we are the children of God." (Rom.

PBB80NAL SALVATION. 67

viii. 16.) "He that belie veth on the Son of
God hath the witness in himself." (1 John
V. 10. ) But what the child of God is conscious
of is not "the witness of the Spirit," but the
fact of being saved. It is the office of the Holy
Spirit to convince him of this fact. But this
blessed assurance that belongs by right to
every child of God should not be confused with
a certain ebullition of joy that sometimes ac-
companies certain ' ' happy conversions. " The
latter is a thing of temperament ; some have
it and some do not; moreover, it "comes and
goes." But the true witness of the Spirit is
not a thing of temperament, it does not " come
and go ; " but is a birthright to be claimed by
every child of God, no matter what his temper-
ament.

"Quit your meanness, and be saved," may
pass for a "short method of salvation" and
"religion made easy," and may be followed
by shaking the preacher's. hand and joining
the Church; but it is not the full and com-
plete salvation from sin that is described in
the Bible. Conviction of sin, repentance,
faith, justification, regeneration, the witness
of the Spii'it — all these are necessary to make
a genuine Bible Christian. Nor have we any
right to make personal salvation any simpler

68 THK DOCTRINES OF METHODISM.

or easier than the Bible makes it. When con-
version is based upon an intelligent under-
standing and a genuine experience of all these
elements of salvation, then, and then only,
does it mean experimental religion and impart
spiritual power. Nor should we recognize any
conscious sin as compatible with the regen-
erate state except to be abhorred and forsaken,
pardoned and cleansed, as soon as it is seen by
the child of God. This ideal of holiness and
freedom from sin is the birthright pri\'ilege
and duty of every child of God from the very
moment of his regeneration; and we must not
lower God's high standard to make it fit man's
shortcomings.

Great as is the work above described in the
salvation of a soul, it is not all that is to be
done; indeed, it is nothing more than entrance
upon the Christian life. And the Christian
life does not consist in merely retaining what
has been thus attained. The victory over sin
has not yet been fully and finally won; the
first great battle has been successfully fought,
and the long warfare has begun. All sin "in
sight" was given up at and in "conversion;"
but other sin will presently come in sight as
the Christian advances and his spiritual vision
arrows clearer. And all holiness and love

PEKSONAL SALVATION. fi9

and duty in sight were welcomed, and assumed
according to the degree of knowledge and
faith then possessed-; but knowledge and
faith will increase, and soon it will appear
that if the character attained in justification
and regeneration was regarded as "perfec-
tion," \t was a very imperfect perfection.
Sinlessness, entire holiness, the perfect life —
that is the ever-advancing goal that is ahead
of the regenerate child of God.

Christian perfection is the name given to this
doctrine which holds a place of highest hon-
or in Methodist theology. Perfection is a
term which the Scriptures use in describing
the ideal religious experience and character
which has been made possible by divine grace.
Methodism, taking the term from the Bible,
teaches that it is not only a possibility and a
privilege, but the duty of every child of God to
attain unto that type of Christian experience
and character, and to lead that life that may
be fitly described by the term "Christian per-
fection." As to what is to be accomplished
progressively and what instantaneously, and
whether or not Christian perfection is a
thing to be "professed" — these are points
of secondary importance about which Metho-
dists do now differ, and always have differed.

VII.
The Doctrine of the Future

LiPE.

It was a saying of one of the early Metho-
dists that "man's chief business in this world
is to get successfully out of it. " That was but
another way of stating a truth so often ut-
tered, in one form or another, by our Lord —
that the life that begins at death is the one
with reference to which we should constantly
live in this world. "What is a man profit-
ed if he shall gain the whole world, and lose
his own soul ? or what shall a man give in ex-
change for his soul?" But this view of the
life to come — that it is the full and final reali-
zation of the divine purpose concerning man —
instead of making this life of little impor-
tance, tends, on the contrary, to invest it with
the utmost possible importance, seeing that it
makes this life a probation in which man is
charged with the responsibility of deciding by
his conduct here what is to be his destiny in
the world to come. The crowning attribute
of man as a creature of God is his moral free
agency, and this is true only because this life
(70)

THE DOCTRINE OF THE FUTURE LIFE. 71

is probationary and preparatory to that life
which is to come.

Eschatology is that department of Christian
theology that treats of those events which will
transpire in the last days. Events that are
signals or forerunners of the end of the world,
as well as events that accompany and follow it,
come imder this head. The one conspicuous
event that will itself determine the end of the
world is the second coming of Christ. Among
the notable events which are associated with
the end of the world are the following:

(1) The gospel will he preached throughout
the entire world: extensively it will have
reached all parts of the earth before the end
will come, though, as to its intensive effects,
there will doubtless always be some people
who have not come under its gracious influ-
ences. (Matt. xxiv. 14.)

(2) Tlie Jews will he hr ought in before the
end comes. This does not probably refer to
an actual restoration of the entire Jewish race
to Palestine, as some hold, but rather to the
conversion of the Jews as a race to Christian-
ity. (Rom. xi. 15, 25.)

(3) The millennium will be a period of a
thousand years of such peace and prosperity
to the Church that Christ is described as then

72 THK DOCTRINES OF METHODISM.

reigning upon the earth in some unique and
significant manner not true of other periods.
(Rev. XX. 1-9. )

(4) The coming of '^Antichrist,''' or the
"Man of sin," who will be the enemy of God
and man, and who will, it seems, embody both
civil and ecclesiastical power, and be the lead-
er in a ser^' -^us and widespread apostasy from
the faith. ,Matt. xxiv. 21; 2 Thess. i. 8. )

(5) Chris fs second comitig in visible form is
the most important event that shall precede
the end of the world. ' ' Premillenarians " say
that this second coming will take place at the
beginning of the millennium, and that the
millennium will consist chiefly in his visible
and personal reign upon the earth for a thou-
sand years. ' ' Postmillenarians " believe that
Christ's second coming will take place at the
end of the millennium, and hence describe his
reign during the millennium as moral and spir-
itual, and not in actual and visible person.
They interpret the millennium as a period of
indefinite length. Christ taught the certainty
of the fact of his' second coming, but with
equal clearness the uncertainty of the time of
his coming. (Mark xiii. 32; Acts i. 11; 2
Thess. i. 7.)

(6) The second coming of Christ will be

THE DOCTBINK OF THK FUTUKB LIFE. 73

followed, according to the last, or postmille-
narian, view (which has most generally pre-
vailed in the Church), by the re»arreotion of
all men from the dead. This resurrection will
embrace the physical body, whose identity
will be preserved. It is a fact that the human
body changes in toto once every seven years,
and yet identity of physical person is pre-
served in spite of these numerous and total
changes in substance. If God does this in na-
ture, why should it be thought a thing incred-
ible that he should in the resurrection repro-
duce the same body, even though there be no
particle of matter in the resurrection body
that was originally in the earthy body which
was buried and soon thereafter disintegrated
and absorbed in surrounding nature? The
resurrection body of the saints, it is stated,
shall be made glorious, like unto the resurrec-
tion body of the Lord Jesus. But although it
is our mortal and physical body that is rep-
resented as being raised, the new resurrection
body is sometimes described as a "spiritual
body," and certain it is that the attributes of
the resurrection body that is described in the
Scriptures belong much more properly to
what we conceive spirits to be than to what
we know material bodies to be. (Isa. xxvi.

74 THE DOCTRINKS OF METHODISM.

19; Dan. xii. 2; Luke xx. 37; John v. 28, 29;
Rom. viii. 11; 1 Cor. xv. 44; Phil. iii. 21.)

(7) What is called the intermediate or dis-
enibodied state that begins with the death of
the body will end at the resurrection, when
the long-separated spirits are reunited to
their resurrection bodies. The intermedi-
ate state is not a state of unconsciousness, or
"soul sleep," as some affirm, but a state of
conscious misery for* the wicked and of con-
scious happiness for the good. ( Luke xvi. 22,
xxiii. 43; 2 Cor. v. 8. )

(8) The general resurrection will be followed
by the day of jlnal jjudgment^ in which aU men
will be judged, the wicked being separated
from the good as a shepherd doth separate the
goats from the sheep. This general and final
judgment will simply confirm the sentence
pronounced upon both the wicked and the
good at death. "It is appointed unto men
once to die, but after this the judgment."
"For we must all appear before the judg-
ment seat of Christ; that every one may re-
ceive the things done in this body, according
to that he hath done, whether it be good or
bad." (Matt. xxv. 32; Acts xvii. 31; Rom.
ii. 16.)

(9) The future lot of the wiched is repre-

THIS DOCTRINE OF THK FUTURE LIFE. 75

sented as one of unrelieved and unending mis-
ery. This misery does not consist so much in
sufferings externally inflicted as in the pangs
and torment of a guilty conscience. And if it
be true that the misery of the lost grows thus
out of evil character rather than out of mere
external environment, it follows that misery
is proportioned to guilt. But the misery and
punishment of no lost soul, not even the
worst in hell, will be one iota more in severity
than that soul justly deserves. God, who is
both omniscient and infinitely just, is the su-
preme and final arbiter in this matter. And
it is worth our while to bear in mind that the
most awful words ever uttered concerning the
doom of the incorrigibly wicked and finally
impenitent in the life to come came not from
Moses the lawgiver amid the thunders of Si-
nai, nor from Jeremiah, the stern prophet of
old, nor from John the Baptist, nor from
Paul; but from the Son of Man, whose gospel
was one of tenderness and love. We need to
remember that, while it is truly said that
"God is love," it is also said that "God is a
consuming fire" to wicked and impenitent sin-
ners. (Matt. XXV. 34, 46; Luke xvi. 25; 2
Thess. i. 9; Rev. xx. 10-14. )

( 10) The future lot of the ri^ghteous is repre-

76 THE DOCTRINES OF METHODISM.

sented as one of full and unending happiness.
The happiness of heaven grows not primarily
out of the place, out of mere external environ-
ment, but out of character, and therefore dif-
fers in degree for different individuals, being
proportioned to the capacity of each soul to
extract happiness out of the place that is pre-
pared for God's children. If the Christian
doctrine of the future life be true, this life of
probation is a training school for heaven, and
the object of life is the development, by grace
and love, by service and sacrifice, of a holy
character, which constitutes a moral capacity
for extracting happiness out of heaven. The
saints in heaven will not be rewarded on the
ground of their good works, as if they were
meritorious, but it has pleased God that they
shall be rewarded "according to their good
works." All souls in heaven will be holy, and
therefore happy; but some develop more of
holiness in this life than others; and therefore,
as "one star differeth from another star in
glory," so some souls will be happier than
others in heaven. As spiritual growth is the
great law of spiritual life in this world, so the
heavenly life will doubtless be one of ever-in-
creasing growth in holiness, and hence of
ever-increasing happiness. The more of holi-

THE DOCTRINE OF THE FUTUBJB LIFE. 77

ness, the more will there be of happiness.
(Matt. XXV. 34, 46; John xiv. 2; 2 Cor. v. 10. )

Most of these subjects embraced in Chris-
tian eschatology have been made the subject
of endless speculation. It is a department of
theology which has a great fascination for a
certain class of minds. While everything be-
longing to Christian revelation is of impor-*
tance, yet it is plain that some doctrines are
far more important than others, and this be-
cause they are more vital and practical. The
truths whose vital importance transcends all
others in this department of doctrine are the
immortality of the soul and the fact that man's
destiny in the future and eternal life is deter-
mined by his free conduct in this life. To the
consideration of these truths we shall there-
fore devote our attention mainly.

While the doctrine of a future life is con-
tained in the Old Testament, yet much less
stress is laid upon it there than is done in the
New Testament. With the children of Israel
"transitory promises" that pertain to this
life had relatively more weight and influence
than with New Testament believers generally,
who have been trained in the school of Christ.
St. Paul tells us that Christ "brought life
and immortality to light through the gospel."

78 THE DOCTRINES OF METHODISM.

The existence of the soul after death is not
only assumed in the New Testament; it is ev-
erywhere taught and everywhere emphasized.
Hence, in this department of Christian theol-
ogy more than in any other, we are under the
necessity of confining ourselves almost entire-
ly to the revelations contained in the New
Testament.

The Bible teaches that this life is the seed-
time and the life to come is the harvest. We
shall reap in the future life the fruit of om-
seed-sowing in this life. The law of sowing
and reaping is this: we must reap what we
sow, and we reap more than we sow. This
law pervades the moral and spiritual world
no less than it does the physical and intellec-
tual. "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall
he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh
shall of the flesh reap corruption; he that sow-
eth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life
everlasting. " While it is true that every man
is constantly reaping in this life the fruit of
his sowing in former years, yet the largest
harvest that he will reap is that which awaits
him in the world to come.

Men will be judged by the deeds done in the
body. For every idle word that men shall
speak they shall give account thereof in the

THE DOCTKINE OF THE PUTUBB LIFE. 79

day of judgment; according as their words
and deeds shall be, they will be either justified
or condemned. While it is repentance and
faith that are the conditions of salvation in the
first instance, and while it is possible for one
to repent even on his deathbed and be saved,
through the great mercy of God, yet it is life
and works and character that determine sal-
vation at the day of judgment. Repentance
and faith are the moral conditions that make
possible the attainment of that life and char-
acter which are the conditions of salvation in
that day when the secrets of all hearts and the
real characters of all men will be revealed.

The uniform teachings of the Bible are to
the eftect that death ends probation in the or-
dinary sense of that term. We read of no
second probation after death. As the tree
falls, so it shall lie. He that is then unjust,
let him be unjust still; he that is then holy,
let him be holy still. Our Lord speaks of a
sin that is forgiven neither in this world nor
in the world to come. Some have tried to
draw from this utterance the inference that
all sins except this "sin against the Holy
Ghost" maybe forgiven in the world to come,
and that therefore probation is continued after
death. But this inference is unwarranted.

80 THE DOCTRINES OF METHODISM.

Our Lord's words, rightly interpreted, mean
that while it is true of all sins that they have
no forgiveness in the world to come, here is a
sin that is so serious and culpable that it places
the transgressor, while yet in this life, beyond
the possibility of his ever being brought to
repentance and saving faith, and hence be-
yond the possibility of pardon. The reason
why any one becomes a sinner or continues to
be a sinner is always in himself, and not in
God. God will do nothing, either in this
world or the world to come, to keep a sinner
from repenting and giving up his sin. But it
would be wholly unwarrantable to di-aw from
this fact the inference that therefore lost sin-
ners can and will repent in thjB world to come.
Paul tells us that Christ not only brought
life and immortality to light, but that he ' ' abol-
ished death." This does not mean that when
Christ came physical death ceased, or will ever
cease till the end of the world. But it does
mean that he totally transformed the doctrine
of death. Instead of its being the cessation
of conscious life, as many believed, or the de-
scent of the soul into an "underworld," into
a shadowy, semi-conscious, and unhappy state
of existence, as others thought — and hence a
thing to be feared and dreaded in either view —

THE DOCTBINK OF THE FUTUBB LIFE. 81

Christ taught that to all who live rightly in
this present world death is the end of all that
can make existence in any way unhappy, and
the beginning of that state where nothing can
mar the highest happiness of which the soul
is capable. To the Christian, to be absent
from the body is to be present with the Lord
and to enjoy uninterrupted fellowship with
Him. Many tigurative expressions are used
to describe what death is to those who are
found in Christ. To those who are weary
with the labors and sufferings of life it is de-
scribed as "rest for the weary" and "sleep
in Jesus.'' Job says: "I will wait till my
change come." The tiny worm that spends
its brief existence within a few square yards
of earth, and feeds on dust and bark and
leaves, presently "dies" as to his present state
of existence; but what is death to him but his
translation into the beautiful insect that basks
in the sunlight, flies at will in the glad air as
its home, and feeds upon the perfume of the
flowers? To the soul tabernacling in a suffer-
ing body, who waits patiently mitil his
"change" comes, death is that which trans-
forms him who is a "worm of the dust" into
a glorified spirit which bounds away into the
glad freedom of the sinless and heavenly life.
6

82 THE DOCTRINES OF METHODISM.

To Paul death was simply the occasion of his
"departure" into another life, his emigration
to another and better country. If this doc-
trine of death be true, then did Christ bring
to them "who through fear of death had all
their lifetime been subject to bondage" the
abolition of death and the light of life and im-
mortality.

But while death is all this and more to those
"in Christ," it is, nevertheless, likewise true
that to all who are found out of Christ at
death this "change," or "departure," is one
that introduces them into a state far more aw-
ful than that of nonexistence, and into a place
more to be dreaded than a vague and shadowy
imderworld of semi-conscious and burdensome
existence. Since Christ came death has had
a new meaning to the sinner as well as to the
saint. If for the latter it is virtually abol-
ished, for the sinner it is made the gateway to
a life that is described as the "second death."

These are the truths concerning the future
life that Methodism has always taught and
emphasized. That theology can alone be suc-
cessful, either in calling sinners to repentance
or in comforting saints, which gives no un-
certain sound in its teachings concerning the
life to come.

yni.

"The Doctrine op the Church.

Our Thirteenth Article of Religion con-
tains the following definition of the Chris-
tian Church: "The visible Church of Christ
is a congregation of faithful men, in the which
the pure word of God is preached, and the
sacraments duly administered according to
Christ's ordinance, in all those things that of
necessity are requisite to the same."

This excellent definition suggests: (1) The
relation of the Church to Christ, its divine
Founder, whose ' ' ordinances " are its laws. (2)
The Church is organized Christianity^ not an
aggi-egation of detached and unrelated units,
but a visible "congregation" or collection of
men bound together by a common relation to
Christ and to each other, and organized for the
accomplishment of a definite purpose in the
world. (3) It is composed of "faithful men"
—that is, men who possess both faith in
Christ and fidelity to Christ, to secure which
type of character in its membership proper
conditions of admission to the Church and a
proper discipline over those in the Church must
be enforced. (4) The first function of the

(83)

84 THE DOCTRINES OF METHODISM.

Church is the teaching or preaching of the
word, which must be committed mainly,
though not exclusively, to those especially
charged therewith and trained therefor — that
is, the Christian ministry. (5) The sacra-
ments, baptism and the Lord's Supper, are to
be duly administered. (6) There are some
things which "of necessity are requisite" to
the Church and its sacraments, and other
things which are not of necessity required —
in other words, essentials and nonessentials in
religion. In the former there must be unity;
in the latter there may be liberty.

While it is most common to designate the
Church as the Church of Christ, it is none the
less appropriately called the Church of God
and the Church of the Holy Spirit. It is the
Church of the Triune God. It is first of all
called "the church of God" (Acts xx. 28)
or the "household of God" (Eph. ii. 19).
As such it has existed from the beginning,
and is, in a sense, one in all ages. From the
beginning of time there have always been
true believers in God, and these have consti-
tuted the true Church.

The Church is most frequently and appro-
priately designated as the Church of Christ.
because it is founded upon his divine-human

THE DOCTRINK OK THK CHURCH. 85

person and work, upon his life and teaching,
upon his atoning death and resurrection, upon
his session at the right-hand of the Father,
and his intercession for the saints. The new
order of things which Christ came to. estab-
lish, he usually designates as his kingdom,
the "kingdom of God," or the "kingdom of
heaven." Only twice does he use the word
"Church" {ekklesia)^ the one case referring
to a local assembly of Christian people (Matt,
xviii. 17), and the other being the classic pas-
sage in which he refers to the visible organi-
zation of Christian believers for all time, and
announces the faith, the foundation, and the
perpetuity of the Church : ' ' He saith unto them
[his disciples]. But whom say ye that I am?
And Simon Peter answered and said. Thou
art the Christ, the Son of the living God.
And Jesus answered and said unto him. Bless-
ed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and
blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my
Father which is in heaven. And I say also
unto thee, That thou art l*eter, and upon this
rock I will build my church; and the gates of
hell shall not prevail against it." (Matt. xvi.
15-18.) When Christ said to Peter, "Upon
this rock I will build my church," he prob-
ably referred to St. Peter's confession, "Thou

86 THE DOCTRINJBS OK MKTHOBISM,

art the Christ, the Son of the living God;"
the one great truth contained in which — viz. ,
the divinity of Christ — is the true rock of
faith upon which the Church is built. Some
think that Christ referred to himself as "this
rock;" others, that he referred to St. Peter
as a representative of the apostles, whose work
and inspired teachings were, in an important
sense, to constitute the foundation of the
Church.

The Church, again, is the Church of the
Holy Spirit. The beginning of the Christian
Church as a visible organization took place on
the day of Pentecost. For this beginning
Christ's work is shown by the Gospel records
to have been preparatory. Not until our
Lord's revelation concerning the nature of his
spiritual kingdom was complete, and not un-
til his atoning death and resurrection were
become historical facts, had the time come for
the historical beginning and foundation of
the Church. The Church is the organ which
the Spirit uses for the accomplishment of his
work in the world. The Spirit can and does
work under any outward form of Chm'ch
government. That is the truest Church that
can furnish, in the number of souls saved
through its agency, the most indubitable and

THK DOCTKINK OF THK CHURCH. 87

abiding evidence of possessing this supreme
credential: the presence and power of the
Holy Spirit.

The visible Church, in the widest sense of
that term, includes all Churches and all mem-
bers in all Churches who acknowledge Jesus
Christ as their Head and trust in him and him
alone for salvation. These constitute but one
spiritual body, as viewed by Christ the Head.
The true scriptural unity is not so much one
of outward form as of inward life; it is a uni-
ty based on a true confession of faith in one
God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It
is entirely consistent with this idea of scrip-
tural unity that there should be many reli-
gious denominations within the Church of
Christ.

There is a distinction to be made between
the outward and visible Chm:ch, which is com-
posed of all professing Christians, and the
true spiritual and invisible Church, which is
composed only of real and true Christians.
While the visible Church will always contain
in its membership some who are not in th^
invisible and spiritual kingdom of Christ, yet
an effort should be made to make the two cor-
respond as nearly as possible. The Church
of the New Testament is composed of the

88 TICK l>OCTRINKS OF METHODISM.

saved: " The Lord added to them day by day
those that were being saved." (Acts ii. 47.)
Before any one is admitted to full member-
ship in the Chm-ch, he should give evidence
not only of his sincere "desire to flee the
wrath to come and to be saved from his sins,"
but also of "the genuineness of his faith;" in
other words, he should give credible evidence
of having exercised such repentance and faith
as are laid down in the New Testament as the
conditions of salvation. This will secure, ap-
proximately at least, a membership of truly con-
verted people. If these scriptural conditions
of salvation be required as the conditions of
admission to the Church, and discipline be
duly enforced, then will the visible Church
be made as pure and spiritual as is possible
here on earth, and then only will the Church
be a "congregation of faithful men."

The Christian ministry is a divine vocation
in that only those may enter it who are di-
vinely called thereto. We believe that the
Holy Spirit chooses those whom he would
have to preach, and indicates his choice of
them by making an inward impression upon
their minds as to their duty in this regard.
But the Church also must sit in judgment on
those who feel called to preach, and thus "try

THK DOCTKIXE OF THE CHURCH. 89

the spirits to see whether they be of God oi-
uot." The Christian ministry, as its name
indicates, is first of all an office of service.
Ministers are servants of Christ and of the
Chuich. The most important function of the
ministry is to preach the word. The salvation
of sinners and the edification of believers de-
pend upon their fidelity to this part of their
work. If the "pure word of God" is to be
preached, the ministry must be educated in a
right understanding and interpretation of the
Bible; otherwise false and fanatical doctrines
may be drawn from the word of God by mis-
interpretation and unsound exegesis.

Methodism recognizes but two institutions
of the Church as sacraments: Baptism and the
Lord's Supper. The Church retains the prim-
itive and apostolic custom of baptizing in-
fants. While it is the rule that the childi-en
only of Christian parents (or guardians) are
presented for baptism, yet the Church teaches
that the right of a child to Christian baptism
gi'ows out of his own relation to Christ, rath-
er than that of his parent or guardian. As
to the mode of baptism, Methodism favors
poiu-ing or sprinkling as more simple and
symbolic of the "washing of regeneration,"
but allows perfect liberty on the part of adult

90 THE DOOTRIKKS OF METHODISM.

applicants for Church membership to choose
either of these modes or immersion. The
Lord's Supper is regarded as a memorial serv-
ice and a means of grace of more than ordi-
nary sanctity. It is the privilege and duty of
every member of the Church to partake regu-
larly of this sacrament as opportunity offers.

If our doctrine of the Church be true, every
branch of the Christian Church is free to de-
termine its own polity or form of govern-
ment. The value of each can be tested only
by time and experience. The polity of Meth-
odism has been on trial for about a century
and a half; and that of Episcopal Methodism
for a little over a century, during which time
it has been constantly undergoing modifica-
tions and adaptations to new conditions as its
growth and ever- widening mission seemed to
demand. Judged by its history in the past
and its efficiency and rapid gi-owth at the
present time, it is doubtful whether any branch
of the Christian Church, under the guidance
of the Holy Spirit, has ever devised a more
scriptural and efficient form of government
than that of the Methodist Episcopal Chm-ch,
South. It behooves every student of Christian
doctrines to give it a careful examination.

PART SECOND.

THE POLITY

OF THE

METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH,
SOUTH.

By Rev. James Atkins, D.D.,
Sunday School Editor.

(91)

PREFACE.

In entitling the following pages "The Polity
of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South," it
is not meant that they contain anything like a
full discussion of our economy. Such a pres-
entation would involve a full exhibit of the ra-
tionale of our Discipline, and even more.

The object has been to set forth the more
prominent features of our Church organization
and plan of working, and to call the attention of
our teachers to certain vital peculiarities of our
system, upon which its continued and enlarged
usefulness depends. If this much shall be ac-
complished by this brief survey, the end aimed

at will have been reached.

James Atkins.

(92)

I.

The General Rules.

The Church of Christ is an aristocracy of
virtue. It is the only one which has serious-
ly and successfully battled for a place among
men. Truly it is a kingdom of grace, but the
only end of that grace is holiness of character
and life. Tender and all-giving as Jesus was
in his attitude toward penitent men, nothing
can exceed his burning candor in laying down
the conditions of discipleship. These condi-
tions would be indeed harsh if the power of
execution were not furnished from above.
But by the divine reenforcement all things
are possible, and most moral achievements
easy, to men who believe. A life of self-de-
nial is the natural order for one in whom the
supreme act and purpose of self-abnegation
have gone before, and a life of heroic moral
doings is easy to a man who is moved upon by
the Spirit of God.

The moral code of Methodism is contained
in what are called the General Rules. These
rules have thrown their gracious, helpful do-
minion over many millions who in these more
than one hundred and fiftv years of our his-

(9.3)

94 OTTR POLITY.

tory have gone from the self-denials and la-
bors of this life into the rewards of another.
There are now about seven millions within
the Methodist fold who are confessedly walk-
ing by the same rules.

The only condition required of those who
seek membership in our Church is "a desire to
flee from the wrath to come, and to be saved
from their sins."

This surely is broad enough, and yet when
interpreted in the light of the Rules it leaves
nothing to be added. It certainly excludes all
who have a desire to flee from the wrath to
come and to be saved in their sins.

Those who have this desire to be saved
from wrath and sin will, if the desire be gen-
uine, give evidence of it in three ways:

First^ iy doing no harm — that is, avoiding
evil of every hind.

Secondly, hy doing good to hoth the hodies
amd soids of men.

Thirdly, hy attending upon the ordinances
of God.

The Things Forbidden. .

Taking the name of God in vain.

This includes:

(1) Profane swearing and all forms of curs-

THE GENERAL RULES. 95

ing, especially such as involve the preroga-
tives of the Deity. • There is much sinful
swearing which does not contain the name of
God, but implies it. He who curses his fel-
low-man, with or without the mention of
God's name, assumes a place of judgment
which belongs to God only.

(2) Perjury, or intentionally false swear-
ing, in which God is called to witness to
the truth of what is false. This indicates
the utmost baseness of character, and the
penalties of the civil law against it are justly
severe.

(3) All sacrilegious and other vain or light
uses of the name of God,

(4) All idle swearing, which long ago
Chaucer pronounced a "crudeness," and
which is now, and must ever remain at the
least, an act of incivility, and lead the way to
more serious and more hurtful forms of the
oflfense.

The name of God stands for his character,
and therefore the breaking of the third com-
mandment is one of the most dangerous and
debasing of sins.

Profaning the day of the Lord, elthei- hy
doing ordinary work therein., <yr hy buying or
selling.

96 OUR POLITY.

The three great doctrines taught by the
Sabbath as we now have it are:

(1) That God is the Creator of all things;

(2) that Christ is risen from the dead; and

(3) that all our time belongs to God.

"The Sabbath, in its spiritual aspect and
meaning, is one of the strongest defenses of
the inspiration of the Bible and of the divin-
ity of the religion which it reveals. It is
man's day and God's day; more thoroughly
man's day because completely God's day.
It is their united time, time of fellowship,
hour of communion, opportunity for deeper
reading, larger prayer, and diviner consecra-
tion." (Joseph Parker.)

Christianity has no more important institu-
tion than the Holy Sabbath. It would be
difficult to overestimate the value of the day
both to individuals and to communities. The
demand for it is laid in the physical constitu-
tion of man and the laboring animals. Not
only was the Sabbath made for man, but man
was made with reference to a Sabbath, so that
in this regard, as well as in other things, it is
to the best interests of man in his present
state to obey God's commands. Such a rest
18 necessary to the highest sanity of the indi-
vidual and the community, and hence it is

THE GENERAL KULBS. 97

that the Sabbath is one of the greatest safe-
guards of personal and national life. It
therefore becomes the duty not only of every
true religionist and philanthropist, but of
every true patriot, to advance by all means a .
proper keeping of the Sabbath day.

It will be noted that in the divine institu-
tion of the Sabbath it was made a day of
rest, not of recreation. One of the worst
evils of modern times is the habit of using
the Sabbath as a day of recreation, and even
of dissipation. It behooves all the teaching
agencies of Christendom to set themselves
against this pernicious drift by teaching in
the home, the day school, the Sunday school,
and the church how rightly to use the holy
Sabbath.

Jesus said that the Sabbath was made for
man, not man for the Sabbath; and in say-
ing this he was breaking from off the Sab-
bath those bm-densome conditions which the
traditions of the Jews had placed upon it.
The divine Sabbath had been so obscured by
them as to be wholly lost sight of. The re-
ligious teachers who were objecting to Christ's
use of the Sabbath for works of mercy were
teaching the people that a man should not wear
shoes with tacks in them on the Sabbath,
Y

98 OtTK POLITY.

lest the grass should be thereby crushed,
and thus amount to a sort of mowing; and
that a tailor should not place a needle in
his coat late in the day before the Sabbath,
, lest he should forget and leave it there, and
thus bear a burden on the Sabbath day.
These are but samples of much foolishness
which was in vogue in that day, and which
perverted God's day so as to make it a burden
instead of a blessing. Now Christ, instead of
abrogating the Sabbath or implying that it
was to be used for recreation, was but re-
storing it to its original place as a day of rest
and religious improvement.

It seems that there were in the days of
Isaiah some who took the recreation view of
the Sabbath, and the words of the greatest of
the old prophets are sufficient to fully cover
the case now. God, speaking through him,
says: "If thou turn away thy foot from the
sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy
day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of
the Lord, honorable; and shalt honor him, not
doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own
pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: then
shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I
will cause thee to ride upon the high places of
the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of

THE GENERAL RULES. 99

Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the Lord
hath spoken it." (Isa. Iviii. 13, 14.)

Let it be noted that the command to work
on the other six days is as explicit and as bind-
ing as that which requires us to rest on the
seventh.

Drunk&MieHs^ or <k%nhmg splrUuaas liqucyrs
unless in cases of necessity. The Methodists
from the beginning have been a temperance
people, and they are still such, not in theory
only but in practice. The American Metho-
dists constitute, perhaps, the strongest single
phalanx in the nation against this mammoth
evil. But there needs to be the most thor-
ough and constant teaching on this subject, in
order that no generation of our young people
shall be liable to repeat the folly and sin of
drinking for lack of information. There is
no sphere in which it is truer that eternal
vigilance is the price of liberty.

Intemperance is the costliest and most de-
structive sin of mankind. It is this in itself,
and in addition it leads in very many cases to
every other form of sin. It is the mother of
crimes. Intoxicants, even when used under
the rule in "cases of necessity," ought to be
used with the utmost caution and under the
restraints of an enlightened conscience. The

100 OUB POLITY.

story of the man who was bitten by a snake
and was given whisky for it, though not new,
is exact and apt. The bite got well, and in
due time the snake died, but twenty years
later the man was still taking the medicine.

All in all, total abstinence is the best rule,
because the only one that is absolutely safe.

(a) Fighting^ quarreling^ hrmoUng; (b)
Irother going to law with Irother; (c) return^
ing evil for evil^ or railing for railing; (d)
the using many vjords in huying or selling.

(a) These things are but little less than
barbarous, and are wholly out of harmony with
that spirit of fraternity which is ever a mark
of the truly regenerate man.

(h) As a rule, litigation even for righteous
claims is harmful to one's relations and influ-
ence. In most cases it is better both morally
and financially to pay a lawyer to keep you
out of the courts than to take you through
them.

(c) "Evil for evil, or railing for railing,"
embodies the spirit of the old order of "an
eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," which
Christ distinctly condemned.

(d) "Let your communication be, Yea,
yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than
these cometh of evil." Talk straight to the

XHB GENEEAL RULES.

101

point, and when you have done turn to some-
thing else.

The buying or selling goods that have not

paid the duty.

The days in which these rules originated
were days of much smuggling. The govern-
ment was being constantly defrauded by ship-
pers and merchants who in various ways were
avoiding the payment of the lawful duties.
This was simply stealing from the govern-
ment, and those who knowingly took part in
the benefits were partners with the thieves.
Of course no truly Christian man could do
such a thing. The principle involved still
abides.

The tariff may be right or it may be wrong;
but in either event the man who knowingly
deals in goods which have not paid it is cer-
tainly wrong.

There is a very loose notion abroad as to
the obligation on the part of the individual to
deal fairly and justly with the government
and with Corporations. An honesty which
does not deport itself with exact righteous-
ness in relation to both is not worthy of the

name.

The giving or taking things on usury, i. d.,
unlawful interest.

102 OUR POLITY.

The word "usury" is from the Latin word
tisus^ which in this connection means "so
much for the use of "—that is, any interest
whatever. It is in this sense that the word
is used in the Bible. It retained this sense
until within the last three centuries. The
Jews were forbidden by the law to take any
interest from each other for the use of money
or other commodities. Hence under their
law any interest was usury. Usury now
means unlawful interest — that is, interest at
a higher rate than that provided for in the
law of the State within which the business is
transacted. The terms "giving" and "tak-
ing" seem to include him who borrows at un-
lawful interest as well as him who lends. It
must, nevertheless, be allowed that the two
cases are quite different as to the moral ele-
ment involved.

TJncharitahle or unprofitable conversation^
particularly speaking evil of magistrates or of
ministers.

This is an exceedingly important rule. The
power of speech is one of the greatest and
most dangerous dignities conferred upon
man. "Out of the abundance of the heart
the mouth speaketh." Purity of speech is
one of the highest signs of a noble and re-

THE GENBBAL BULKS.

103

fined nature. Coarseness dnd baseness of
speech can come from but one source. Men
do not often make mistakes in their esti-
mate of it. The crudest men know that low-
ness of speech is unbecoming the children of

God.

Uncharitable speech indicates a harsh and •
uncharitable mood, if not a fixed disposition.
It always inflicts two injuries, one upon the
victim of it and the other upon the author.
Charity even toward one's enemies is one of
the strongest pledges of trueness toward one's
friends. Uncharitable talk when once begun
knows no limits. It is like a fire in a field,
which does not burn according to metes and
bounds, but by its own heat and the material it
finds in all directions to feed upon.

The unprofitable conversation referred to in
the rule means light and trashy talk, such as
is common among gossips and gabblers, and to
which young people are especially liable if
not rightly guarded against it. The unfur-
nished mind finds it much easier to prate about
things of no value than to prepare for season-
able and profitable talk. But unprofitable
conversation also includes more serious and
thoughtful talk which lacks a pure and
helpful purpose. This is even more to be

104 OUR POLITY.

avoided than idle and meaningless conversa-
tion.

Speaking evil of rulers and ministers is a
very common fault. It seems to be assumed
by many that any exaltation in office implies
the right of the people to make a sort of tar-
get of the man thus exalted. Nothing is far-
ther from the truth. Such men deserve the
sympathy and the support of those whom
they represent in so far as these can be con-
scientiously given. All faithful men occupy-
ing places of trust and power realize that the
higher they go as men reckon height, the
heavier their responsibilities become and the
more burdensome their duties. Men, wheth-
er magistrates or ministers, who serve the
people faithfully have a right to the moral
support of the public. To discount this by
evil-speaking is a wrong to the men and often-
times a crime against the civil or religious in-
terests which such men are set to serve.

If rulers or ministers are either incompe-
tent [or unfaithful, let a change be made in
a constitutional way. Evil-speaking corrects
nothing.

In general, the habit of reckless criticism
within the household needs to be most careful-
ly guarded against. Much infidelity is bred

THB GBNBRAl, BULKS.

105

in children by indiscriminate and indiscreet
criticism of the preacher and the preaching.
Whoever destroys in himself or another a
genuine reverence for superiors in years, in
attainments, in position rightly used, is fool-
ishly cutting from above him the rounds of
the ladder by which he would rise to higher
things. A true reverence, especially in young
people, is one of the most beautiful and
charming of virtues, and is the spring of un-
numbered blessings to society. It is the very
chivalry of man's moral nature, and adorns
every stage of life as nothing else can do.

Doing to otliers as we would not they should
do unto us.

This is merely the negative statement of
the golden rule, and includes all forms of in-
jury to our fellow-men.

Doing what we l^/nmo is not for the glory of

God: a«,

The putting on of gold and costly appa/rel.

A display of extravagant and vainglorious
finery is always unbecoming in the children
of God. This is no doubt the spirit aimed at
in this rule. Any such interpretation of it as
would lead the Church to regulate the per-
sonal habits of its members in regard to their
attire has long since ceased. It is, neverthe-

106 (U Tl POLITY.

less, well for all to have due regard to situa-
tion and ability in their dressing. The use of
jewelry or fine clothing to the exclusion of a
liberal part in the benevolent movements of
the Church is wrong beyond question, and
shows a low and selfish disregard of the
claims of others for the necessities of life and
for mental and spiritual enlightenment. It
indicates a spirit which is far from the spirit
of Christ. "If any man have not the Spirit
of Christ, he is none of his."

The talcing such diversions as ca/nnot he used
in the name of the Lord Jesus.

The language of this rule clearly implies
that there are diversions which may be taken
without injury. Diversions which are not in
themselves harmful to health or character,
when not used to excess so as to become a
waste of time or a dissipation, may be used
with profit.

What those diversions are is left to the
intelligence and conscience of the individual
believer, except as to those which have been
commonly condemned by men as evil, or have
been pronounced against by the authorities of
our Church . These prohibited amusements are
dancing., card-playing.^ theater-going., attend-
a/nce upon race courses^ circu^e.^, and the like.

THE GKNEBAL RirLES. 107

Chief among these offenses is the modern
dance. The bishops, in their address to the
General Conference of 1874, speak on the
point as follows: "An explicit utterance was
given by order of the last General Confer-
ence, in our pastoral address, on 'Worldly
Amusements.' We now repeat that utter-
ance. We abate none of its teachings with
respect either to manifest inconsistency of
such indulgences with the spirit and profession
of the gospel, or the perils which they bring
to the souls of men. . . . Among these
indulgences ... is the modern dance,
both in its private and public exhibition, as
utterly opposed to the genius of Christianity
as taught by us."

The General Conference of 1890 appointed
a special committee of fifteen to prepare an
address on the spiritual state of the Church.
The report of this committee was adopted by
the General Conference and published in the
Discipline of that year. In that report is
found the following language:

"In this same condemnation, as equally
contrary to the Scriptures, which declare that
'the friendship of the world is enmity against
God,' to our General Rules, and to the vows
which our members have voluntarily assumed.

108 OUR POLITY.

this General Conference would include card-
playing, theater-going, attendance upon race
courses, circuses, and the like. These offenses
are likewise jastifiable grounds of discipline."

The General Conference, having adopted
this report, took the following action:

''^ Resolved^ That inasmuch as the deliver-
ances of our bishops, as contained in their
quadrennial addresses to the General Confer-
ence from time to time, and as quoted at
length by the Special Committee of Fifteen,
have declared dancing, theater-going, card-
playing, and the like worldly indulgences, to
be contrary to the spirit of Christianity, and
violative of the General Rules and moral dis-
cipline of our Church, as also of the vows
of our Church members; we therefore heart-
ily indorse the aforesaid deliverances as con-
taining the just and correct interpretation of
the law in the premises, and as such this
General Conference accepts the same as hav-
ing equal force and authority as if contained
in the body of the Discipline." (1[497, Dis-
cipline of 1890.)

These utterances and acts put the position
of our Church on these diversions beyond
question. In this regard the Methodist
Church articulates and authoritativelv states

THE GENEEAL BULES. 109

what all the leading Churches hold. Espe-
cially is this true of the modern dance, which,
though practiced by many Church members
in the various denominations and is even con-
nived at by some communions, is approved
by no Church in Christendom, and is severe-
ly condemned by most.

A consensus of religious opinion running
through many ages of trial and embracing
many peoples touching the injurious nature of
any practice is itself an almost unanswerable
argument against such practice. But a care-
ful examination into the data upon which the
Church has made up and holds its estimate of
the dance will furnish ample proofs to every
age that the practice is thoroughly carnal,
wars against spiritual interests, and brings
much detriment to the spiritual life of many
who engage in it.

But let it be noted that a wise administra-
tion of discipline in regard to these things
will never be harsh. It is sometimes very
difficult for young persons to see in these di-
versions what the Church sees. While all
sane young persons can see that a vow delib-
erately made and deliberately and habitually
broken involves sin, it is still best to reen-
force them with such knowledge of the in-

110 OUB POLITY.

herent or incidental evil of these practices as
will make them both clear and strong in their
own views against them. A wise discipline
will, therefore, always be by instruction, by
patience, and in the main by persuasion.

The singing those songs, or reading those
books, which do not tend to the knowledge or
love of God.

The songs and books of a people are the
mightiest factors in determining of what char-
acter a people shall be. Singing and reading
are, therefore, suitable subjects for advisory
rules on the part of the Church which would
bring its members to the highest and best.
This rule does not mean that we are to sing
no songs or read no books except such as are
distinctly religious in character, but rather
that we shall avoid all such as are pernicious
or empty of substantial good. In Mr. Wes-
ley's time there was very little that was
wholesome and edifying in the literature of
the day, and much that was bad, and he did a
truly great work in expimging, recasting,
and making books for his people to read.
There is now no more important interest for
parents and religious teachers to look after.
Many a young person has been ruined by
making a companion of one bad book.

THK GENERAL BULBS. HI

Of.

Softnens or needless self-indulgenct
There is no room for a lazy man in the
kingdom of God. A self-indulgent and ease-
seeking person cannot fairly claim to be a
follower of our Lord, who himself came not
to be ministered unto but to minister, and who
went about doing good. The servant is not
above his Lord. It is every man's duty to be
diligent, not only in spiritual concerns but
also in temporal affairs. No amount of
wealth or opportunity for ease can free a man
from the obligation to pursue with alacrity
some chosen field of service.
Laying iip treasure upon ea/rth.
Mr. Wesley in one of his sermons gives
three great mottoes on this subject: (1) Make
all you can. (2) Save all you can. (3) Give
all you can. Make all you can consistently
with perfect integrity and the rights of oth-
ers. Save all you can— that is, waste noth-
ing. Give all you can consistently with yom-
plain obUgations. Mr. Wesley himself made
much, wasted nothing, gave everything. Had
he been a man of family, he probably could
not have made so much, wasted so little, or
given all. Nevertheless, he preached the
right doctrine and gave the right example
concerning earthly treasures. Some wag has

112 OUB POLITY.

said pithily at least that the maxim which
governs the business world of to-day is:
"Make all you can, and can all you make."
Perhaps no desire is more universal and more
hurtful to spiritual life than the desire to lay
up treasure upon earth. The Church is by
no means free from it, and there is much
need of sound teaching in order that our peo-
ple may be saved from an inordinate love of
the world.

Borrowing without a prohahility of 'pouying^
or taking up goods without a prohahility of
paying for them.

This is virtually obtaining money or goods
under false pretenses, which is a misdemean-
or under the laws of many, perhaps most, of
the States. Thoroughgoing honesty is one of
the most valuable fruits of the gospel, and is
one of the most charming traits in Chm-ch
members as they are looked upon by the eyes
of the world. There are honest pagans;
shall any Christian be less?

The next section of the Rules, on doing good,
is given so clearly and in such detail as to need
no comment. It is as follows:

It is expected of all who contiwue in these so-
cieties that they should continue to evidence
their desire of salvation,

THE GENEBAL EULES. 113

Secondly^ hy doing good^ hy being in every
kind merciful after their -power ^ as they home
opportv/nity^ doing good of every possible sort^
a/nd^ as far as possible^ to all men:

To their bodies^ of the ability which God giw-
eth^ by giving food to the hungry^ by clothing
the naked, by visiting or helping th^n that are
sick or in prison;

To their souls^ by instructing^ reprovingy or
exhorting all we ha/oe any intercourse with;
tra/mn/pling under foot that enthusiastic doctri/ne
that ^^ive are not to do good unless our hearts
be free to it^

By doi/ng good, especially to them that are of
the household of faith, or groaning so to be;
employing them preferably to others, buying one
of another, helping each other' iri biisiness; and
so much tlie more because the. 'woi'ldwill love its
own, a/nd them only.

By allpossihle diligence and frugality, that
the gospel be not blamed.

By running with patience tJie race which is
set before them, denying themselves, and taking
up their cross daily; submitting to bear the re-
proach of Christ, to be as the filth and offscour-
ing of the world, and looking that men should
say all mcmner of evil of them falsely for the
Lord'^s sake.

114 OUB POLITY.

It is expected of all who desire to continue m
these societies that they should continue to evi-
defice their desire of salvation^

Thirdly, hy attending upon all the ordinmices
of God; such are.

The public worship of God.

There is much strength in fellowship, no
matter what the issue; especially is this the
case in spiritual things. No man is so strong
as not to need the reenf orcement which comes
from communion with those of like mind and
heart. The doctrines of the Fatherhood of
God a;id the brotherhood of man stand very
close together. He who has lost his seme of
fellowship would do well to look closely into
the foundations of his faith. The great de-
fection of Thomas against his Lord was due to
his being absent from the fii-st prayer meeting
after the resurrection. "Forsake not the as-
sembling of yourselves together, as the man-
ner of some is." When the Pentecost came,
the disciples were of one accord in one place.
The divine presence is promised to the assem-
blies of the saints.

The ministry of tJie word, either read or ex-
pounded.

Jesus ordained that the world should be
sa^'ed by the preaching of the gospel. There

THE GENERAL RULES. 115

is no substitute for preaching. It has regu-
lated the ethical state of men through the ages,
more than any other influence, and will prob-
ably continue to do scf to the end.

Paul asks: " How can they hear without a
preacher? " It may also be asked: "How can
he preach without hearers ? " It is the plain
duty of every member who can to attend regu-
larly upon the ministry of the word, and espe-
cially upon that of his own Church. All the
good ends of good preaching are helped by
good hearing.

The Supper of the Lord.

Our Lord, who while living made himself
of no reputation, left of himself when depart-
ing no monument except that he made of the
perishable elements, bread aad wine, a remem-
brancer. Even this is conditioned upon love
and faith upon the part of those who eat and
drink. He did not designate a place, a time,
or a quantity. He said in substance: Do this
as oft as ye shall do it in remembrance of me.
The use of this holy sacrament is both a privi-
lege and a duty. Many have been deterred
from it by foolish and superstitious conceits.
He eats and drinks worthily who eats and
drinks with faith, and, it might be added,
with a sense of his own unworthiness. '

116 OUR POLITY.

It ifi the place of the stewards in each charge
to procure and arrange the elements for the
Hacrament. This should always be attended
to in a becoming way. • In some places there
is much neglect. A neat pitcher, however
cheap, is better than the bottle which some-
times appears. There is no occasion in con-
nection with which there is more reason that
all the proprieties should be carefully ob-
served.

Family and private pray&f.

There can be no spiritual life without prayer.
It is " ^he Christian's vital breath . " The neg-
lect of it is always followed by religious de-
cline. The great movements of the Church
can be marked by the presence of men and
women who wero mighty in prayer — princes
who prevailed with God.

The family altar is the birthplace of rev-
erence and devotion as is no other place on
earth. Parents who allow their children to go
into the severe ordeals of life without its hal-
lowed memories and fruits commit a great
wrong against their offspring.

Searching the Scriptures.

One might as well expect to become a great
lawyer without studying the common law or
the statutes of his State as to become a robust

THE GENERAL EULE8. 117

Christian without a thorough khowledge and
frequent reading of the word of God. It is
the sword of the Spirit, and he who fights sin
in himself and others must know and constant-
ly use it. The tendency to turn all Scripture
study out of the family into the Sunday school
is pernicious. The home is the best place for
readying and studying God's word.

Fasting or ahstinence.

This rule has fallen very much into disuse.
It is, nevertheless, an important one. There
are occasions in religious life and effort for
which fasting or abstinence is an alinost nec-
essary preparation. It is wholesome for the
body, quickens the mental faculties, tends to a
sense of dependence by impressing us with the
perishable nature of our bodies and of all ter- '
restrial life, leads to gratitude for material
gifts, and in many ways helps toward a more
spiritual order of living.

n.

The Conferences of Methodism.

When a number of persons join in the doing
of any work, it is well for them to understand
thoroughly three things : the reasons for do-
ing the work, the methods by which it is to
be done, and the field in which they are to
labor.

In the foregoing statement of our doctrines
are given what may be called in the highest
sense the reasons for all the labors which have
engaged the Methodists for more than a cen-
tury and a half and are engaging them now
throughout the world. In the following pages
it is proposed to set forth in a very brief way
the polity of Methodism, or its method of
working, and also to outline at least the fields
of its operation.

It may be well to say at the outset that the
polity of Methodism is unique — that is, it dif-
fers in so many vital points from the polities
of the other Churches that there has been
nothing hitherto in ecclesiastical history to
which it may be compared. It will become
necessary in these pages to stress these pe-
(118)

THK <:OXFERENCKS OF METHODISM. 119

culiarities, sometimes to the point of making
a comparison of its results with those obtained
by other branches of the Christian Church, for
whose character and methods the writer en-
tertains a profound respect.

The assembly name of Methodism in all its
branches is the word "Conference." The
spirit and purpose of Methodist assemblies is
very well conveyed by this term, which means
a meeting together in order to confer touch-
ing all the persons and interests which lie
within the domain of the Conference.

The Methodist Episcopal Church, South,
has five kinds of Conference : Church, Quarter-
ly, District, Annual, General.

1. The Church Conference is composed of
all the members of the local Church and resi-
dent members of the Annual Conference.
The pastor is the chairman. A secretary is
elected annually by the body. This Confer-
ence is very much like a family meeting in
which all the interests of the household may
be freely discussed and all local interests
looked after, and is invaluable in quickening
all the interests of the Church.

The Church Conference is directed to meet
once a month in stations, and at least once
every three months at each appointment on

120

OUR POLITY.

circuits. For order of work see Discipline,
•[91.

^. The Quart&dy Conf&rence. — This body
meets, as its name implies, once a quarter, or
four times in each Conference year. It is
composed of all the traveling and local preach-
ers residing within the circuit or station, with
the exhorters, stewards, trustees, and class
leaders of the respective circuits, stations, and
missions, together with the superintendents of
Sunday schools who are male members of the
Church, the secretaries of (Church Confer-
ences, and the presidents of Senior Epworth
Leagues, when eligible. The chairman of the
Quarterly Conference is the presiding elder
or, in his absence, the preacher in charge.
For order of work see Discipline, ^[87.

3, The Disti'ict Conference. — This meeting
is held once a year in each district at such
time as the presiding elder may appoint.
The District Conference is composed of all
the preachers in the district, traveling and
local, and of laymen, the number of whom
and the mode of their appointment each An-
nual Conference determines for itself. The
chairman of the District Conference is a
bishop or, in his absence, the presiding elder.
For order of work see Discipline, ^ 72.

THK COXFKRKNCKS OF METHODISM. J2l

li.. The Annual Conference. — This Confer-
ence is composed of all the traveling preach-
ers in full connection with it and four lay rep-
resentatives from each district. The lay mem -
hers are chosen annually by the District Con-
ference, and participate in all the business of
the Conference except such as involves minis-
terial character. The number and bounds of
the Annual Conferences are determined by the
General Conference. The time of each meet-
ing is appointed by the bishop in charge, and
the place is fixed by the Conference. The
President of the Annual Conference is one of
the bishops or, in his absence, a member of
the Conference elected by ballot. The presi-
dent thus elected discharges all the duties of
a bishop except that of ordination.

This is by far the most important, though
not the highest in authority, of all the Con-
ferences of Methodism. It has executive su-
pervision of all the interests of the Chm-ch
within its prescribed bounds, such as furnish-
ing the people with the gospel. Home and
Foreign Missions, Church extension, Sunday
schools, Epworth Leagues, and Christian
education. It has also large powers of initia-
tion. Indeed, much of our General Confer-
ence legislation originates as to the thought

122 OUR POLITY.

and plan within one or more of the Annual
Conferences, and no constitutional matter
passed upon by the General Conference can
become law without the approval of three-
fourths of the members of all the Annual Con-
ferences.

The Annual Conference passes at each ses-
sion upon the personal life and official admin-
istration of .every preacher who is a member
of it. The method adopted in this is as open
and clear as possible. The name of each man
is called in open Conference under the ques-
tion, "Are all the preachers blameless in fheir
life and official administration ? " The answer
must be audible and without ambiguity. If
a negative answer be given by anybody, lay
or clerical, the law provides for an immediate
investigation, and the acquittal of the accused
or the imposition of proper penalties, the
extremest of which is expulsion from the
ministry and the Church. The right of ap-
peal belongs to every member who is con-
victed of any crime. That appeal is to the
General Conference next ensuing. If a mem-
ber be tried and acquitted, .there can be no ap-
peal: the decision of the Annual Conference
is final. The Annual Conference has the
right to locate one of its members for ineffi-

THE CO^'FEKKNCES OF METHODISM. 123

ciency or unacceptability. Such action does
not imply anything against the personal char-
acter of the one so dealt with.

We have forty-six Annual Conferences.
Foui- of these are in foreign countries, and
one lies partly in Mexico and partly in the
United States.

5. The General Conference.— This body is
composed of an equal number of traveling
preachers and laymen, elected by the several
Annual Conferences. The maximum and min-
imum ratios of representation are fixed by what
is called the Second Restrictive Rule. Within
the limits thus fixed the General Conference
may determine from time to time such ratios
as it may deem advisable. The present ratio
is one clerical member for every forty-eight
members of each Annual Conference, and an
equal number of lay members. The latest
General Conference (1902) was composed of
two hundred and seventy-eight members.

The President of the General Conference
is one of the bishops or, if all the bishops
should be absent or disabled, a member of
the body elected by ballot. The bishops are
not members of the General Conference oth-
erwise than as Presidents of the body when
in session.

124 OUE POLITY.

The General Conference is the only legis-
lative assembly of the Church, and its busi-
ness is largely transacted through estab-
lished committees, very much as in other leg-
islative bodies. The standing committees
are fourteen in number, and are as follows:
Episcopacy, Revisals, Boundaries, Itinerancy,
Missions, Sunday Schools, Epworth League,
Education, Temperance, Finance, Church
Extension, Publishing Interests, Colportage,
Appeals.

The General Conference, being a delegated
body, representative of the whole Church,
has power to do whatever it deems best for the
interests of the Church within the limits pre-
scribed in the Six Restrictive Rules. It has
power also to alter any of these rules except
the first, which relates to the making of any
change in our Articles of Religion. The
method prescribed for altering any of the
other five is given in a proviso to the Sixth
Rule. It provides that the proposed change
shall pass the General Conference by a two-
thirds majority, and then be ratified by
three-fourths of the members of the sever-
al Annual Conferences present and voting.
Such proposals of change may originate with
the Annual Conferences. In that event the

THE CONFEBENCES OP METHODISM. 125

order is reversed, and a three-fourths vote
in the Annual Conferences must be followed
by a two-thirds vote of the General Confer-
ence.

The General Conference meets once in f our
years in the month of April or May, and at
such place as it may select.

In the interim of the General Conferences
the work prescribed by it is carried forward
under the direction of the following

General Boards.

(1) The Book Committee, which has full
supervision of all our publishing interests,
and to which all connectional officers are
amenable for their official conduct till the
meeting of the General Conference. This
committee is composed of thirteen members,
six clerical and seven lay, elected by the Gen-
eral Conference, on nomination of a special
committee appointed by the bishops. It elects
its own chairman and secretary quadren-
nially.

(2) The Board of Missions, which consists
of a President, Vice President, Secretary,
Treasurer, and seventeen managers, elected
by the General Conference quadrennially.
The bishops and the Secretary of the Board of

126 OUR POLITY.

Church Extension are ex officio members of the
Board.

The Board of Managers has full charge of
all foreign missionary affairs, such as the
raising of funds and their application, the
selection of candidates for the work, and the
supervision of all the interests of the Church
in foreign fields.

This Board has also an Assistant Secretary,
elected by the Board quadrennially.

(3) The Sunday School Board. This Board
consists of six members, five elected quad-
rennially by the General Conference, and the
Sunday School Editor, who is elected quad-
rennially by the General Conference, and who
is ex officio chairman of the Board. To this
Board belongs the general managenrent of all
Sunday school interests throughout the
Church.

(4) The Ep worth League Board, consisting
of thirteen members, six clerical and six lay
and one of the bishops, who is e,c officio Presi-
dent of the Board. Besides the President and
General Secretary, who is elected quadi-en-
nially by the General Conference, the other
officers are three Vice Presidents and a Treas-
urer, who are elected quadrennially by the
Board.

THE CONFERENCES OF METHODISM. 127

(5) The Board of Education, which is com-
posed of fifteen members, elected by the
General Conference on nomination of the
Committee on Education. The Board elects
its own President, Vice President, and Re-
cording Secretary, who also acts as Treasurer.
The Corresponding Secretary, known as the
Secretary of Education, is elected by the
General Conference.

It is the duty of this Board to supervise all
the educational interests of the Church, as
provided for in Chapter XII. of the Disci-
pline.

(6) The Board of Church Extension, which
consists of a President, Vice President, Cor-
responding Secretary, and Treasm-er, and
thirteen members, elected quadrennially by
the General Conference, and continuing in
ofBce until their successors are elected and
accept. The bishops and Secretary of Board
of Missions are ex oftcio members of the
Board. For a full statement of the work com-
mitted to this Board see Discipline, 1 % 381-
393.

All these Boards meet once a year, usually
in the month of May, and in the city of Nash-
ville, except the Board of Church Extension,
which meets in Louisville, Ky.

m.

The Itinekanot.

The Methodist itinerancy is the most per-
fectly organized obedience the world has
yet seen to the great commission: "Go ye
into all the world, and preach the gospel to
every creature. "

The two commands of the commission are
to go and tojpreach.

A Chm*ch which was the chief exponent of
that phase of Arminian theology which teach-
es that all men are free to be saved, and that
nothing stands in the way thereto except their
own agency, could not logically stop short of
claiming the world for its parish. To visit-
that parish with the gospel was the great
economic problem with which it undertook
to deal in the production of an itinerant plan
for the preaching of the gospel.

Every one entering our traveling connec-
tion solemnly pledges himself to go any-
where to preach the gospel, whither the ap-
pointing power may send him. This does not
mean simply anywhere within that Annual
Conference with which he connects his for-
(128)

THE ITINERANCT.

129

tunes, but anywhere within the range of a
reasonable demand for his services.

This leads me to remark that the Metho-
dist itinerancy is as general as the episcopa-
cy. Every preacher who unites with any
Conference thereby joins the traveling connec-
tion—that is, joins the ministry of Southern
Methodism to go whithersoever the bishop
may see such need of his services as justifies
his appointment. This is the economic fact
upon which the transfer power of the bishop
is based. Otherwise the transfer power would
become nothing more than a power of per-
suasion, and as a matter of authority amount
to nothing. It is proper to say here that our
bishops usually, perhaps unexceptionally, con-
fer with a preacher to be transferred from
his own to another Conference, so as, in a
good measure, to secure his assent before he
is appointed. The bishops, nevertheless, have
the power to transfer a preacher to any field
within our boundaries without his consent, and
even against his will in the case. It is due to be
said here that, inasmuch as our itinerancy is as
general as our episcopacy, and as our Church
confers upon the bishops the right to transfer
preachers without any final right on the part of
the preachers to refuse, such preachers, when

130 OUR POLITY.

transferred, have the same right to considera-
tion and fellowship as those who have been
members of the receiving Conference from
the beginning. As a matter of fact, the
transfer has to forego many things which are
peculiarly dear to a Methodist preacher in
order to serve the Church by obeying the or-
der of Providence and the appointing power
to the extent of leaving his own Conference
to take work in another.

But the life work of nearly all our preach-
ers is within the bounds of the Annual Con-
ference with which they first connect them-
selves. Within those bounds every man is
appointed to his work each year by the bish-
op who presides. The bishop alone is the
responsible appointing power. This does not
mean that no others exert an influence. The
bishop receives much advice, a large amount
of which he is no doubt wise in disregard-
ing. But so vast a movement as the itin-
erancy does not leave so vital a matter to
haphazard. The bishops are furnished with
the best system possible for obtaining coun-
sel of the most seasoned kind in regard
to both the preachers to be appointed and
the fields to be served. For the full vindi-
cation of this position it is necessary that we

THE ITINEBAXCY. 131

glance at the order of work within the Con-
ference.

Each Annual Conference contains quite a
large territory, sometimes a whole state,
sometimes a half state, and so on, according
to the population to be served, etc. The lar-
gest Conferences have from one hundred and
fifty to two hundred pastoral charges, em-
bracing from sixty to one hundred thou-
sand Church members. Each Conference is
divided into a number of presiding elders' dis-
tricts, from ten to twelve, according to the
number of charges in the Conference. These,
districts usually contain from twelve to twen-
ty pastoral charges. The presiding elder,
appointed annually by the bishop, has charge
of the district, and his duties in general are
to preach on four occasions in each pastoral
charge, to preside over the Quarterly and
District Conferences, counsel with the preach-
ers for their own improvement and for the
benefit of the Church, and to see that all the
interests of the Church are looked after.
This office is one of very great importance,
and when duly magnified stands second only
to that of a bishop. It involves heavy labors^
large responsibilities, and vast opportunities.
This leads us back to the question of the

132 OUR POLITY.

appointing power and the usual method of its
exercise. All the presiding elders of an An-
nual Conference compose a council which has
come to be called the bishop's cabinet. Usual-
ly the presiding bishop calls the presiding
elders to meet him daily, and they together
go carefully over the charges, examining into
the work of the preachers, and making a ten-
tative appointment of each to a place. There
are frequent revisions of these appointments
before they are ready for announcement at
the close of the Conference. Not only does
the bishop have the full benefit of the counsel
of these chosen advisers, .but any preacher or
layman has access to the presiding elders and
the bishop to show any view he may hold in
regard to men and places. But after all, the
responsibility for every appointment is with
the bishop, who, if he should choose, has
power to change all the appointments agreed
upon by the presiding elders, including the
places of the presiding elders themselves.

It has been said by some that this order
places too much power in the hands of the
bishops. This might be true under certain
conceivable conditions. But so long as wise
men do not put themselves to great trouble
to do foolish things, or good men to do bad

THE ITINERANf^V.

13a

things, in either case without reward and in
full view of persuasive penalties, there is no
danger of the misuse of this peculiarly sacred
power. Bishops are, of course, not infallible,
and may be deceived either intentionally on
the part of some who approach them or un-
wittingly on the part of others, and thus mis-
takes may occur. But even in that event
there are more expeditious and easier correc-
tions in our system than in any other yet tried
by the Church.

No preacher is appointed to any work for
more than one year at a time, nor can any be
appointed to the same charge for more than
the fourth year in succession, except in those
peculiar cases provided for in the Discipline.
Now and then a little local antagonism on
the part of preachers and congregations has
appeared on account of this feature — the time
limit; but in reality there is not a more im-
portant feature of the itinerant system.
' It has been said that it prevents us from
having a settled pastorate, such as is found in
the Churches which have the congregational
form of government, where the congregation
selects the pastor and keeps him so long as
the people want hira and he wishes to stay.
A few instances of a pastorate running through

134 OUB POLITY.

forty or even fifty years have given an incor-
rect impression as to the average duration
of the pastoral term in the congregational
Churches. On the other hand, the liability
to an annual change in our pastorate and the
certainty of it at the end ©f four years have
produced an erroneous impression as to its
average duration.

Some years ago Bishop McTyeire made a
very careful inquiry into this matter and
brought to light some very surprising data.
He made the field of comparison to cover the
leading towns and cities of the South and
Southwest where our Church has its chief
sphere of work. The three leading Congre-
gational Churches of the same region are the
Baptist, the Presbyterian, and the Protestant
Episcopal. Bishop McTyeire obtained the
record of the pastorates of these three Church-
es through a considerable period, and found
that the average pastoral term in our Chm'ch
was longer than the average term in the other
three — that is, putting together the pastorates
of the other three Churches and obtaining the
average for the three, ours was found to be
the longer term. The Bishop called attention
to another feature of the situation which is
worthy of note — viz., that when in other

THK ITINEBANCY.

135

Churches the people would be rid of a pastor
they must construct a prize with which to
lift him out, while with the Methodists the
wheel rolls round on schedule and rolls him
out. There can be no doubt as to the supe-
riority of the wheel over the lever as a means
of locomotion.

But there is a much more important thing
than the length of the pastoral term which
has been accomplished by our system as by
no other— viz., the constant furnishing of all
our people with preaching and the other
means of grace.

It has been the economic boast of Metho-
dism that it has no preacher without a Church
to serve, and no Church without a preacher.
In the congregational Churches this, evil is
inevitable and constant. Occasional reports
made public touching this question show
thousands of Churches in the United States
without a pastor, and about the same number
of pastors without a Church.

Through the itinerant plan as used by us not
only is every congregation constantly sup-
plied with pastoral service, but by reason of
our connectional order men are often appoint-
ed to places where we have neither an organ-
ized society nor a place of worship. They

136 OTJK POLITY.

are sustained out of a fund raised in each
Conference for that purpose until the people
have been evangelized and have themselves
become contributors to the further spread of
the same gospel which has saved them.

The itinerancy requires that many things
of a social nature be foregone by both pastor
and people, things which in themselves are
delightful and worthy to be sought. It also
involves many inconveniences, and even to
this day hardships of no ordinary kind. But
it is the best way of doing the thing proposed,
and is not likely to decline or grow effete so
long as the Methodist people maintain that
spirit of obedience to the great commission
which led to its origination and its use thus
far.

The success of the itinerancy as a means
of evangelization has been truly wonderful.
The organized movement began in England
with all odds against it in 1739, and in Amer-
ica in 1769. So rapid has been the growth
of the Church that its members now number
nearly seven millions, with probably not less
than fifty millions of adherents. It has not
only grown populous beyond any precedent,
but it has become rich and influential, and
has affected favorably the doctrines and poli-

THK ITINEBANCTf. " 137

ties of nearly all the Protestant denomina-
tions. God has unquestionably set his seal of
approval upon it. Notwitstanding the mar-
velous progress of the past, it is evident that
Methodism has but fairly begun its career of
evangelization, provided its leaders and peo-
ple are true to its doctrines and life. Many
lands, with their teeming unsaved millions,
await its ministry. In no land where it has
been planted thus far have its truths and
plans of work failed to command th6 respect
and acceptance of the people.

IV.
Our Mit^istry.

We hold steadfastly to the doctrine that
God calls those whom he would have to pro-
claim his message, and that such a call implies
a call to thoroughly prepare for the best use
of the holy office.

When one is inwardly persuaded of his call
to the ministry, he is, if on examination found
worthy, recommended by the Quarterly Con-
ference of the charge to which he belongs for
license to preach. This recommendation is
now to the District Conference. Formerly—
that is, from the time of our organization till
lg94_the licensing of preachers was by the
Quarterly Conference. The District Confer-
ence receiving the recommendation examines
into the gifts, graces, and usefulness of the
candidate; and, finding him worthy, grants a
license for one year, which must thereafter be
annually renewed until the local preacher thus
made is ordained a deacon. This ordination
comes in due course, by vote of the An-
nual Conference, in four years, provided
the local preacher has done satisfactory work
and is recommended by the District Confer-
(138)

OUR MINISTBY.

139

ence for this order. If the local preacher thus
made desires to join the traveling connection,
he procures a recommendation from the Dis-
trict Conference to the Annual Conference for
admission on trial. At the session of the An-
nual Conference he is examined by two com-
mittees touching his gifts, attainments, and
suitableness for this work. If found worthy,
and if he be needed, he is admitted on trial
by a majority vote of the Annual Conference.
He is not then a member of the Conference,
but is a local preacher on trial to become a
member. If at the expiration of two years
he has proven his fitness for the work, and
passed satisfactory examinations on the course
of study for the two years, he is by order of
the Conference ordained a deacon and admit-
ted into membership in the Conference. If
he continue for two years more to demon-
strate his fitness for the work, and pass the re-
quired examinations on the com-se of study tor
the third and fourth years, he is ordained an

elder. u • •

When- once admitted into membership in
the traveling connection, there are five ways
of going out: To withdraw; to die; to be ex-
pelled for immorality, as provided for m the
Discipline; to ask for and receive a location;

140 OUR POLITY.

and to be located by vote of the Conference
for inefficiency or unacceptability. When lo-
cation occurs, either by request or by the un-
solicited vote of the Conference, the one thus
located remains a local preacher.

It should here be noted that the work of a
local preacher is chiefly to preach within the
charge to which he belongs, under the direc-
tion of the preacher in charge, and to assist in
all manner of religious work as opportunity
may offer. The local preacher pursues some
other vocation for a livelihood, and usually
receives nothing for his services as a preach-
er. The local preacher has been, through
most of our history, a great power in the
Church. With the multiplication of reg-
ular pastors, and a decrease in the size of
pastoral charges, by which most of our peo-
ple are furnished with frequent opportuni-
ties for hearing the word, there has come
a decline in our local ministry which is to
be much regretted. There is still room for
the constant employment of thousands of
such godly and devoted men, and the seer
who can suggest a plan by which the local
ministry can be restored to its pristine pow-
er and spiritual glory will confer a lasting
benefit upon the Church. The English Meth-

OUR MINISTKY.

141

odists, amidst their crowded conditions, are
making great use of it.

Within the Annual Conference, and apart
from those who are in the active work, there are
supernumerary and superannuated preachers.
•'A supernumerary preacher is one who is so
disabled by affliction as to be unable to preach
constantly, but who is willing to do any work
in the ministry which the bishop may direct
and he may be able to perform.'' "A super-
annuated preacher is one who is worn out in
the itinerant service." Superannuated preach-
ers are supported in whole or in part, usually
in part, and a very small part at best, out of
the superannuates' fund— a fund raised chiefly
by collections throughout the Annual Confer-
ence for that purpose.

The highest place in om- ministry is that of
bishop, or General Superintendent. Om- bish-
ops are elected by the General Conference,
which, as we have seen, is a delegated body
composed of an equal number of traveling
preachers and laymen. Bishops are in every
way amenable ito the body which makes them.
The life and oflficial administration of each is
passed under review once in f oiu: years. This
is done in what is known as the Committee on
Episcopacy. Any preacher or layman in the

142 OTJB POLITY.

connection may come, by letter or in per on,
before this committee with any complaint he
may wish to make. It thus happens that our
bishops' lives are lived in the open like those
of all our preachers. No class is held to a
stricter accountability; and yet there is in
that Committee, as elsewhere, a profound
reverence for the oflBce and for those who
are called to fill it. This is largely due to
the unimpeachable integrity and purity of
those who have been occupants of that
place. We have never had a case of trouble
with a bishop on moral grounds, and none
of a serious nature on grounds of adminis-
tration.

The College of Bishops meets once a year,
in the month of May, to consider all the inter-
ests of the Church committed to them. There
is an annual assignment made of each bishop to
the work of the ensuing year. This is done
through a committee of bishops appointed for
that purpose by the College.

There is no class of preachers among us to
which is assigned so long and varied a list of
duties as to our bishops. Their responsibili-
ties are of the largest, and their fields of labor
practically boundless. This will be readily
seen by reading, in Chapter III., Section 2, of

OUR MIXISTRY.

143

the Discipline, what the Church provides that
its bishops shall do.

The bishops, being general superintendents,
are supported by the general Church out of
funds collected for the purpose within each
Annual Conference. Bishops who have be-
come superannuated, and the widows and chil-
dren of deceased bishops, are sustained in the
same way. Both the salaries and allowances
are fixed by recommendation of the Commit-
tee on Episcopacy.

V.

Our CoifNECTioisrALisM.

We may say, without any disparagement
of other forms of Church government, that
there is one element in Methodism which sur-
passes anything hitherto known in Church
organization. That feature may be called
the genius of it rather than a mere element.
We refer to its connectionalism. We call it
the genius of Methodism because it pervades
with its spirit every part of the system from
the reception of a preacher on trial to the
bishopric or general superintendence, and is
in all the work of the Church from the exten-
sion of church - building within the home
field to the giving of the gospel to every
creature. By connectionalism we mean that
summation of conditions by which the whole
Church is present in a good sense wherever
any part of it exists — that is, each part is in
vital relation to all the others. The most in-
experienced preacher in the humblest field is
there in effect by the appointment or will of
the whole Church. The Church brings this
appointment about by the simplest and most
rational method possible. Tt is through the
(144)

OUR CONNECTIONALISM. 145

bishop, who has a wholly general relation, and
who is as truly subject to appointment by his
peers as the pastors are to appointment by
him. He has his work assigned him once a
year, and each time his field is as liable to be
within China or Brazil as in Tennessee. But
this general superintendence, which is thus
free from local prejudices, is not a haphazard
matter. The bishop does his work after
coimsel from the presiding elders, whose busi-
ness it is to know in as far as possible both the
man and the field. The bishops themselves
are elected to this work by the whole Church
in a delegated assembly, which is composed
of traveling preachers and laymen in equal
numbers, and the bishops are constantly ame-
nable to this body for the way in which they
exercise this appointing power as well as all oth-
er functions which belong to the office. It is
in this way that the whole Church makes the
appointment of any preacher, whether he be
the pastor of the remotest mission, with its
peculiar hardships, or the episcopacy, with its
fullness of care and responsibility. This
principle finds most impressive illustration
when an Annual Conference meets in its last
session to receive the appointments. In the
^hole body not a man knows certainly what
10

146 OUR POLITY.

his field of labor will be until the pronounce-
ment falls from the lips of the bishop, the
man through whom the Church appoints him.
These men are not less ardent in their at-
tachments because of the fact that their sys-
tem makes them cosmopolitan in their sym-
pathies and habits of thought. No men have
stronger individuality or more definite pref-
erences than Methodist preachers: They go,
nevertheless, whithersoever they are sent with
a good cheer which is utterly inexplicable to
those who do not understand the workings of
our system. There is no truer exhibition of
moral sublimity in all the organizations of
men than an Annual Conference receiving the
appointments.

There is not to be found elsewhere in hu-
man history such a combination of self-sur-
render and pure democracy as is found in the
Methodist itinerancy and its loyal acceptance
by the Church. The self-surrender element
is found in the Catholic Church, especially in
its Jesuitism, but the democracy is not there.
With the Romanists everything proceeds from
a so-called infallible pope; with the Metho-
dists everything, including its qiinistry
throughout, is of the Church. The self-
surren(iler of the Methodist preacher, while

OITR CONXECTTOXALISM. 147

in a broad and high sense absolute, is yet un-
der guard of a democratic order so thorough
and complete as to take out of it all elements
of mere chance and as far as possible all dan-
gers from mere personal prejudice. In other
words, his surrender is not to any man or
committee of men, but to the whole Church
for the good of the whole. Not only so, but
the surrender of the right, on the part of the
preacher, to choose his field of work is an-
swered back to by the surrender, on the part
of the congregation, of its right to choose a
pastor. And yet there is no lack of intelli-
gent counsel both ways. A practical outcome
of this order is that probably no Church is bet-
ter satisfied with its pastors, and no preachers
more unselfishly devoted to their people.

As it is in the ministry, so it is in the work
of the Church. The Church itself in general
council determines what work shall be under-
taken of a general order, and by a rational
method determines what part of the work
shall be done by each part of the Church, and
thus stands back of the individual pastor, as
he proceeds to his task, and furnishes the
pledge of its assembled wisdom to each con-
gregation as it goes forward with the achieve-
ment of its part of the whole. It will be

148 OUR POLITY.

easily seen that this plan greatly reenforces
the individual invention of the pastor, and,
when the pastor is wholly lacking in inven-
tion, provides for a safe and harmonious
schedule of Church work.

In the connectional order of Methodism
the Boards of Management are truly General
Boards. Each Annual Conference has its own
Boards, but in addition to superintending lo-
cal or Conference interests these Boards have
a connectional side. They execute within the
Annual Conferences the plans of the General
Boards. The General Boards are created by
the General Conference every four years, and
in all the interests committed to them they
stand for the General Conference in the in-
terims of its meetings. In this way the will
of the general Church or General Confer-
ence is made to run on without lack of
authority or resources as surely and as suc-
cessfully as if each interest were under the
immediate direction of the General Confer-
ence itself. As a result of this arrange-
ment, whatever these Boards undertake,
within the limitations put upon them, be-
comes a matter for the whole Church, in the
doing of which the honor of the Church is
involved, and in which the loyalty of every

OUR CONNECTIONALISM. 149

charge to the will of the general Church comes"
into play.

There are certain things which stand related
to this connectional organization very much
as in geometry a corollary is related to a the-
orem and its processes of demonstration.
Logically considered, they are "obvious con-
sequences," whether they have as yet mate-
rialized into a part of our polity, as some of
them have, or stand forth only in the form of
a logical demand that the Church shall use
them.

One of these corollaries is the transfer
power, which is born of the relation of our
general superintendency to our general itiner-
ancy as set forth in the discussion of "Our
Itinerancy."

Two other conclusions which connectional-
ism was bound to reach, and did reach long
ago, were a connectional organ and a connec-
tional publishing interest. How well these
have worked, we have all seen long ago.
Some years ago, when the Publishing House
became involved to a point of practical insol-
vency, the connectional spirit was appealed
to, and a process was begun which resulted
quickly in its recuperation, and brought it in
a short while to foundations which are among

150 OUR POLITY.

the secui-est in modern commerce. The same
thing was illustrated in the payment in one
year of a missionary debt of more than one
hundred and thirty thousand dollars without
.diminishing the regular collections for that
interest. This magnificent result was largely
due to the fact that when the Secretary, Dr.
Morrison, went forth on his mission he was
as much at home and in authority in San
Francisco as he was in Nashville, where the
oflices of the Boards are located. Again the
rallying of the connectional spirit, and the
use of the connectional opportunity, saved
the cause.

But there are two other conclusions which
are inevitable from the connectional order of
Methodism, which are just beginning to be
realized as a part of the polity of the Church.
One of these is a connectional system of edu-
cation. The present Board of Education has
taken steps which unquestionably tend in that
direction, and some progress has been made
toward practical results. Indeed, the act of
the Board of Trust of Vanderbilt University
and of the General Conference in making
that institution the university of the whole
Church gives promise of a thoroughly re-
lated and compacted system which will en-

OUR CONNECTIOXALISM.

151

able us to lead the van, not by the sacrifice of
other great schools, but by an order which
will help them all, and which will reach
down and clasp hands with the public school
system so as to conserve rather chan in any
sense surrender the Methodist element in

them.

But perhaps the finest conclusion, and one
which we are barely entering upon, is the
creation of a connectional fund for our super-
annuated preachers. The doing of this is an
easy thing under a proper plan and with the
right time limits. This is a matter in which
we can much better afford to go slowly than
not to go at all. The lifetime of a Church is
a long stretch. So long as om- itinerancy
continues, the worn-out preacher without re-
sources is to be a stupendous fact in our
Church life. The late General Conference
(1902) determined upon the raising of five
million dollars for this purpose. The sources
chiefly relied upon under that order are pop-
ular collections and bequests. Other sources
will probably be put under contribution later.
There are at least two others which might
be used with great profit to the fund. The
first of these is a certain per cent of the pop-
ular collection in every charge. The stimu-

152

OUR POLITY.

lating effect of such a movement would make
the remaining per cent a larger amount than
that which is now raised for the same pur-
pose, and would result in the bringing of
this great claim clearly before oui- people.
The second is a fixed percentage of the clear-
ings of the Publishing House.

After all, nothing of an economic kind
would have a better effect in guarding our
ministry against the danger of the contin-
uance of inefficient men in the traveling con-
nection. Such a fund would bring a better
service and a gi-eater dignity to the Church,
and a larger sense of security to the faithful
men who are toiling on amidst galling limita-
tions to serve their generation by the will of
God.

It is easy to see that the Methodist polity,
when operated according to its design, is an
organization of tremendous force and un-
equaled flexibility. The system is capable
of a vast impact, one which is scarcely re-
sistible within the domain of the Church's
work. But from the fact that our polity is
a perfect concatenation of parts — that is, a
chain of essential links — it follows that a
want of strength or adjustment at any point
affects the efficiency of the whole order. It

OUR CONNECTIONALISM. 153

implies, therefore, an extraordinary respon-
sibility for all those who have any vital con-
nection with the operation of the system.

From what has been said concerning the
relation of parts in our system, it is not diffi-
cult to see that we are at the farthest remove
from the congregational system. The two
orders are as unlike as possible. They will
not mix. Whether the congregational order
could be improved by the organic adoption
of certain features of our polity is a curious
question on which we do not desire to enter;
but that any tendency toward congregational-
ism, or even broader forms of localizing,
works detriment to our interests there can
scarcely be any question. It is a question
whether or not there is such a tendency in
some sections among us. We have occasion-
ally seen symptoms which look in this direc-
tion, but nothing which indicates a serious
change of thought, only a loss of sympathy.
It is well, however, for every pastor and
teacher to keep careful and statesmanlike
guard over the loyalty of the people to our
connectional order and interests. And it is
well to remember that this loyalty is not a
thing to be effected by the exercise of author-
ity, but to be developed by a broad intelli-

J 54 OUR POLITY.

gence as to the nature of our polity and of
the vastness and importance of the general
work which the Church has taken in hand, a
work which is impossible of full accomplish-
ment except by the cordial cooperation of all
the congregations. It sometimes happens that
a community, or an element in a community,
loses sympathy with the general movements
of the Church, then loses the sense of connec-
tionalism; and finally, finding itself unable to
cooperate in this disjointed state with the
gi-eat body, goes off into independence— that
is, becomes congregational. As a rule, such
movements have not succeeded; as a rule,
they probably never will. The conditions of
success which belong to the regular congrega
tional system are wanting, and the conditions
which bring success to a connectional Church
have been rejected.

What Methodism could do, if every man
would only do his duty in an ordinary meas-
ure, staggers conception. It is able not only
to girdle the globe with a holy and trium-
phant evangelism, but also to belt it with insti-
tutions of learning, of reform, and of char-
ity. To have part in the operation of a sys-
tem the possibilities of which are beyond
speech -7- almost beyond figures --implies a

OXm CONNBCTIONALISM. 155

vAst responsibility, the very thought of which
ought to arouse every Methodist to new vigor
in the doing of his part. The system itself is
in default at no point. The only trouble is a
lack of fidelity on the part of those who have
formally given their allegiance but have with-
held their aid.

VI.
Fields of "Work.

Missions.

The missionary work of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, South, is divided into
Foreign Missions and Home Missions, and is
under the supervision of the Board of Mis-
sions, the Woman's Foreign Missionary Board,
the Woman's Home Mission Board, and one
Board in each of the Annual Conferences.

The statistics of these several fields are as
follows:

BOARD OF MISSIONS.

The following figures show the increase in
contributions for missions in the quadren-
nium ending March 31, 1902:

Prom
Eegular Collections. All Sources.

1899 $ 320,494 92 $ 255,525 03

1900 235,116 51 284,220 46

1901 267,084 32 330,356 65

1902 291,672 79 362,135 85

Total for quadrennium . .$1,014,368 44 $1,232,237 99
Former quadrennium... 901,593 24 1,077,388 13

Increase... $ 113,775 20 $ 154,849 86

Number of missionaries, 160. Number of
native preachers, 102.
(156)

FIELDS OF WORK. 157

CHINA MISSION CONFERENCE.

This mission was founded in 1848. Our first
missionary in that field was Rev. Chas. Taylor,
of the South Carolina Conference. The latest
reports give the following figures: Mission-
aries (including wives), 33; native traveling
preachers, 15; members, 934; Sunday schools,
29; scholars, 1,712; Epworth Leagues, 18;
membership, 599; organized Churches, 27;
Churches entirely self-supporting, 3; board-
ing schools, 2; pupils, 264; day schools, 8;
pupils, 153; hospital, 1; dispensaries, 2; pa-
tients treated, 16,462; total collections, $1,-
416.55; total value of mission property, $195,-
932.50.

THE KOREA MISSION.

The Korea Mission forms one district of
the China Mission Conference; but the lan-
guage, national life, and general conditions
make the work so radically different that
financially and administratively it is separate-
ly considered by the Board. It was opened
by Bishop Hendrix in 1895. Dr. C. F. Reid,
of the China Mission, was appointed superin-
tendent. The conversion of Mr. T. H. Yun
and his urgent appeal to enter Korea became
a call of Providence to the Church. The su-
perintendent reports: Missionaries (including

158 OUR POLITY.

wives), 12; local preachers and helpers, 28;
members, 424 (increase, 155); Sunday schools,
11; scholars, 343; dispensary, 1; patients
treated, 405; collections, $272; total value of
mission property, $30,115.

JAPAN MISSION CONFERENCE.

Our work was begun in this field in 1886
by Drs. J. W. and W. R. Lambuth and O.
A. Dukes. The mission was organized into
an Annual Conference in 1892. In this An-
nual Conference we have: Missionaries (in-
cluding wives), 39; native traveling preach-
ers, 11; members, 744; Sunday schools, 42;
scholars, 1,654; Epworth Leagues, 2; mem-
bers, 60; organized Churches, 15; Churches
entirely self-supporting, 2; boarding schools,
2; pupils, 586; day schools, 8; pupils, 181;
total collections, $1,245.17; total value of
mission property, $62,694.

BRAZIL MISSION CONFERENCE.

Our missionary operations in Brazil had
their commencement in 1872, when Rev. J. eJ.
Ransom, our first missionary to that field, was
sent out. The mission was organized into an
Annual Conference in 1886. There are now
in the Brazil Mission Conference: Mission-
aries (inchiding AviVes), 28; native traveling

FIELDS OF WORK. 159

preachers, 1^; members, 3,^43; Sunday schools,
65; scholars, 2,370; Epworth Leagues, 7;
members, 315; organized Churches, 48; Church-
es entirely self-supporting, 7; boarding school,
1; pupils, 53; day school, 1; pupils, 39; total
collections, $7,301.38; total value of mission
property, $115,338.

MEXICO.

In thirty years this mission has grown into
three Annual Conferences. The combined sta-
tistics of the Central (organized in 1886), the
Northwest (organized in 1890), and the Mexi-
can Border (organized in 1885)— three Mis-
sion Conferences now in Mexico, which rep-
resent the fruits of incessant toil and heroic
devotion for thirty years— are: Missionaries
(including wives), 34; native traveling preach-
ers, 53; members, 5,814 (increase, 106); Sun-
day schools, 116; scholars, 3,862; Epworth
Leagues, 47; members, 1,545; organized
Churches, 168; Churches entirely self-support-
ing, 5; boarding school, 1; pupils, 212; hos-
pitals, 2; patients treated, 3,133; total collec-
tions, $5,180.30; total value of mission prop-
erty, $167,107.08.

CUBA MISSION.

Our first work in Havana was organized in
1896, and in 1898 Cuba was taken under the

160 OUE POLITY,

control of the Board as a regular mission field.
We are establishing ourselves firmly on the
island, as is shown by the erection of a sub-
stantial stone church in Matanzas and the pur-
chase by Bishop Candler for $15,000 of a cen-
trally located property in Havana well adapted
for church and school purposes. The work
has grown steadily, there being a marked in-
crease over last year. Rev. D. W. Carter, su-
perintendent of the mission, reports the follow-
ing statistics: Missionaries (incuding wives),
14; native traveling preachers, 2; members,
454 (increase, 62); Sunday schools, 9; scholars,
552; Epworth Leagues, 3; organized Churches,
8; day schools, 3; pupils, 288; collections for
all purposes, $2,884.57; total value of mission
property, $40,000.

OTHER MISSIONS.

In addition to these six foreign mission
fields occupied by our -Church, we have a Ger-
man Mission and an Indian Mission Confer-
ence, and our General Board of Missions to
aid the work of our Church in the Pacific, the
Los Angeles, the Columbia, the East Colum-
bia, the Denver, the Montana, the Western,
and the New Mexico Conferences.

FIELDS OF WORK. 1^1

OFFICERS OF THE BOARD.

The officers of the Board for the quadren-
nium beginning May, 1902, are as follows:
Bishop A. W. Wilson, President; Rev. James
Atkins, Vice President; Rev. Walter R. Lam-
buth. Secretary; Rev. Seth Ward, Assistant
Secretary; J. D. Hamilton, Treasurer.

Woman's Boakd of Foreign Missions.

This Board was given its constitution in
Atlanta, Ga., by the General Conference, in
1878. During the first year $4,104. 27 was col-
lected, but the service at home last year result-
ed in $104,017.95, making the total of $1,396,-
188 collected since organization. The Wom-
an's Board supports 67 missionaries in the
following countries: China, Korea, Brazil,
Mexico, and Cuba. The women sent out oc-
cupy 29 stations, conduct 22 boarding schools
and 61 day schools, and there are 170 native
and foreign assistant teachers, 78 Bible wom-
en, 218 scholarships, 6 kindergartens, 2 hos-
pitals, and 2 Bible schools. There are 567
boarding pupils, 1,008 day school pupils, with
about five thousand women and children under
instruction, about two thousand of whom are
Sunday school pupils. The value of property
owned by the Woman's Board of Foreign Mis-
11

162 OUB POLITY.

sions, including the Scarritt Bible and Train-
ing School, is ^01,500.

The officers of the Board are as follows:
Mrs. M. D. Wightman, President; Miss Maria
L. Gibson, First Vice President; Mrs. A. W.
Wilson, Second Vice President; Mrs. S. C.
Trueheart, Corresponding Secretary; Mrs. T.
B. Hargrove, Recording Secretary; Mrs. H.
N. McTyeire, Treasurer.

Woman's Home Mission Society.

The Woman's Home Mission Society of the
Methodist Episcopal Church, South, came into
existence in 1886.

The object of this Society is to enlist Chris-
tian women and children in secui'ing homes
for itinerant preachers, in helping to make
comfortable the families of those ministers
whose charges are unable to provide sufficient
support, and providing religious instruction
for the neglected and destitute.

OFFICERS.

Miss Belle H. Bennett, Richmond, Ky.,
President; Mrs. John D. Hammond, Nash-
ville, Tenn., First Vice President; Mrs. F. B.
Carroll, Dallas, Tex., Second Vice President;
Mrs. R. W. MacDonell, Nashville, Tenn., Gen-

FIELDS OF "WORK. 163

eral Secretary; Miss Emily M. Allen, Macon,
Ga., Recording Secretary; Mrs. W. D. Kirk-
land, Nashville, Tenn. , General Treasurer.

STATISTICS.

Number of members, 29,034; receipts for
connectional work, $269,935.11; receipts for
local work, $456,010.55; total receipts, $725,-
945.66; number of parsonages built and aided,
1,265; money donated to parsonages, $117,-
284.23; money loaned to parsonages, $37,100;
value of supplies distributed outside of re-
ceipts above stated, $44,921.06; number of
boarding and day schools supported, 4; num-
ber of night schools supported, 5; number of
pupils enrolled, 1,080; number of missionaries
and teachers employed, 47; number of city
mission boards, 9; number of Rescue Homes
and Doors of Hope, 2; value of property,
$69,000.

PABSONAOES.

During the year the Board granted $3,475
to 37 parsonages, while the Conference Socie-
ties, through their 50 per cent of dues, helped
92 to the amount of $6,424, thus making a to-
tal of 129 parsonages granted $9,899. Since
organization 1,265 parsonages have been aided
to the amount of $117,284.23.

164 OUB POLITY.

SUPPLIES.

Last year goods valued at $8,136.54 were
forwarded to the heroes who hold those fields
known as the "hard appointments." In ten
years $44,021.06 has been distributed through
this department.

SCHOOLS.

Of no part of our work are we more hope-
ful than of these character-building institu-
tions. The three schools for the Cubans at
Tampa, Ybor City, and Key West haVe been
filled by 403 scholars under the instruction of
14 teachers.

At London, Ky., the pupilage has been 265,
and during the year 32 students have been
converted. A large per cent of these students
go out to become teachers in district schools,
thus enlarging the influence of this school,
known as the Sue Bennett Memorial School.

The Industrial Home and School at Greene-
ville, Tenn., under the direction of Mrs. E. E.
Wiley, has given fostering care to 113 children
during the year.

On the Pacific Coast the Society carries on
night schools at Los Angeles, for Chinese; and
at San Francisco, Oakland, and Alameda, for
Japanese. Since the organization of these
schools more than five hundred and fifty-nine

^isLds of wo&k. 165

Students have been enrolled, and full three
score have become Christians.

At Augusta, Ga., in an annex to Paine Col-
lege, the society has undertaken the industrial
training of the young negro women who are
enrplled as students.

Two schools among the Choctaw Indians of
Mississippi have been opened.

Work has also been instituted in the mines
of West Virginia.

CITY MISSIONS.

In eleven cities the auxiliaries are organized
into City Mission Boards, employing trained
missionaries. In Atlanta, Nashville, and Nor-
folk small beginnings have been made in set-
tlement work, the missionaries living in needy
8ectix)ns, thus getting into the home life and
close to the hearts of the people.

The Sunday School.

The Sunday school work is conducted for
the double purpose of instructing the young
in a knowledge of the Holy Scriptures and
of training them in the habits of Christian
work.

In each congregation the Sunday school ia
under the management of the Quarterly Con-
ference, which elects the superintendent an-
il *

166 OUB POLITY.

nually on nomination of the pastor, who is
the superintendent in chief of all the schools
within his pastoral charge. The pastor and
superintendent together select the teachers
and give direction to their work.

The Sunday School Department is under
the management of the Sunday School Board,
which consists of five members, and the Sun-
day School Editor, who is ex officio chairman.
The Board is elected quadrennially by the
General Conference. The members for the
current quadrennium (1902-06) are as fol-
lows: James Atkins, D.D., Nashville, Tenn.,
Chairman; John O. Willson, D.D., Green-
wood, S. C. ; John R. Pepper, Memphis,
Tenn.; B. M. Washburn, Montgomery, Ala.,
Secretary; B. M. Bm'gher, Dallas, Tex.; M.
L. Walton, Woodstock, Va. D. M. Smith,
Nashville, Tenn., is the Treasurer of the
Board.

Statistics. — Number of schools, 14,396; offi-
cers and teachers, 103,476; scholars, 884,329.
Total in schools, 987,805.

Literature. — Sunday School Magazine, 48,-
800; Senior Quarterly, 325,000; Intermediate
Quarterly, 300,000; Home Department Quar-
terly, 9,300; Children's Visitor, 68,500; Illus-
trated Lesson Paper, 130,000; Our Little

FLBI.DS OF WORK. 167

People, 205,000; Olivet Picture Cards, sets,
70,000. Total circulation in 1902, 1,156,600.

Bible TeacJiers^ Study Circle. — This de-
partment of training work was fully organ-
ized by the General Conference of 1902, and
Dr. H. M. Hamill was elected by the Sunday
School Board Superintendent of Training
Work.

The course for teachers is as follows:

First Course: "History of Sunday Schools,"
by W. G. E. Cunnyngham, D.D.; "Bible
Studies," by A. E. Dunning, D.D.; "The
Sunday School Teacher," by H. lili. Hamill,
D.D.

Second Course: "Short History of Metho-
dism," by J. W. Boswell, D.D.; "The Books
of the Bible," by H. M. Hamill, D.D.; "The
Doctrines and Polity of the Methodist Epis-
copal Church, South," by W. F. Tillett, D.D.,
and James Atkins, D.D.

There is a seventh book for superintend-
ents and other officers — "The Organized Sun-
day School," by Axtell. On the completion
of the first course a certificate is issued to
each teacher who meets the required stand-
ard, and at the end of the second course a full
diploma is awarded by the Sunday School De-
partment.

168 OITB POLITt.

The Sunday School and Missions.— Bj or-
der of the General Conference, every Sunday
school is a missionary society. The order of
work is the setting apart of one Sunday in
each month as missionary day, the collection
on which goes to the use of the Board of
Missions; and in October a Missionary Rally
Day, with a collection for the same purpose.
The Sunday schools are now raising an extra
fund of $10,000 to endow a chair in the Soo-
chow University. The amount raised by our
schools for missions is now about $50,000 a
year.

The amount raised on Children's Day for
aiding destitute schools, and especially for
helping Sunday schools in foreign mission
jfields, is about $15,000 per year.

The Board of Church Extension.

This Board was organized in 1882. The
originator of it, and its Secretary to the time
of his death, was Rev. David Morton, D.D.

The purpose of the Board is to aid in the
purchase or securing of church lots, and the
erection or securing of church buildings and
parsonages. The office of the Board is lo-
cated at Louisville, Ky.

Each Annual Conference has an auxiliary

FIBLDS OF WOBK. 169

of the Church Extension Board, which is en-
titled to retain and apply within the bounds
of the Conference fifty per cent of all funds
coming into its hands, the other fifty per
cent passing to the Parent Board for admin-
istration. The Board has a loan fund of
$200,000.

The General and Annual Conference Boards,
since their organization, have aided 4,946
Churches, with $942,642 in gifts and $433,-
645 in loans. West of the Mississippi 1,816
Churches, have been helped; east of the Mis-
sissippi, 3,101; and in the mission fields, 29.
Amount spent in helping Churches in mission
fields, $21,532. Amount donated to Churches
in the West by the General Board, $272,430;
in the East, $148,437. The assessment on the
Churches for the year 1902-03 is $125,460.

The oflScers of the Board are: Presley Me-
guiar. President, Louisville, Ky.; R. B. Gil-
bert, M.D., Vice President, Louisville, Ky.;
Rev. P. H. Whisner, Corresponding Secre-
tary, Louisville, Ky.; John Ouerbacker,
Treasurer, Louisville, Ky.

The Epwoeth League.

Acting on a memorial submitted by the
Church Conference of Trinity Church, Los

170 OtTB POLITY.

Angeles, Cal., the General Conference of
the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, at its
meeting in the city of St. Louis, in May,
1890, ordered the foundation, under the direc-
tion of the Sunday School Department, of
Young People's Leagues "for the promotion
of piety and loyalty to the Church." This
was the organic beginning of the Epworth
League in the Methodist Episcopal Church,
South, which was the first of the great bod-
ies of Christendom to make its young people's
organization a part of its corporate life.
Since its reorganization, in 1894, as a sepa-
rate department of connectional work, the
Epworth League has chartered 5,839 Senior
and 866 Junior Chapters.

The several departments of League work
are in healthy condition. About 6,000 vol-
umes are annually circulated in its Reading
Courses. The General Minutes of the Church
credit to it between $50,000 and $75,000 con-
tributed to the causes of the Church. The
most considerable of these contributions is
made to the cause of missions. The Epworth
Era, published at Nashville, Tenn., is the or-
gan of the League. The year just closed has
been the most prosperous in the history of
the organization.

FISUDS OF WORK.

171

The oflBcers of the General Epworth
League Board are: Bishop W. A. Candler,
President, Atlanta, Ga. ; and H. M. Du Bose,
D.D., General Secretary.

The Boakd of Education.

The Board of Education of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, South, was established by
the General Conference at Memphis, in May,
1894.

During its existence of eight years the
Board has organized and is now operating a
teachers' bureau; raised $25,000 for a new
building at Paine Institute, known as "Hay-
good Memorial Hall;" stimulated the An-
nual Conferences to lift their assessments
for education from a total of $70,750 in 1897
to a total of $93,160 in 1901; conducted a
campaign which resulted in a thank offer-
ing for education amounting to more than
$1,500,000; secured a better classification of
our institutions, and their more harmonious
adjustment in a system.

Statistics.— ThQ latest report of the Board
shows that the Church has one university, 18
colleges, 103 secondary schools, 8 affiliated
schools, and 64 mission schools of all grades,
domestic and foreign. In connection with

172 OUB POLITY.

the Biblical Department of Vanderbilt Uni-
versity and under the direction of its faculty,
the Board has also recently established a Cor-
respondence School for ministers which is now
in successful operation, with an enrollment of
nearly one hundred and fifty pupils.

The officers of the Board are as follows:
Bishop C. B. Galloway, President; Bishop E.
R. Hendrix, Vice President; Chancellor J. H.
Kirkland, Recording Secretary; Rev. J. D.
Hammond, Corresponding Secretary.

The Treasurer of the Board is Mr. D. M.
Smith, Nashville, Tenn.

Statistics of Methodist Episcopal Church,

South, 1901.

Pastoral charges 5,037

Number of societies 17,898

Traveling preachers 6,293

Local preachers 4,983

Members 1,505,241

Total membership 1,516,516

Value of Publishing House, less all liabili-
ties, $926,094.53.

Combined circulation of periodicals issued
by the House, 1,156,600 copies.

The Agents for the House for 1902-06 are
Messrs. Bigham and Smith, Nashville, Tenn.

Sill

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