History of the M.E. Church, Vol. IV - Media Sabda Org

The first decade of the century ended with Methodism established in all the New England states.
It had one extensive Conference, and a large portion of a second. The four districts with which it
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began the century had increased to eight; its thirty-two circuits to seventy-one; its fifty-eight
preachers to one hundred and fourteen, and its five thousand eight hundred and thirty nine members
to seventeen thousand five hundred and ninety-two. These statistics exhibit a remarkable progress,
even if we take not into account the quite inauspicious circumstances of the denomination in the
Eastern states. In ten years its districts had doubled, its circuits considerably more than doubled, its
ministry lacked but two of being doubled, and its membership had more than trebled. It had gained
in these ten years eleven thousand seven hundred and fifty-three members, an average increase of
more than one thousand one hundred and seventy-five each year, or nearly one hundred per month.
Its self-sacrificing preachers, who, in both their labors and sufferings, were indeed "a spectacle unto
the world, and to angels, and to men," might well have exclaimed, "Thanks be unto God, which
always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savor of his knowledge by us in
every place." There was no considerable section of New England which was not now penetrated or
compassed by their circuits, and but few localities which heard not occasionally, if not regularly, the
voice of their ministrations.
At the close of the second decade its membership numbered nearly twenty-five thousand, its
ministry one hundred and twenty-five traveling, and some hundreds of local preachers. Such were
the beginnings and early growths of that great harvest which, by the centenary of American
Methodism (1866) was to yield, in New England, one hundred and three thousand four hundred and
seventy-two members, and about a thousand traveling preachers, with nearly nine hundred chapels,
more than a hundred thousand Sunday-school students, and thirteen educational institutions,
including a university, a theological school, and boarding academies. The vitality of Methodism
would be tested in New England, if anywhere; the result has been most satisfactory. The increase of
members, from the beginning of the century, has been eighteen-fold. In 1800 there was one
Methodist to two hundred and eleven inhabitants; in 1830, one to forty-four; in 1866, one to
thirty-one. The greatest proportion is in Vermont, where there is one Methodist to twenty of the
inhabitants; the least is in Rhode Island, where there is one to fifty-seven. Through every decade save
one (1840-1850) the denomination has gained upon the growth of the population, notwithstanding
the rapid ingress of foreign papists.
Methodism has become, in our day, in New England aggregately, the second denomination in
numerical strength, and the first in progress. In the state of Maine it is the first numerically; in New
Hampshire, Vermont, and Connecticut the second; in Massachusetts the third, in Rhode Island the
fourth. In the metropolis itself it makes more rapid progress than any other Protestant
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denomination, and its churches are among the best architectural monuments of the city. Not only
to the frontier populations of the nation, West, South, and North, had it a special mission, as seen
in its peculiar adaptations and signal success; it had a providential work in New England, and has
achieved it with equal success. At its introduction there the reaction of the rigorous Puritan theology
had set in, as has been seen, and was threatening the very foundations of "orthodoxy;" Methodism,
by presenting an intermediate, benign, and vital theology, provided a safe resting-place for the public
mind. It has stimulated the elder Churches to new life, and has fortified itself into a powerful
communion throughout all the Eastern states, sending thence, meanwhile, into all other parts of the
Republic, communicants, preachers, educators, and influences which have developed and