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

of useful knowledge, was at its command in this direction. Accordingly the "Sunday school Union"
was organized on the second of April, 1827. Bangs says that "the measure was hailed with grateful
delight by our friends and brethren throughout the country. It received the sanction of the several
annual Conferences, which recommended the people of their charge to form auxiliaries in every
circuit and station, and send to the general depository in New York for their books; and such were
the zeal and unanimity with which they entered into this work, that at the first annual meeting of the
society there were reported 251 auxiliaries 1,025 schools, 2,048 superintendents, 10,290 teachers,
and 68,240 scholars, besides above 2,000 managers and visitors. Never, therefore, did an institution
go into operation under more favorable circumstances, or was hailed with a more universal joy, than
the Sunday-school Union of the Methodist Episcopal Church." This great success, however, could
not save it from the misfortunes of bad management. Under "an injudicious attempt," continues
Bangs, many years later, "to amalgamate the Bible, Tract, and Sunday-School Societies together, by
which the business of these several societies might be transacted by one board of management," and
by other causes, it declined, if indeed it did not fail, until resuscitated by the zeal of some New York
Methodists, and by an act of the General Conference of 1840. It passed through modifications till
it assumed its present effective form of organization, and grew into colossal proportions under the
labors of its indefatigable secretaries, Drs. Kidder and Wise. It now (1866) has (aside from its
offspring in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South) 13,400 schools, more than 150,000 teachers
and officers, and near 918,000 scholars, about 19,000 of whom are reported as converted during the
last year. There are in the libraries of these schools more than 2,529,000 volumes. They are
supported at an annual expense of more than $216,000, besides nearly $18,000 given to the Union
for the assistance of poor schools. There are circulated among them, semi-monthly, nearly 260,000
"Sunday-School Advocates," the juvenile periodical of the Union. The numbers of conversions
among pupils of the schools, as reported for the last eighteen year, amount to more than 285,000,
showing that much of the extraordinary growth of the Church is attributable to this mighty agency.
The Union has four periodicals for teachers and scholars, two in English, and two in German, and
their aggregate circulation is nearly 300,000 per number. Its catalogue of Sunday-school books
comprises more than 2,300 different works, of which more than a million copies are issued annually.
Including other issues, it has nearly 2,500 publications adapted to the use of Sunday-schools. In fine,
few, if any, institutions of American Methodism wield a mightier power than its Sunday-School
Union. These figures, however, show but partially the Sunday-school enterprise of American
Methodism, as they do not include those of its several branches, which, at dates subsequent to the
period reached by our narrative, grew out of; and broke from, the parent Church. These will hereafter
be given.
We have already had frequent intimations in these pages of the interest of Methodism for
Education. The founders of the denomination in England were classically educated men, and it had
its birth in a university. Wesley, in the very year which is recognized as its epoch, (1739,) began its
noted "Kingswood School," and at his first Conference (1744) proposed a theological school, a
"seminary for laborers," or lay preachers, a project which was at last realized by the present two
"Theological Institutions" of English Methodism. American Methodism early shared this interest of
the parent body in education. Dickins had proposed, as early as 1780, an academic institution for the
denomination. In the year of the organization of the Church (1784) Coke and Asbury projected the
Cokesbury College, and laid its foundations the next year at Abingdon, Md. In 1787 Asbury
consecrated and opened it with public ceremonies. In 1795 it was destroyed by fire; but a second