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

all over the country, yielding seven thousand Church members, thirty local preachers, eighty-three
regular mission circuits and stations, and one hundred and eight missionaries. One hundred churches
were built for German worship, and forty parsonages. Primitive Methodism appears to have revived
in the zeal and simplicity and self-sacrificing devotion of the German Methodists. May they ever
retain this spirit! No agency has ever been employed so specifically adapted to effect the conversion
of Romanists as that which is immediately connected with the German Mission enterprise. The
pastoral visitations of the preachers bringing them into immediate contact with German Catholics,
their distribution of Bibles and tracts, their plain, pointed, and practical mode of preaching, all
combine to bring the truth to bear upon that portion of the population; and the result is he conversion
of hundreds from the errors of Romanism."
The chief importance of the German Mission has, however, been subsequently developed. It has
not only raised up a mighty evangelical provision for the host of German emigrants to the new world,
but under the labors of Jacoby, it has entrenched itself in the German "fatherland," and is laying
broad foundations for a European German Methodism. German societies and circuits, a German
Conference, a "Book Concern," with its periodicals, a Ministerial School, and all the other customary
appliances of evangelical Churches, have been established; and, in our day, this Teutonic Methodism
comprises, on both sides of the Atlantic, nearly thirty thousand communicants, and nearly three
hundred missionaries.
It is impossible here to trace in detail the further outspread of this great interest, especially under
the successful administration of its ablest secretary, John P. Durbin, nor is it appropriate to the limits
of the present work. Suffice it to say that the annual receipts of the society, which, the year before
his administration began, amounted to about $104,000, have risen to more than $700,000; and that,
besides its very extensive domestic work, the Methodist Episcopal Church has now missions in
China, India, Africa, Bulgaria, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and South
America. Its missions, foreign and domestic, have 1,059 circuits and stations, 1,128 paid laborers,
(preachers and assistants,) and 105,675 communicants. The funds contributed to its treasury, from
the beginning amount to about $8,000,000. About 350 of the missionaries preach in the German and
Scandinavian languages, and more than 30,000 of the communicants are German and Scandinavian.
The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, had, in addition to these before the Rebellion, missions in
China, among our foreign settlers, among the American Indians, and the southern slaves. About three
hundred and sixty of its preachers were enrolled as missionaries.
American, like British Methodism, has become thoroughly imbued with the apostolic idea of
foreign and universal evangelization. With both bodies it is no longer an incidental or secondary
attribute, but is inwrought into their organic ecclesiastical systems. It has deepened and widened till
it has become the great characteristic of modern Methodism, raising it from a revival of vital
Protestantism, chiefly among the Anglo Saxon race, to a world-wide system of Christianization,
which has reacted on all the great interests of its Anglo Saxon field, has energized and ennobled
most of its other characteristics, and would seem to pledge to it a universal and perpetual sway in
the earth. Taken in connection with the London and Church Missionary Societies, the British and
Foreign Bible Society, the London Tract Society, to all of which Methodism gave the originating
impulse, and the Sunday-school institution, which it was the first to adopt as an agency of the
Church, it is not too much to say that it has been transforming the character of English Protestantism