History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

ank. Samuel Hick and William Carvosso also departed, leaving testimony to the saving power of
the faith they taught and exemplified.
The Centenary of Methodism was celebrated both in England and America with appropriate
ceremonies and excusable exultation over the marvelous spread of a heart-religion on both
continents. A layman, Butterworth, had suggested the commemoration. An imposing assembly met
at Manchester, 1838, comprising about 250 preachers and laymen. It was resolved to raise 80,000
as a centenary offering. The actual sum raised was 216,000. In October, 1839, the Methodist world
united in the celebration. Nothing like it for munificent giving was ever before known in a
denomination. Wesley died at the head of 550 itinerants and 140,000 members in all quarters of the
globe. A half century later these had grown to an army of 6080 itinerant preachers and four times as
many local preachers, and 1,400,000 members, including the various bodies claiming to be
Methodists. It had about 350 foreign missionaries, and about 3000 unpaid assistants, occupying some
300 stations. Perronet wrote years before Wesley's death, "I make no doubt that Methodism is
designed by Providence to introduce the approaching millennium." Wesley caught its true spirit some
twelve years before his death, regarding it not as a sect, or as a party in dogmatic theology, but a
revival of spiritual Christianity designed to uplift the Christian world and furnish a lever for the
moral betterment of the ungodly masses. It is doubtful whether in after years it can be claimed as an
improvement, or even as a necessity, when it became in the parent bodies of England, and specially
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America, a pronounced sect with some exclusive pretension, and too largely intent upon
denominational aggrandizement as well. Meantime most of the evangelical churches have affiliated
with it more closely in the preached modification of doctrine, and particularly in experiential piety.
Its career for one hundred years has been succinctly traced; fifty more are to come, within which
half-time it has fulfilled the promise of its beginning by tripling its numbers, girdling the world, and
searching out its hidden corners. What remains for it no one cares to anticipate, lest the realized
exaggerations of the past should make incredulous the hope of the future.
Nothing can better conclude these reflections than the words of Stevens as to a distinguishing
peculiarity of this the greatest moral and spiritual force of modern times. "It has practically restored
the primitive 'priesthood of the people,' not only by the example of its lay or local preachers, more
than twice as numerous as its regular ministry, but by its exhorters, class leaders, prayer leaders, and
the religious activity to which it has trained its laity generally." But how regrettable is it that this
noble record is marred by the stultifying blindness of the founders of the parent bodies in England
and America, the latter, it is true, but the echo of the former, in studiously and persistently excluding
that priesthood of the people from all participation in its governmental structure. In the primitive
Church nothing was done legislatively but by the consent of the people congregationally assembled.
But antiChrist — the overslaughing of the people by the preaching class — early appeared, soon
consolidated, and erected itself into a hierarchy of little and big popes. That the favored class should
be enamored of it is consonant with all the exhibitions of human nature, fettered in this, if nothing
else, with the selfish spirit. It has taken one hundred years of better education, restive agitation,
demand and denial, with its precipitation of expulsions for opinions' sake, to awaken the old bodies
to a sense of its high inexpediency, not to say its wrong. Slowly, but surely, the great reform has gone
forward, and it is manifest destiny for it to continue to go forward, until Methodism, not only its
protesting bodies living and thriving side by side with the parents as object-lessons and modifying
forces, shall emancipate itself from a false interpretation of a laity without parallel for its loyalty to