History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

Wesleyan Conference mingled with the paramount element of the Episcopal churches at the second
Ecumenical Conference in Washington, D. C., its features of strength and centralization appealed
to the admiration of some of the foremost of these brethren, and they returned home full of the
purpose to embody modifications of them in the Wesleyan Conference. They secured at the last
Conference a committee to consider the subject of strengthening the executive department. It
originated with Rev. Dr. Riggs and had the support of Rev. Hugh Price Hughes, and other prominent
men. The plan is not fully matured by the committee having it in hand, but it is in brief: to create a
body of thirteen administrative officers, who for the present shall be styled "Separated Chairmen,"
each of whom shall have administrative charge of some sixty circuits as a superintendent, preside
over meetings of the district conferences, etc. These officers are to be elected for a term of six years.
It is a recrudescence of Coke's plan at the Manchester Conference nearly one hundred years ago,
though this does not appear to be confessed, as it might prejudice the case. It is the mildest approach
possible to a reestablishment of the paternal idea, and would probably be helpful, but the lurking
danger of something else it might generate has turned upon it already in its incipiency a storm of
opposition from laymen and ministers. The English Methodist press reports R. W. Peeks, a member
of Parliament and a layman, as saying: "It is a new scheme for the creation of a bench of Methodist
bishops.
I earnestly appeal to my fellow Methodists not to be misled by poetical similes and adulatory
phrases; but to recognize the plain and naked fact, that the new clerical order will be nothing more
or less than a Methodist episcopate." Rev. W. H. Coradine says, "The whole affair, to sum up, is too
autocratic and bureaucratic for the 'times' and for the Methodist Church." Rev. W. G. Hall says:
"Will the game be worth the candle? I call it a game, for I cannot but see it in the light of playing a
pretty little game at bishops . . . the powers of such brethren, chairmen or bishops as we might call
them, would soon grow beyond that of the President. . . . I think it likely the thirteen so appointed
would be known as the thirteen Methodist tyrants, and their government as the Methodist Reign of
Terror. The toadyism to which this would give rise would be most degrading to the ministerial
character, and the partiality to which the bishops would be tempted would soon show itself." Nothing
comparable to this severity of language can be found in the whole range of the Reform controversy
of 1820-30 in America, and yet for milder protests laymen and preachers in no small numbers were
expelled the Mother Church. Will this man lose his clerical head? No. The time for the excision of
men for opinions' sake and denying freedom of speech is past in Methodism. The Riggs proposition
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will probably be disastrously defeated. "In founding the United Societies of the people called
Methodists, John Wesley founded a Church." The statement must be unqualifiedly denied. There is
not a single fact to support it, and such reckless avowals confuse true history. Such annalists deliver
themselves in an occult sense, and if critically pressed could justify their assertions only in a refined
transcendental meaning. There is a purpose, however, in linking Wesley's name with Churchism both
in England and America, as will hereafter be seen. Wesleyan Methodism under the immediate
supervision of the Conference is accredited with the following statistics for 1891. Members in Great
Britain, 423,615; in Ireland and Irish missions, 25,365; in Foreign missions, 34,287; French
Conference, 1411; South African Conference, 28,776; West India Conferences, 45,928; total,
559,382. Ministers, total 2224. Dr. King furnishes no property values for this period.