History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

in the society even stripling preachers ended it by publicly tearing up the class book, and reinstating
such as they chose. Under it presiding elders ruled with a rod of iron all refractory elements.
Examples of its working will occur later in this History. Two observations of the logical and
philosophical Snethen must be cited as bearing upon the subject, the one directly and the other
indirectly. "This article [just canvassed], if I remember rightly, was introduced into the form of
discipline after the separation of James O'Kelly; . . . it were to be wished that enactments which are
predicated upon temporary and accidental circumstances might expire by their own limitation, and
not be suffered to remain a dead letter in the discipline long after the occasion for them ceases." This
was written before the expulsions of 1827-30, or in August, 1821, or he would have discovered that
it was not a dead letter. And now as to the impolicy of such a law, and its reflex influences, he says:
"The weakest governments are not those which have the least power, but the least degree of social
organization. To govern is to manage the social sympathies and energies so as to bring the greatest
possible degree of general regard to bear upon the general interest. The oldest and most powerful
hierarchies stand recorded upon the pages of history, and will forever stand recorded, for
unparalleled corruption and depravity. For all moral and religious purposes they become utterly
impotent; innocence and virtue alone groaned and bled under their iron rule."
The agitation against the unbalanced system of the Episcopacy not only cost the wide and
disastrous secession of O'Kelly; but the slow recovery of the old organization, despite the
accustomed zeal and fidelity of both preachers and people, is in evidence how whole communities
in which they labored were prejudiced against a system giving birth to such expedients for the
equalizing of rights and of such laws as that under review for the suppression of the Reformers. How
many stood aloof from Methodism on this account is an unknown quantity, but the patriotic
intelligence of the times was offended at the exercise of ecclesiastic authority by an exclusive class.
The course of history in the Church is proof, however, that power is repressive, so that the reforming
element was twenty years in reaching the position abandoned when O'Kelly seceded. They were put
under espionage, and hampered in every way. History fairly recorded shows that the Reformers
among the ministers and people persisted despite all discouragements. The moral courage required
cannot be appreciated by Methodists of today. Hope seemed forlorn, but they did not surrender their
principles. All honor to them for keeping alive the issues which have made this "History of
Methodist Reform" 'both a possibility and a necessity. The keen-cut words of the philosophical
novelist, George Eliott, are in place, "Any coward can fight when he is sure of winning, but give me
the man who has pluck to fight when he is sure of losing." The brainful, liberal element of both
classes in the Church saw the concrete idea of a hierarchy fastening itself with the grip of an octopus,
and they resisted with Christian manliness its arrogations. But what availed counter Scripture and
reasoning? For the time nothing. Principle has an inherent vitality, as the contest of a hundred years
convincingly proves, but power is overmastering, and again and again prevailed. Snethen has in a
few pregnant sentences crystallized the whole controversy: "Power combined with interest and
inclination cannot be controlled by logic. But even power shrinks from the test of logic." It was true
at this period, and in every period of Reform, but conspicuously so in the contention of 1827-30, as
shall be seen. Shrinking from the reasoning, it withered with power. The answer of the Throne has
ever been, I meet your reason with my resolution.
The regulations as to slavery were made more stringent, the provisions and conditions exhibiting
the difference between the pronouncements of a theory and the impracticables of a condition. No