new and rich outgushing of the Holy Ghost will put an end to the intolerable disagreements of the old Churches and creeds, and reveal the kingdom of God in power and great majesty."

Such, then, is Methodism, as seen in its History, its Practical Economy, and its Theological Platform— a system of spiritual life, of Evangelical liberalism, of apostolic propagandism. As such it has pre-eminent claims on the consideration and gratitude of our age; but these claims it has further demonstrated by its beneficent, its extraordinary results, especially in this new world. We are now prepared to consider some of these results.

ᏢᎪᎡᎢ II

WHAT HAS METHODISM ACHIEVED, ENTITLING IT TO THE PROPOSED COMMEMORATION?

CHAPTER I.

ITS SPECIAL ADAPTATION TO THE COUNTRY.

METHODISM, it has been affirmed, was a specia. provision for the early religious wants of this nation. The Revolution opened the continent for rapid settlement by immigration. A movement of the peoples of the old world toward the new was to set in on a scale surpassing that of the northern hordes which overwhelmed the Roman Empire. Much of this incoming population was to be Roman Catholic, most of it low, if not semi-barbarous. Some extraordinary religious provision was requisite to meet and counteract its demoralizing influence on the country.

The growth of population was to transcend the most credulous anticipations. The one million and a quarter (including blacks) of 1750, the less than three millions of 1780, were to be nearly four mill

ions in 1790; nearly five and a third millions in 1800; more than nine and a half millions in 1820; nearly thirteen millions in 1830. Thus far they were to increase nearly thirty-three and a half per cent. in each decade. Pensioners of the war of the Revolu- * tion were to live to see the "Far West transferred from the valleys of Virginia, the eastern base of the Pennsylvania Alleghanies, and the center of New York, to the great deserts beyond the Mississippi; to see mighty states, enriching the world, flourish on the Pacific coast; and to read, in New York, news sent the same day from San Francisco. Men, a few at least, who lived when the population of the country was less than three millions, were to live when it should be thirty millions.

Methodism, with its "lay ministry" and its "itinerancy," could alone afford the ministrations of religion to this overflowing population; it was to lay the moral foundations of many of the great states of the West. The older Churches of the colonies could never have supplied them with "regular" or educated pastors in any proportion to their rapid settlement. Methodism met this necessity in a manner that should command the national gratitude. It was to become at last the dominant popular faith of the country, with its standard planted in every city, town, and almost every vil

lage of the land. Moving in the van of emigration, it was to supply, with the means of religion, the frontiers from the Canadas to the Gulf of Mexico, from Puget's Sound to the Gulf of California. It was to do this indispensable work by means peculiar to itself; by districting the land into circuits which, from one hundred to five hundred miles in extent, could each be statedly supplied with religious instruction by one or two traveling evangelists who, preaching daily, could thus have charge of parishes comprising hundreds of miles and tens of thousands of souls. It was to raise up, without delay for preparatory training, and thrust out upon these circuits, thousands of such itinerants, tens of thousands of local or lay preachers and exhorters, as auxiliary and unpaid laborers, with many thousands of class-leaders who could maintain pastoral supervision over the infant societies in the absence of the itinerant preachers, the latter not having time to delay in any locality for much more than the public services of the pulpit. Over all these circuits it was to maintain the watchful jurisdiction of traveling presiding elders, and over the whole system the superintendence of traveling bishops, to whom the entire nation was to be a common diocese. It was to govern the whole field by Quarterly Conferences for each circuit, Annual Conferences for groups of circuits,