UNIV. OF CENTENARY OF AMERICAN METHODISM. INTRODUCTION. THE American Methodists propose to celebrate, in the year 1866, the completion of the first great cycle of their history, its centenary jubilee. From Maine to California, from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, they will assemble in their churches for religious ceremonies and pecuniary offerings. What entitles Methodism to this solemn, this national commemoration? In answering this question it is proposed to show: First, What is Methodism. Second, What it has achieved that commends it to such general and grateful recognition. Third, What are its capabilities for the future, and the consequent responsibilities of its people. It is not designed to discuss these propositions in the way of dissertation, but, as far as possible, in a historical form such as shall present the general scope of Methodism, as a historical, a doctrinal, and a practical system; so that the inquirer, who may have heretofore given it no studious attention, shall be able to appreciate its real character and claims. PART I. WHAT IS METHODISM? CHAPTER I. ITS ORIGIN, FOUNDERS, AND EARLY PROGRESS IN ENGLAND. METHODISM has been described as "a revival Church in its spirit, a missionary Church in its organization;" a resuscitation of the spiritual life and practical aims of primitive Christianity. This is its genuine standpoint, the only one from which its history and its theological and practical systems can be interpreted. It is implied not only in the characteristic features of its progress, doctrines, and economy, but in the individual history of its founders and other principal agents. John Wesley, its chief apostle and legislator, was born June 14, 1703, in the Epworth Rectory, Lincolnshire, England. Charles Wesley, one of its ablest preachers, and the author of its Psalmody, now its virtual liturgy throughout the world, was born there, December 18, 1708. Susanna Wesley, their mother, who has been called "the real found ress of Methodism," was distinguished by her rare intellect, her piety, and her domestic management. Her system of household education has been the wonder, if not the admiration, of most historical writers on Methodism. It was her custom to retire with each of her children once a week, for religious conversation and prayer. She has recorded that, on these occasions of devout self-recollection, she felt a peculiar solicitude for her most celebrated child. ✅ When not yet seven years old he had providentially been saved from a terrible death. The rectory was burned down at night; all its inmates, except John, had escaped, but he was sleeping in a room which the flames rendered inaccessible. The rector and his family knelt on the ground, in the light of their burning home, and committed the soul of the child to God, when suddenly he appeared at the window of his chamber. A peasant, mounting on the shoulders of another, rescued him at the instant that the roof fell in; two minutes of delay would have deprived the history of the world of the name and achievements of its most remarkable modern religious character. "I do intend," said his grateful mother, in one of the recorded meditations of her weekly retirement and prayer with him, "I do intend to be more particularly careful of the soul of this child that thou hast so mercifully provided for, than ever I have been, that I may do my endeavor to instill into his mind the principles of true religion and virtue. Lord, give me grace to do it sincerely and prudently, and bless my attempt with good success." In advanced life John Wesley recorded the admiration with which he recalled this faithful mother; the skill with which she managed, with little assistance, and in no little poverty, the daily affairs of her family, comprising thirteen children, all of whom, that attained responsible years, became devoted Christians, and "died in the Lord;" her household school, commenced daily with singing and prayer, and conducted solely by herself with academic regularity; her devotion as family priestess to religious duties; her daily evening hour of retired prayer and converse with her children severally; the prudence and zeal with which she conducted in the absence of her husband a sort of Sunday public worship, in the rectory, for the villagers as well as her family. It was inevitable that such a training should have impressed, for life, the minds of such men as the two Wesleys. They bore from the rectory tendencies which the world could never reverse. John left the home for the Charterhouse School, London, when eleven years old, and entered Oxford University in his seventeenth year. Charles went to the Westminster school when about eight years of age, and in due |