Its church property, (churches, parsonages, and colleges, aside from its 77 academies and Book Concern,) amounts to $30,055,000.

Its Book Concern has a capital of $837,000; 500 publishing agents, editors, clerks, and operatives; with some thirty cylinder power presses in constant operation, about 2,000 different books on its catalogue, besides tracts, etc.; 14 periodicals, with an aggregate circulation of more than 1,000,000 copies per month.*

Its Sunday-School Union comprises 13,400 schools; more than 150,000 instructors; nearly 918,000 pupils; and more than 2,500,000 library books. It issues nearly 2,500 publications, besides a monthly circulation of nearly 300,000 numbers of its periodicals.

Its Missionary Society has 1,059 circuits and stations; 1,128 paid laborers, and 105,675 communicants.

The Methodist Episcopal Church South has published no statistics since the rebellion broke out; it has doubtless suffered much by the war, but it reported, the last year before the rebellion, nearly 700,000 Church members, nearly 2,600 itinerant and 5,000 local members. It had 12 periodical publications, 12 colleges, and 77 academies, with 8,000 stu

*There are five independent weekly papers in the Church besides the above number of "official" periodicals.

dents. Its Missionary Society sustained, at home and abroad, about 360 missionaries and 8 manual labor schools, with nearly 500 pupils.

According to these figures the two great Episcopal divisions of the denomination have had, at their latest reports, 1,628,320 members; 9,421 traveling, and 13,205 local preachers; with 191 colleges and academies, and 31,106 students.*

The Canada Wesleyan Church was not only founded by, but for many years belonged to, the Methodist Episcopal Church; it now reports more than 56,000 members, 500 itinerant preachers, and 750 Sunday-schools with about 45,000 pupils; a university, a female college, and a Book Concern with its weekly periodical.

Another branch of Canadian Methodism, the "Methodist Episcopal Church in Canada," equally the child of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States, reports 3 Annual Conferences, 2 bishops, 216 traveling and 224 local preachers, and 20,000 members; a seminary and female college, and a weekly newspaper.

The Canadian Wesleyan Methodist New Connec

* Some of these figures differ slightly from enumerations given elsewhere in this volume; the latter were made from earlier data, and went to press before the former reached me; they do not, however, materially affect the aggregates. Methodism, in common with other Churches, has suffered by the late period of political and military agitation.

tion Church reports 90 traveling and 147 Local preachers, and 8,450 communicants. It sustains a weekly paper and a theological school.

The other Methodist bodies, in the United States, are the Methodist Protestant Church, the American Wesleyan Methodists, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and some three or four smaller sects; their aggregate membership amounts to about 260,000; their preachers to 3,423.*

Adding the traveling preachers to the membership, there are now in the United States about 1,901,164 Methodist communicants. Adding three non-communicant members of its congregations for each com municant, it has under its influence 7,604,656 soulsbetween one fifth and one fourth of the whole national population.

.

Aggregately there are now in the United States and Canada,t as the results of the Methodism of 1766, 1,972,770 Church members, 13,650 traveling preachers, 15,000 local preachers, nearly 200 colleges and academies, and more than 30 periodical publications; 1,986,420 communicants, including preachers, and nearly 8,000,000 people.

The influence of this vast ecclesiastical force or

*As reported in 1860, in Schem's Ecclesiastical Year Book; our best authority in American ecclesiastical statistics.

The other North American British Provinces are not included, as their Methodism did not originate with the denomination in the United States. The Primitive Methodists are also omitted.

the moral, intellectual, and social progress of the New World, can neither be doubted nor measured. It is generally conceded that it has been the most energetic religious element in the social development of the continent. With its devoted and enterprising people dispersed through the whole population, its thousands of laborious itinerant preachers, and tens of thousands of local preachers and exhorters, its unequaled publishing agencies and powerful periodicals, from the Quarterly Review to the child's paper, its hundreds of colleges and academies, its hundreds of thousands of Sunday-school instructors, its devotion to the lower and most needy classes, its animated modes of worship and religious labor, it cannot be questioned that it has been a mighty, if not the mightiest agent in the maintenance and spread of Protestant Christianity over these lands. It stands now on the threshold of its second century mightier than ever, in all the elements and resources requisite for a still greater history. It has modified somewhat its primitive methods, but only for its increased efficiency.

The question, What is the actual position, moral as well as statistical, of the Methodist Episcopal Church in particular? cannot be more authoritatively answered than in the address of its latest delegate to the British Conference, Bishop Janes. "In this epoch of her history," he says, "the ques

tion naturally arises, 'What has been the career of American Methodism, what its attainments of power and usefulness in the land and in the world?' As a partial answer to this inquiry, we refer you to our latest tables of statistics: * Communicants 928,320; itinerant ministers, 6,821; local ministers, 8,205; churches, 10,015; parsonages, 2,948; estimated value of churches and parsonages, $26,883,076; Sunday-schools, 13,153; officers and teachers, 148,475; scholars, 859,700. We have 161 missionaries in foreign lands, and 7,022 church members. Among the foreign populations of our own country, we have laboring 286 missionaries; and in the churches under their care, 26,138 communicants. In our domestic missionary department we have about 800 missionaries; their statistics are given in the general aggregate I have stated. Some of these missionaries are supported wholly by the missionary fund, but most of them only in part. Receipts, $558,993; the appropriations for the current year are $625,000. With regard to our education, we have 23 universities or colleges, in which there are 5,345 students, with property and endowment funds amounting to more than $2,800,000. We have two theological schools, in which there are 116

*The statistics, given elsewhere in this volume, are the latest I have been able to obtain; a difference of time will account for any difference of figures between the bishop's statements and my own.