membership decreased 67,000, but during these same three years the reported conversions in the schools amounted to 50,500. While these facts speak emphatically for the religious power of the school, they show alarmingly the inefficient guardianship of the Church over its children. They prove that most of its converted youth either fail to enter or are lost from its communion. The startling exhibit of these statistics should be kept under the eye of the Church,* and be anxiously pondered till a remedy be found for the extraordinary evil. The last General Conference ordained that the "baptized children of the Church" shall be "organized into classes," with suitable leaders, (male or female,) and in due time be "enrolled on the list of probationers" and "admitted into full membership." This is an important advance in the right direction; but it must fail without the diligent pastoral attention of the ministry. The intimate co-operation of the pastor with his Sunday-school teachers; his presence in the school, especially in

times of religious interest; his habitual personal care of converted scholars until they shall be fully incorporated and confirmed in the Church, and his continual endeavors to interest them in their religious duties, are indispensable means of their safety. He should behold in the Sunday-school the Church of the future. There more than anywhere else should we exert our utmost strength, for thence chiefly are we to reinforce our hosts for all coming battles and victories. The great number of reported conversions in our schools, probably exceeding that of any other, if not indeed of all other American Churches combined, should thrill the denomination with interest, should convince it that here it has a field of immeasurable resources, and that I have not wrongly called the question of the Church relation of its children its greatest practical problem.

Finally, and above all things, Methodism should be reminded of its responsibility to maintain vital, apostolic piety in the land, and to spread it over the world. This, as This, as we have seen, was its original mission; this its historical stand-point; from this has sprung all its surprising achievements; if this ceases the light will go out in all its sanctuaries. Its spiritual life has, let it be repeated, preserved its doctrinal integrity and its practical vigor through these hundred years. It has never had, at least in

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America, a serious outbreak of theological heresy. Seldom has it had even an individual judicial case of heterodoxy. Such causes of faction and division have been almost unknown to it. Its piety has kept it orthodox, notwithstanding the extraordinary liberality of its terms of membership. Doubtless its peculiar methods have been the proximate cause of its great success, but what would these methods have been without the spiritual energy which has worked them? That energy has been divine, but the energy of the Divine Spirit itself works by the truth; the doctrines of Methodism have therefore been its vital element. Repentance, faith, personal regeneration, the witness of the Spirit, sanctification, these have been the living ideas of Methodist teaching through out the world. It retains these vital truths to-day unimpaired; let it continue to guard them sacredly, as the very fire on its altars. Let it incessantly expound and enforce them in all its sanctuaries, and these sanctuaries shall continue to be thronged with inquiring, awakened, and living souls.

Reviewing thus with grateful joy the blessings of God to us and our families through his Church, and reminding ourselves, with devout self-admonition, of our responsibility for the future, it is befitting that we should erect, not in stone, but in more enduring substance, a monument, the light on whose summit shall shine with ever increasing glory dur

ing the coming hundred years, and shall be witnessed by the eyes of our posterity, when on the anniversary morning of October, 1966, they shall throng in redoubled hosts to their temples, and respond back over our graves, to this anniversary epoch, and send forward to the next the anthems of our jubilee. God grant that the hymns of that morning may resound not only over this, but over both American continents, from Labrador to Terra del Fuego, and that the missions of Methodism may respond to them from all the ends of the earth! Our chief memorial of the epoch, as has been stated, is not to be a building but an institution—a Fund for Education;* the interest of which alone is to be expended, the principal to be handed down as our salutation to the Methodists who shall assemble on that far-off morning. A more practicable or more sublime design is hardly possible to the denomination. Its other leading interests, like missions, Sunday-schools, etc., have the habitual sympathy and support of its people, but education can hardly expect such support, and yet can it be pronounced a less important, though it may be a less direct interest of the Church? Were its centenary contributions to be given to these more immediate interests, they would soon be absorbed or expended,

*The Centenary plan, as appended to this volume, provides for spe cial contributions for other objects, including a Centenary Missionary building; but these are comparatively minor designs.

profitably indeed, but in such manner as to lose their monumental character. The Church can confide these interests to its current sympathy and help, but education needs permanent endowment, and a great educational fund, like that proposed, is of all Church interests the best fitted to be monumental. It can continually assist our existing seminaries and erect new ones, and yet its undiminished principal be transmitted as our benediction to the future. Let us then establish it on a scale worthy not only of the last, but of the next hundred years of our history.

With such a history, such capabilities, and such responsibilities and aims, we enter upon the hundredth year of our great mission. The eye of Christendom will be specially upon us this year. The eye of God will be specially upon us. All the doings of the year should be done as in the sight of him and of his whole catholic Church. At the close of the memorable year, both he and his general Church will judge us according to our works. We shall then also be compelled to judge ourselves. The measure of our gratitude for such great prosperity, of our sense of such great responsibility, and of our Christian zeal for the improvement of such a sublime opportunity, will be apparent to ourselves and to all the world. Surely we shall not, we cannot, fail to rise to the high occasion. We will consecrate it with hymns of acclamation, with prayer, with the renewal