The Methodists of the world have this week been holding
an " CEcumenical " Council in London. The proceedings, so far as recorded, were chiefly of denominational interest, their first note being attention to education, and their only peculiarity the extra- ordinary importance attached to hymnology, which the Council consider a grand instrument for the diffusion of doctrine. At least, the President -of the English Conference, Dr. Osborne, said so, amid every mark of approval. The statistics of the Council are very noteworthy. The Council is believed to represent 23,000,000 Christians in Great Britain and America, and the denomination with its subdivisions has in those countries and Australia 84,000 local preachers, 32,000 minis- ters, 4,763,000 members, 577,500 teachers, and 4,480,000 scholars in its schools. There are more than a million Methodists in membership in the United Kingdom alone. The figures may read a lesson to the Established Church. The special attraction of Methodism is the vigorous appeal it makes to the emotional side of men's religious nature, the precise side which the Church is so apt to leave uncultivated. Add that it assigns active functions to Min laity, though itself in organisa- tion strongly sacerdotal, and'owe have the explanation of much of its vast success.
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