The Methodists seem to me to be a little unduly
disturbed because the B.B.C. and the Press gave prominence to an assertion made at the Methodist Conference that " the Methodist Church is slowly dying out ; in ten years we are 83,00o fewer "—this in the course of a discussion on a reported decrease of 5,902 in Church membership during the year. It was obviously right to give it prominence. The fact that a member of the Conference should make such a state- ment is clearly of importance, exaggerated though the statement may be. A fall in the membership of religious bodies is, of course, no new story, and a drop of 6,000 out of three-quarters of a million is no great matter. Pure religion and undefiled does not necessarily depend on membership of an organised Church, but there can be few persons convinced of the truth of the Christian. religion who do not realise the importance of association in worship and in the practical work of a religious community. A fall in Church membership is not to be dismissed with the facile and inaccurate assertion that there are more good Christians outside the Churches than in them.
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