THEMETHODIST (ECUMENICAL CONFERENCE.
The group of Churches which are entitled to be classed under the general designation of "Wesleyan," though chronologically the latest of the great divisions of Protestantism, occupies in point of numbers at least the third, more probably the second place. Yet, though it is sufficiently startling to be told that a communion not a hundred and fifty years old numbers more than twenty millions of adherents, statistical returns alone will not convey an adequate impression of its extent and importance. It has been well said that England is only a small part of the outcome of English history, the greater issues of which lie not within the narrow limits of Britain, but in the destinies of nations yet to be ; and the same language may fairly be applied to Methodism. Deeply as the Evangelical Revival of the last century has stamped its impress on the mother-country, it has contributed still more powerfully to mould the religious thought and the social habits of the American Republic, and of the Colonies which almost encircle the earth with a zone of English commonwealths. The United States and the British Colonies furnish fully three-fourths of the numerical strength of Methodism,—perhaps five-sixths would be nearer the actual proportion. An ecclesiastical gathering which has neither legislative nor executive functions to discharge, and which can therefore do nothing but talk, is not usually a very edifying spectacle ; but the assembly at City Road has been free from any of those un- seemly outbursts of temper which too often occur when the representatives of antagonistic schools of thought are thus brought into close contact. That, however, is not all gain. The unbroken harmony of the gathering is, no doubt, a proof of the good-sense and mutual forbearance of the delegates ; but it must be remembered that these qualities have not been subjected to any severe strain. It is characteristic alike of the strength and the weakness of Methodism that it contains no antagonistic schools of theology. The constitution organised by Wesley, with its uniformity of doctrine and its conservatism of polity, has proved to be ad- mirably adapted to foster the expansion of the Connection, and to secure its stability; but these advantages have been purchased at a heavy price, by the sacrifice of much of that freedom which is the indispensable condition of healthy intellectual life. The evil has been seriously aggravated by that unwritten code which, in a Voluntary community, presses more severely than any formal enactment. Unless an author was prepared to brave the odious suspicion of heresy, or of disloyalty to Methodism, he was required not only to subscribe to "every particle of every creed and every article," but to abstain from anything like free criticism either of the fundamental principles of Methodist polity, or of the life and, teachings of "our venerable founder." This repression of the critical faculty entailed its own penalty. The past for which such implicit veneration was claimed became half-mythical. Before the generation that had listened to Wesley's voice had passed away, the early history of the Revival was already enveloped in a legendary haze, in which colours and outlines were blurred, and the true perspective altogether lost. In historical works and biographies, written by men of ability and thorough honesty, the origin and growth of the Methodist Churches were depicted with as much accuracy as the scenery of the Alps in the cheap daubs issued by the paint-sellers of Frankfort and Leipzic, while the sketches of the more eminent personages were often as lifelike as the figures of the Apostles in a mediaeval church window.
A more rational method is now becoming general. Mr. Tyer- man, especially, in the series of works which have at once taken their place as standard biographies, has drawn with a bold and faithful hand the portraits of Wesley and Whitfield and of several of their coadjutors. Some reputations have been more or less damaged by his honest pen ; but the central figure has gained, as that of a really great man always does gain, by being stripped of its conventional accessories. The Wesley painted by Mr. Tyerman, with none of the scars omitted, is far more attractive and more majestic than the angular-limbed, nimbus-crowned portrait of the older biographies. The same observation holds good of the work he accomplished. It has been too much the fashion to treat of Methodism as if it were a product of the Georgian eras,—a stream the source of which is to be sought in the Epworth parsonage, or the little prayer-meeting in Aldersgate Street. Its significance dawns on us only when we recognise it as the continuation, the development, of the Puritanism of the preceding century, just as Puritanism was the continuation and development of the Reformation. It is Puritanism, but it is the Puritanism of the eighteenth century, not the seventeenth. It belongs to the England of the Brunswicks, not to the England of the Stuarts. It is also Puritanism modified profoundly by the personal influ- ence of the Wesleys. The impress of their personal character is stamped upon the theology, the organisation, the devotional literature, and the ethical teaching of Methodism so deeply as to obscure its true historical relation to the sterner and more rugged types of our early Protestantism. Yet the Evangelical revival was substantially a revival of Puritanism. In one respect, of course, there could be no resemblance between the two move- ments. There could be no combination of political with religions enthusiasm in an age when the battle for both civil and religious freedom was virtually won, an age when loyalty to the reigning dynasty was the first duty of all who wished to secure the benefits of the Revolution. Nor among the governing classes was there anything corresponding to the large Puritan and Presbyterian minority of the first Stuart reigns. The Puritanism of the Georgian erawas therefore necessarily exclusively religions, and notwithstanding a few illustrious exceptions, it was a plebeian
movement. But when we turn from what, in spite of their inter- assist him. It is suggested that his captors—who, it would appear from a telegram subsequently shown to Mr. Kennard, expected to be followed by certificates of his insanity—repre- sented everywhere that he was mad ; but this is not certain on the evidence, and it is quite as probable that those who noticed feared a struggle if they interfered, and selfishly decided that it was no business of theirs. The police would look to it, or some one else. 'This feeling, according to a correspondent of the Liverpool Daily Post, is now openly avowed, and he even ventures to tell this story :—" I stated yesterday, a propos of the abduction of a clergyman, that the people in a London street would not interfere in such an affair, if called on by the victim. I have had a curious confirmation of that statement, in a street conversation which I overheard. It was generally agreed that a man would be a fool to interfere, losing time, and perhaps getting himself in`Jo trouble. One man even found sympathy in his declaration that if he saw one man stabbing another, he would go home and go to bed. This is certainly not creditable to us, but it is a common feeling, and is frequently manifested." It is difficult for any one who reads the papers to doubt that this is the ex- planation of a great many discreditable incidents, and that the tandency to avoid doing anything troublesome for a stranger's benefit decidedly increases. The monstrous incident recently reported of fifty persons watching a little girl drowning in Kensington Gardens, without an effort to save her, struck most people, and certainly struck ourselves, as incredible; but the facts appear to be undoubted, and no less discreditable explanation of them has ever been suggested. The people—or some of them— knew that the water was shallow, for a gardener had just before plunged in under their eyes ; but they either expected paid officials to rescue the child, or could not overcome the selfish dis- like to get wet, and so perhaps catch cold, or lose some profitable time in going home to change. That tragedy, with its shame- ful incidents, is, let us hope, exceptional, but the same kind of occurrence is much too frequently reported, and we should like to know what the explanation is. The usual one, a decline in national courage, does not strike us as true. That national character can change, is, we suppose, possible, or the Jews could nothave become a singularly receptive people; but such a change, in an unconquered and unremoved race, formerly distinguished for courage, is to the last degree improbable. There is, moreover, very little other evidence for it. It is useless to quote soldiers, for besides the momentary tendency to abuse them, and so discredit short-service, their courage is in part a product of discipline, which may be relaxed or strengthened, and which is just now, owing to a perversion of sympathy that will disappear in the first war, a little too humane. But the old courage is exhibited in most relations of civil life. We see firemen and policemen and miners and sailors behaving as bravely as ever they did, the Humane Society gives away as many medals as ever, and the criminal classes expect resistance no less than in the last genera- tion. We see no proof of a growth of a general spirit of cowardice, and, pending evidence, are not disposed to believe that while the people have become healthier and better fed, anything BO unusual or so disastrous has occurred. Nor do we attach much importance to the theory of increased numbers and of decreased self- reliance. No doubt, Londoners do trust the police to a curious, and in some respects, most satisfactory degree, looking to them to relieve themselves of responsibility or trouble with an instinctive alacrity which extends even to children. A lost child, horribly afraid of everyone else, will follow a policeman in uniform, and the neighbouring mothers always trust such a child to police care ; while it is, we are told, a standing order in back-streets to Jemima and Maria Ann, that if anything happens to them or their charges, they are to ask " the perlice." But this feeling has not grown up out of London, and out of London the pressure of the multitude, which so increases the temptation to leave your duty to some one else to do, is hardly perceptibly heavier. The evil is a general one, and requires some general explanation. est and their importance, are really the accidentals of Puritanism, to its theological side, we see at once the unity underlying the apparent divergencies of these two phases of English Pro- testantism. Combining an uncompromising hostility to every form of Sacerdotalism and Sacramentarianism with an equally uncompromising adherence to dogmatic theology of the most orthodox type, having a system of Church government which, -though neither Presbyterian nor Independent, retains no trace of Anglican influence, and an ethical code against which are brought the hackneyed charges of narrowness and austerity, Methodism may fairly claim to possess all the essential qualities of Puritanism.
Yet among these essentials, Calvinism is not included. The stern system which bears the name of the Genevan Reformer is so identified with the Puritan character, and is usually regarded as having contributed so much to its dignity and its harshness, that Puritanism without Calvinism sounds like a contradiction in terms. It would not, however, be easy to prove that there is any necessary connection between advanced Evangelical Protestantism and a belief in Predestination.
The development of the theology of the Reformed Churches is one of the most remarkable examples of the importance of the personal element in history. The Predestinarian or Augus- tinian bias which was given to that development was due, not to any tendency inherent in the principles of the Reformation, but to the ascendancy exercised by the powerful intellect and -lofty character of him who was the more than Patriarch or Pope of this the largest and most vigorous half of the Protestant world. That the same iron theological yoke was not rivetted. on the necks of the modern Evangelical Churches, we owe to the personal influence of the Wesleys. The Arminian- ism of Wesley was the natural result of his education, under influences which were at once High-Church. and Broad- -Church. In the surroundings of the great evangelist's early years, there was a curious blending of the two elements in the religious life of the Anglican Church, which, however antago- nistic to each other, are equally hostile to Puritanism. Had Wesley been reared in a good old Puritan home, had his train- ing been thoroughly Evangelical, he would have been far less qualified for his life-work. A mind which was of so profoundly .Conservative a cast would never have been able wholly to free itself from the shackles of Calvinism. It was because his reli- gious training was anti-Puritanic, that he was especially fitted to be the chief agent in the revival of Puritanism. If the Evangelical movement had been predominantly or, rather, exclusively Calvinistic, as, but for Wesley, it must have been, the consequences would, in all probability, have been fatal to the Protestantism of the nineteenth century. The bulk of the nation, appealed to on the one side by a Puritanism from whose stern theology its reason and its humanity recoiled, and on the other by a Sacerdotal- ism which insulted its common-sense and its innate love of freedom, would have drifted into a condition of practical Ag- nosticism. While we recognise the service which Metholism has thus rendered to faith, we cannot refrain from pointing out that, if its influence in the future is to be equally beneficial, it can only become so by an adaptation of its organisation, and, still more its tone, to the changing requirements of the age. If it is to retain its hold on the rising generation, it must relax something of its inexorable enforcement of professed uniformity -on questions respecting which an absolute identity of opinion is impossible, in even the smallest coterie. A Voluntary Church may be at liberty to insist upon subscription to any number of theological minutire, but it must pay the inevitable penalty, in a lower standard of pulpit honesty, and in the reluctance of intelligent men to submit to the imposition of a theological strait-waistcoat. Already there are complaints of the difficulty -of inducing young men of culture to enter the ranks of the Methodist ministry, and that difficulty will continue to increase, until there is some relaxation of the terms of subscription, :which are probably the most severe in Christendom.
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