UNION OF METHODISM.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LII, Issue 308, 26 November 1932, Page 8

UNION OF METHODISM.

A REPROACH “ROLLED AWAY.” DR. SOOTT LIDGETT ON THE CHURCH’S TASK. Dr. Scott Lidgett, in an article in the London Times, describes the steps which led to the decision to reunite the Methodist Churches and the meaning of the Act of Union. He regards the reunion as “one of the most important events in the religious history of this country.” Following upon the recent union of the Scottish Churches, it shows that thb movement towards the eventual re-union of Christendom is taking its start from the coming together of those branches of the Universal Church which are most closely allied in doctrine and ecclesiastical polity. The union of Methodism, he continues, has brought to a triumphant conclusion a preparatory work which has been going on for 19 years. That a scheme embodying an agreed doctrinal statement and providing for central nnd local government should have been adopted at last with such general consent shows that the years since the initiation of the proposal have been fruitfully spent. The Methodist Church, thus reunited, will be the most numerous Free Church in the British Isles. It will have more than 5000 ordained ministers and more than 50,000 local preachers. It will have 20,000 churches with more than 1,000,000 communicating Church members. Its Sunday school pupiis will number 1,250,000 taught by 200,0d0 Sunday school teachers. Its adherents, of course, are much more numerous than its communicating members. When the statistics of world Methodism are taken into account, Methodism is probably the most numerous Protestant denomination in the world. TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

“Two hundred years have passed since John and Charles Wesley and George AVhitefield, with their friends, met m what came to be nicknamed the Holy Club, at Oxford. Original Methodism combined the inwardness of personal religion, an intimacy of spiritual fellowship between those who enjoyed it, and an evangelistic activity in a wa.y that has perhaps never been approached save by the Franciscan Movement in the days of its earliest and unfettered enthusiasm. World Methodism as existing to-day owes everything to this three-fold combination. What England owes to the revival has become a commonplace with historians. Men so diverse in their points of view as Lecky, Green, Justin McCarthy, and Augustine Birrell have borne consistent testimony to the beneficial results of a movement which carried the message of the Gosped throughout the land at a time when the rapidly risjng centres of manufacturing and mining industries brought together masses of people whose spiritual needs were almost entirely unprovided for either by the Established Church or by the then existing dissenting denominations. ,' „ • “This work of evangelisation eventually aroused all the Churches, transformed the living theology of them all, raised the moral standards of the community, and initiated all kinds of social reform. But unfortunately the movement which did so much for the salvation of the nation could not save itself from internal disunion. . . . The recent proceedings roll away the reproach that has for so long rested upon the movement and will enable the Methodist Church tp concentrate its strength upon the original task of proclaiming the Gospel of the Grace of F'od in Christ Jesus throughout the world, and of seeking to apply the principles of the Gospel to all the pressing needs of our modern life.