NORTHERN ADVOCATE DAILY MONDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1932. THE METHODIST CHURCH

Northern Advocate, 7 November 1932, Page 4

NORTHERN ADVOCATE DAILY

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1932. THE METHODIST CHURCH

Registered for transmission through the post as a Newspaper.

i An epoch-marking - event in the history of Methodism in Britain took place on September 20, when, by the signature of a deed at the Albert Hall, London, the union of the Wesleyan Methods ists, ,the Primitive Methodist and Ihe United Methodist Churches was consummated. The preliminary process of inquiry, negotiation and reparation had occupied 19 yea is, for it was in 1913 that Sir Robert Perks initiated the movement at the Wesleyan Metbodist Conference by a resolution inviting the three churches to confer as to the possibility of reunion. From the statistical standpoint, the Methodist Church is, numerically, the largest Free Church denomination in Britain. It includes 23,000 places of worship and nearly 17,000 Sunday schools,; It is served by more than 0000 ministers and by more than 50.000 local preachers. It consists of more than 1,250,000 communicating church members, and has attached to it probably three times that number of adherents. including scholars in its Sunday schools. So far as all these are concerned,, union will bring’ about greatly increased efficiency and economy of adminis(ration, thus liberating great forces, personal and financial, for the prosecution of the spiritual mission to which Methodism is called and pledged. When the much larger figures of worldMethodism are taken account of Methodism is now probably the largest of the Protestant denominations of the world. “Statistics, however,” as Dr. Lidgctt, the President of the whole Methodist Church, says, “arc of least account in estimating a spiritual movement, and Methodist union is above all, a spiritual movement. Methodism has always been united in acceptance of the Evangelical faith and in pursuit of the Evangelical mission handed down to it by the religions revival of the eighteenth century that was led by John and Charles Wesley. What England and, indeed, the English-speaking world, owes directly and indirectly to that great movement, has become a commonplace of historians.” Yet the reproach of Methodism, it is pointed out, has been that, while united in faith and doctrine, as well as the sense of an historic mission, its life and witness-have been gravely injured by a series of secessions, which took place during the first half of the nineteenth century. All these turned oiT questions of Church government, ami especially upon the relation of ministers and laity in the administration of the Church. The administration of Methodism at that time was exclusively ministerial in its supreme governing body—the Conference—and predominantly ministerial in its circuits throughout the country. In 1 878, however, the Wesleyan Methodist Church took the momentous step of admitting laymen to the representative session of the Conference, questions of doctrine, the appointment and discipline of ministers, etc., being reserved to the pastoral session of the Conference. This reform was the forerunner and cause of a progressive movement, which gave fresh enterprise, breadth, and vigour to Wesleyan Methodism as a whole. It also removed the originating cause c.l disunion between the man dies of Methodism, and when, at the decisive moment, the representatives of the Primitive Methodist churches accepted the principle of a ministerial session of the Conference, charged with responsibility for the pastoral concerns of the Church, the cause of reunion was

virtually won. The scheme of union, therefore, in the language of the President, “embodies bo*h a statement of the faith in which Methodism has always been united, and a constitution which gives effect, in a balanced whole, to the rightful contentions of each of the uniting sections that, henceforth, will compose the Methodist Church.”