VOLUME 4 — BOOK VI — CHAPTER XIII
AUXILIARY PLANS AND INSTITUTIONS LITERARY, EDUCATIONAL, MISSIONARY, ETC.

Practical Adjuncts of the Methodist system — Its Use of the Press — Wesley the Founder of the System of "Cheap Publications" — Great Variety of his Literary Works — Publishing Enterprise of American Methodism — Robert Williams begins it — Early Legislation respecting it — Origin of the Book Concern — Beauchamp's "Christian Monitor" — "Zion's Herald" — Progress of the Book Concern — Its present Condition and Usefulness — The Sunday-School — Wesleyan Methodism First Incorporates it in the Church — Asbury Establishes the First in America — Early Legislation of the Church respecting it — Sunday-school Union — Results — Education — Early Attempts for It — Asbury's Devotion to it — Rescue Missions — The Position of Methodism in their history — Coke — Sketch of the Progress of American Methodism in Domestic and Foreign Missions — German Methodism

The practical, of Disciplinary, as well as the Theological, system of Methodism has been minutely defined its appropriate place. But a Church must, in this age, have other, not to say extra-ecclesiastical, means of labor if it would meet the ever varying walks of the world, and not stagnate and die. Methodism has habitually been adding such auxiliaries to its working system. They have been noted in their due time, as they have, one after another, sprung up; but their fuller consideration has been reserved till the present stage of our narrative, when their series — literary, educational, and missionary — had become substantially complete. In order to estimate them adequately, their results, beyond our chronological limits, must be, and can legitimately be, briefly anticipated. They afford some of the most important and startling facts of the history of the Church.

American Methodism from its organization, and even before that date, appreciated the importance of the press. The example and injunctions of Wesley kept the denomination, not only in England, but wherever it extended, zealous in the diffusion not only of religious literature, but of "useful knowledge" in general. He was the founder of the system of "cheap publications;" cheap prices sustained by large sales. [2] The literary labors of Wesley would seem, aside from all his other services, to be sufficient for the lives of half a score of men. A German historian of Methodism [3] classifies, with German elaborateness, the great variety of his literary works, as Poetical, Philological, Philosophical, Historical, and Theological. Though he probably wrote before Wesley's death, he states that many of these writings, after ten or twenty editions, could not be obtained without difficulty, and the whole could not be purchased for less than ten guineas, notwithstanding they were published at rates surprisingly cheap. A catalogue of his publications, printed about 1756, contains no less than one hundred and eighty-one articles, in prose and verse, English and Latin, on grammar, logic, medicine, music, poetry, theology, and philosophy. Two thirds of these publications were for sale at less than one shilling each, and more than one fourth at a penny. They were thus brought within reach of the poorest of his people. "Simplify religion and every part of learning," he wrote to Benson, who was the earliest of his lay preachers addicted to literary labors. To all his itinerants he said, "See that every society is supplied with books, some of which ought to be in every house." In addition to his collected works, (fourteen octavo volumes in the English edition, and seven in the American,) his Biblical "Notes" and abridgments make a catalogue of one hundred and eighteen prose productions, (a single one of which, "The Christian Library," contains fifty volumes,) forty-nine poetical publications by himself and his brother, and five distinct works on music. Not content with books and tracts, Wesley projected, in August, 1777, the Arminian Magazine, and issued the first number at the beginning of 1778. It was one of the first four religious magazines which sprung from the resuscitated religion of the age, and which began this species of periodical publications in the Protestant world. It is now the oldest religious periodical. It may be questioned whether any English writer of the last or the present century has equaled Wesley in the number of his productions.

American Methodism has always been true to this example of English Methodism, and in fact has far transcended it. Its "Book Concern" is now the largest religious publishing house in the world.

We have seen the beginnings of this literary agency in the printing and circulation of Wesley's sermons by Robert Williams, one of the earliest lay evangelists, who, according to Lee's history of the Church, "spread them through the country, to the great advantage of religion, opening the way for the preachers where these had never been before." But as early as the first Conference (1778) this individual or independent publishing was prohibited, the "consent of the brethren" being required, because, as Lee writes, "it now became necessary for all the preachers to be united in the same course, so that the profits ensuing therefrom might be divided among them, or applied to some charitable purpose." "Be active," commanded the Church to its ministry at its organization of 1784, "be active in the diffusion of Mr. Wesley's books. Every 'assistant' may beg money of the rich to buy 'books for the poor;' " and it was ordained at the same time that "they should take care that every society be duly supplied with books." The Conferences of 1787 made further provisions for the purpose, and "from this time," says Lee, "we began to publish more of our own books than ever before, and the principal part of the business was carried on in New York." No publisher or "Book Agent" was yet named, however; but, two years later, we find Philip Cox and John Dickins designated to that office in the Minutes. The former acted as a sort of colporteur at large for three years, the first American example of that useful office, and died in it, "after circulating, says his obituary in the Minutes, "many hundred books of religious instruction." Dickins, the only Methodist preacher in Philadelphia in 1789, began there, at that time, the "Methodist Book Concern," in addition to his pastoral labors. The first volume issued by him was the "Christian Pattern," Wesley's translation of Kempis' celebrated "Imitation." The Methodist Discipline, the Hymn Book, Wesley's Primitive Physic, and reprints of the first volume of the Aminian Magazine, and Baxter's Saint's Rest, followed. The only capital of the Concern was about six hundred dollars, lent to it by Dickins himself. In 1790 portions of Fletcher's "Checks" were reprinted. In 1797 a "Book Committee" was appointed, to whom all books were to be submitted before their publication. In 1804 the Concern was removed from Philadelphia to the city of New York. As early as 1796 the General Conference ordained the publication of a "Methodist magazine," in imitation of Wesley's periodical; it was not successfully attempted till 1818. It still prosperously continues, under the title of the Methodist quarterly Review. Western Methodism had, however, anticipated it by the publication of Beauchamp's "Christian Monitor," at Chilicothe, Ohio, in 1815. In 1824 the Concern secured premises of its own on Crosby Street, with presses, bindery, etc. In 1823 the "Youth's Instructor," a monthly work, was begun. The same spirit of enterprise led to the publication of the Christian Advocate and Journal, which appeared, for the first time, on the ninth of September, 1826. But New England preceded the rest of the Church in providing for this want; in 1815 a publication was commenced, entitled, "The New England Missionary Magazine." It was edited by Martin Ruter, and printed at Concord, N.H., by Isaac Hill; but it ceased after four quarterly numbers had been issued. In 1821 the New England Conference formed an association, styled the "Society for Giving and Receiving Religious Intelligence." This gave rise to Zion's Herald, printed by Moore and Prouse, under the direction of the committee of the society, of which Elijah Hedding was president. The first number was issued January 9, 1823, on a small royal sheet, the pages measuring only nine by sixteen inches. Such was the origin of the first weekly publication of Methodism in the world; a paper which has had an unsurpassed power on the great questions and crises of the Church.

The success of the Advocate was remarkable. "In a very short time," writes Bangs, one of its original publishers, "its number of subscribers far exceeded every other paper published in the United States, being about twenty-five thousand. It soon increased to thirty thousand, and was probably read by more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons, young and old." It should be noticed also that, at the earnest request of Methodists west of the mountains, the General Conference of 1820 authorized the establishment of a branch of the Book Concern in Cincinnati, under Martin Ruter, a precedent which led to secondary branches in various parts of the country. The rapid increase of the business very soon made it necessary to enlarge its buildings. Accordingly all the vacant ground in Crosby Street was occupied. But even these additions were found insufficient to accommodate the several departments of labor, so as to furnish the supply of books, now in constantly increasing demand. Five lots were therefore purchased on Mulberry Street, between Broome and Spring, streets, and one building erected in the rear for a printing office and bindery, and another of larger dimensions projected. In the month of September, 1838, the entire establishment was removed into the new buildings. In these commodious rooms, with efficient agents and editors at work, everything seemed to be going on prosperously, when suddenly in 1836 the entire property was consumed by fire at night. The Church thus lost not less than two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The buildings, all the printing and binding materials, a vast quantity of books, bound and in sheets, a valuable library which the editor had been collecting for years, were in a few hours destroyed. Fortunately the "Concern" was not in debt. By hiring an office temporarily, and employing outside printers, the agents soon resumed their business, the smaller works were put to press, and "the Church's herald of the news, the Christian Advocate and Journal, soon took its flight again (though the first number after the fire had its wings much shortened) through the symbolical heavens, carrying the tidings of our loss, and of the liberal and steady efforts which were making to reinvigorate the paralyzed Concern."

At the General Conference of 1836 the plan of a new building was submitted and approved. It went up with all convenient dispatch, in a much better style, more durable, and safer against fire than the former structure The front edifice is one hundred and twenty-one feet in length, and thirty in breadth, four stories high above the basement, with offices for the agents and clerks, a bookstore, committee rooms, etc. The building in the rear is sixty-five feet in length, thirty in breadth, and four stories high, and is used for stereotyping, printing, binding, etc. Large additions have since been made.

In our day (1866) the Methodist Book Concern, aside from that of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, which was founded by a division of its funds, comprises two branches, eastern and western, and seven depositories, with an aggregate capital of more than $837,000. Four "Book Agents," appointed by the General Conference, manage its business. It has twelve editors of its periodicals, nearly five hundred clerks and operatives, and between twenty and thirty cylinder and power presses constantly in operation. It publishes about five hundred "General Catalogue" bound books, besides many in the German and other languages, and about fifteen hundred Sunday-school volumes. A Tract Society is one of its adjuncts, and its tract publications number about nine hundred in various tongues. Its periodicals are a mighty agency, including one Quarterly Review, four monthlies, one semi-monthly, and eight weeklies, with an aggregate circulation of over one million of copies per month. Its Quarterly and some of its weeklies have a larger circulation than any other periodicals of the same class in the nation, probably in the world.

The influence of this great institution, in the diffusion of popular literature and the creation of a taste for reading among the great masses of the denomination, has been incalculable. It has scattered periodicals and books all over the valley of the Mississippi. Its sales in that great domain, in the quadrennial period ending with January 31, 1864, amounted to about $1,200,000. If Methodism had made no other contribution to the progress of knowledge and civilization in the New World than that of this powerful institution, this alone would suffice to vindicate its claim to the respect of the enlightened world. Its ministry has often been falsely disparaged as unfavorable to knowledge; but it should be borne in mind that its ministry founded this stupendous means of popular intelligence, and has continued to work it with increasing success up to the present time. They have been, as we have seen, its salesmen, and have scattered its publications over their circuits. Wesley enjoined this service upon them in their Discipline. "Carry books with you on every round," he said; "leave no stone unturned in this work;" and thus have they spread knowledge in their courses over the whole land, and built up their unparalleled "Book Concern." There has never been an instance of defalcation on the part of its "agents;" it has never failed in any of the financial revulsions of the country; and it is now able, by its large capital, to meet any new literary necessity of the denomination. Among its agents and editors have been some of the ablest men of the Church, some of whom have been noticed, but most of whom pertain to dates beyond our limits. Ten of them have been called from its service to the episcopate in the northern Church alone. [5]

The Sunday-school system of the Church has been closely allied to its Book Concern. I have heretofore given some account of its origin, [6] showing that Methodism shared in that important event in England; that it first incorporated the institution in the Church; that Francis Asbury established the first school of the kind in the new world in 1780, at the house of Thomas Crenshaw, in Hanover County, Va.; and that this first attempt prefigured one of the greatest later advantages of the institution by giving a useful preacher to the denomination. In 1790 the first recognition of Sunday-schools by an American Church was made by the vote of the Methodist Conferences, ordering their formation throughout the Church, and also the compilation of a book for them. Methodism for many years made no provision for the general organization or affiliation of its Sunday schools. Its Book Concern issued some volumes suitable for their libraries, chiefly by the labors of John P. Durbin, who prepared its first library volume, and its first Question Book; but no adequate, no systematic attention was given to this sort of literature. It was obvious, on a moment's reflection that an almost illimitable field for the enlargement of the business of the Concern, and the diffusion of useful knowledge, was at its command in this direction. Accordingly the "Sunday school Union" was organized on the second of April, 1827. Bangs says that "the measure was hailed with grateful delight by our friends and brethren throughout the country. It received the sanction of the several annual Conferences, which recommended the people of their charge to form auxiliaries in every circuit and station, and send to the general depository in New York for their books; and such were the zeal and unanimity with which they entered into this work, that at the first annual meeting of the society there were reported 251 auxiliaries 1,025 schools, 2,048 superintendents, 10,290 teachers, and 68,240 scholars, besides above 2,000 managers and visitors. Never, therefore, did an institution go into operation under more favorable circumstances, or was hailed with a more universal joy, than the Sunday-school Union of the Methodist Episcopal Church." This great success, however, could not save it from the misfortunes of bad management. Under "an injudicious attempt," continues Bangs, many years later, "to amalgamate the Bible, Tract, and Sunday-School Societies together, by which the business of these several societies might be transacted by one board of management," and by other causes, it declined, if indeed it did not fail, until resuscitated by the zeal of some New York Methodists, and by an act of the General Conference of 1840. It passed through modifications till it assumed its present effective form of organization, and grew into colossal proportions under the labors of its indefatigable secretaries, Drs. Kidder and Wise. It now (1866) has (aside from its offspring in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South) 13,400 schools, more than 150,000 teachers and officers, and near 918,000 scholars, about 19,000 of whom are reported as converted during the last year. There are in the libraries of these schools more than 2,529,000 volumes. They are supported at an annual expense of more than $216,000, besides nearly $18,000 given to the Union for the assistance of poor schools. There are circulated among them, semi-monthly, nearly 260,000 "Sunday-School Advocates," the juvenile periodical of the Union. The numbers of conversions among pupils of the schools, as reported for the last eighteen year, amount to more than 285,000, showing that much of the extraordinary growth of the Church is attributable to this mighty agency. The Union has four periodicals for teachers and scholars, two in English, and two in German, and their aggregate circulation is nearly 300,000 per number. Its catalogue of Sunday-school books comprises more than 2,300 different works, of which more than a million copies are issued annually. Including other issues, it has nearly 2,500 publications adapted to the use of Sunday-schools. In fine, few, if any, institutions of American Methodism wield a mightier power than its Sunday-School Union. These figures, however, show but partially the Sunday-school enterprise of American Methodism, as they do not include those of its several branches, which, at dates subsequent to the period reached by our narrative, grew out of; and broke from, the parent Church. These will hereafter be given.

We have already had frequent intimations in these pages of the interest of Methodism for Education. The founders of the denomination in England were classically educated men, and it had its birth in a university. Wesley, in the very year which is recognized as its epoch, (1739,) began its noted "Kingswood School," and at his first Conference (1744) proposed a theological school, a "seminary for laborers," or lay preachers, a project which was at last realized by the present two "Theological Institutions" of English Methodism. American Methodism early shared this interest of the parent body in education. Dickins had proposed, as early as 1780, an academic institution for the denomination. In the year of the organization of the Church (1784) Coke and Asbury projected the Cokesbury College, and laid its foundations the next year at Abingdon, Md. In 1787 Asbury consecrated and opened it with public ceremonies. In 1795 it was destroyed by fire; but a second edifice was soon after provided in Baltimore; this, however, shared the fate of its predecessor in precisely one year. It has been supposed that these disasters not only discouraged Asbury, but led him fallaciously to infer that Providence designed not the denomination to devote its energy to education. It was far otherwise, however, with that great man. He did not believe that collegiate or pretentious institutions of learning should be attempted by the Church while yet in its infancy, but he never abandoned the design of secondary or more practically adapted institutions. He formed indeed a grand scheme, as we have seen, for the establishment of academies all over the territory of the denomination, one for each "district," a district then being a Conference.

As far south as Georgia contributions in land and tobacco were received for the founding of a college there in 1789; and in the yet frontier settlements of Redstone, Pa., and Kentucky, seminaries were attempted under Asbury's auspices. In 1789 overtures for an academy in Kentucky were approved by him and the Conferences, and the next year the Western Conference began subscriptions for it. At Bethel, Ky., an edifice and organization were really established, but financially broke down at last, prostrating the health and intellect of Poythress by its fall. At Uniontown, Western Pennsylvania, an academy was started in 1794 or 1795 by Asbury's influence, and survived some few years, educating Thomas Bell, Samuel Parker, and other eminent men. Thus in its primitive struggles of the last century, did the Church show its appreciation of education. In 1792 Asbury was ambitious to place "two thousand children under the best plan of education ever known in this country."

Before the close of the last century Hope Hull established an academy in Wilkes County, Ga., and we have seen Roberts, McHenry, and Valentine Cook personally devoting themselves to the work of education. In 1818 Dr. Samuel K. Jennings and other Methodists attempted a college in Baltimore, but this also failed. No failures, however, no discouragement, could obliterate from the mind of the denomination the conviction of its responsibility for the education of the increasing masses of its people. In 1820 the General Conference recommended that all the annual Conferences should establish seminaries within their boundaries, thus proposing to supply the whole republic with such schools, though with considerable territorial intervals. This demonstration of interest for education in the supreme body of the Church was prompted by the spontaneous enterprise of the ministry and the people, who, three years before, had, chiefly under the guidance of Martin Ruter, started an institution in New England, (at New Market, N. H.,) still distinguished, in its later location, at Wilbraham, Mass.; and in 1819 another, chiefly under the guidance of Nathan Bangs, in New York city, afterward transferred to White Plains, N. Y. The impulse thus given not only produced numerous academies, but led in 1823, to the beginning of Augusta College, Ky., whose edifice was erected in 1825, and commenced the series of modern collegiate institutions under the patronage of the Church, so that by the General Conference of 1832, says the biographer of Hedding, "the Wesleyan University had been established at Middletown, Conn., and Dr. Wilbur Fisk, of the New England Conference, was at its head, and John M. Smith, of the New York Conference, one of the professors. Madison College, now extinct, but whose place has since been supplied by Allegheny College, had gone into successful operation in Western Pennsylvania; J. H. Fielding had succeeded H. B. Bascom as president, and H. J. Clark was one of the professors; both were members of the Pittsburgh Conference. Augusta College had been established under the patronage of the Kentucky and Ohio Conferences; Martin Ruter was president, and H. B. Bascom, J. S. Tomlinson, J. P. Durbin, and Burr H. McCown, were professors; all of them members of the Kentucky Conference except J. P. Durbin, who belonged to the Ohio. In the southwest, Lagrange College had been established; Robert Paine was president, and E. D. Simms one of the professors. In Virginia, Randolph Macon College had been established, and M. P. Parks, of the Virginia Conference, was one of its professors, and Stephen Olin was soon after placed at its head. Thus it will be seen that no less than five colleges had sprung into existence in an incredibly short time, and were already in successful operation under the supervision of the Church. Several Conference seminaries also had been established; such were the Cazenovia Seminary, the Maine Wesleyan Seminary, Wilbraham Academy, Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, Shelbyville Female Academy, and others, which were in successful operation in different parts of the Church." [7]

The Church could not pause here. Wesley, as we have seen, had proposed ministerial education at his very first Conference, and the British Methodists had embodied the proposition in two imposing "theological institutions." The New England Methodists agitated the question in their Church periodical, and in 1839 a convention was called, in Boston, to provide such an institution. It was founded with the title of the Biblical Institute; it struggled through severe adversities, was at first connected with the Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn.., then with the Methodist Seminary, at Newbury, Vt., but at last was located in Concord, N.H., where it has exerted no inconsiderable influence upon the character of the New England Methodist ministry. In 1845 John Dempster, of New York city, became its professor of theology. He threw his remarkable energy into the cause of ministerial education throughout the denomination, and not only forced along the New England institution against formidable discouragements, but became a leading founder of the northwestern seminary at Evanston, Ill., where a Chicago Methodist lady, by the gift of property amounting to $300,000, gave endowment and her name to the Garrett Biblical Institute.

Thus boarding academies, colleges, and theological seminaries have rapidly grown up in the denomination till the Methodist Episcopal Church alone now (1866) reports no less than 25 colleges, (including theological schools,) having 158 instructors, 5,345 students, $3,055,861 endowments and other property, and 105,531 volumes in their libraries. It reports also 77 academies, with 556 instructors and 17,161 students, 10,462 of whom are females, making all aggregate of 102 institutions, with 714 instructors and 23,106 students. The southern division of the denomination reported before the Rebellion 12 colleges and 77 academies, with 8,000 students, making an aggregate for the two bodies of 191 institutions and 31,106 students.

The moral and social influence of such a series of educational provisions, reaching from the year of the organization of the Church to our own day, must be incalculable; and could it point the world to no other monuments of its usefulness, these would suffice to establish its claims as one of the effective means of the intellectual and moral progress of the country.

We turn to another and more immediately ecclesiastical and evangelical interest, which was formally initiated in the Church, as I have shown, before the expiration of the period which closes our narrative. American Methodism could not long fail to imitate the example of British Methodism in the "missionary cause," for the parent Church had early become pre-eminent before the Christian world in this sublime enterprise. The idea of religious missions is as old as Christianity, and has been exemplified by the Papal Church through much of its history, and in the ends of the earth. The Moravians early embodied it in their system. In the Protestantism of England it had but feeble sway till the epoch of Methodism. That grand form of it which now characterizes English Protestantism in both hemispheres, and which proposes the evangelization of the whole race, appeared in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Societies for the propagation of the gospel had previously existed in Great Britain, but they were provided chiefly, if not exclusively, for the Christianization of countries which, by reason of their political dependence upon England, were deemed to have special claims on British Christianity — the inhabitants of India and the Indians of North America. An historian of missions, writing in 1844, says: "It was not until almost within the last fifty years that the efforts of the religious bodies by whom Christian missions are now most vigorously supported were commenced." [8] Methodism was essentially a missionary movement, domestic and foreign. It initiated not only the spirit, but the practical plans of modern English missions. Bishop Coke so represented the enterprise in his own person for many years as to supersede the necessity of any more formal organization of it, but it was none the less real and energetic. The historian just cited says "The Wesleyan Missionary Society was formed in 1817, but the first Wesleyan missionaries who went out, under the superintendence of Coke, entered the British colonies in 1786. The Baptist Missionary Society was established in 1792, the London Missionary Society in 1795, and the Edinburgh or Scottish and the Glasgow Missionary Societies in 1796. The subject also engaged the attention of many pious persons belonging to the Established Church, besides those connected with the London Missionary Society, and by members of that communion. The Church Missionary Society was organized in the first year of the present century." The London Missionary Society, embracing most Dissenting bodies of England, arose under the influence of Calvinistic Methodism, and the Church Missionary Society sprang from the evangelical Low Church party which Methodism, Calvinistic and Arminian, had resuscitated in the Establishment, Venn, the son of the Methodist churchman Venn, being its projector.

Though Coke represented the Arminian-Methodist Mission interest as its founder, secretary, treasurer, and collector, it really took a distinct form some six years before the formation of the first of the above named societies. Coke spent more than a year in bringing the Negro missions before the English people immediately after his second visit to the West Indies. In 1786 a formal address was issued to the public in behalf of a comprehensive scheme of Methodist missions. It was entitled "An Address to the Pious and Benevolent, proposing an Annual Subscription for the Support of Missionaries in the highlands and adjacent Islands of Scotland, the Isles of Jersey, Guernsey, and Newfoundland, the West Indies, and the Provinces of Nova Scotia and Quebec. By Thomas Coke, LL.D. 1786." It speaks of "a mission intended to be established in the British dominions in Asia," but which was postponed till these more inviting fields should be occupied. This scheme was called in the address an "Institution;" it was really such; though not called a society, it was one in all essential respects; and if the fact that it was not an extra-ecclesiastical plan, but a part of the system of Methodism, should detract from its claim of precedence in respect to later institutions of the kind, that consideration would equally detract from the Moravian missions, which were conducted in a like manner. The address filled several pages, and was prefaced by a letter from Wesley indorsing the whole plan.

The next year (1787) the Wesleyan Missions bore the distinctive title of "Missions established by the Methodist Society." At the last Conference attended by Wesley (1790) a committee of nine preachers, of which Coke was chairman, was appointed to take charge of this new interest. Coke continued to conduct its chief business; but the committee were his standing counsel, and formed, in fact, a Mission Board of Managers two years before the organization of the first of British Missionary Societies. Collections had been taken in many of the circuits for the Institution, and in 1793 the Conference formally ordered a general collection for it. Coke published accounts of its "receipts and in this manner did Methodism early prompt the British Churches, and call forth the energies of the British people, in plans of religious benevolence for the whole world. Its previous missions in Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and the Channel Islands did much for the reformation of the domestic population. Besides its efforts in 1786 in the West Indies, it began its evangelical labors in France as early as 1791, and its great schemes in Africa in 1811; in Asia in 1814; in Australasia in 1815; in Polynesia in 1822; until, from the first call of Wesley for American evangelists, in the Conference of 1769, down to our day, we see the grand enterprise reaching to the shores of Sweden, to Germany, France, and the Upper Alps; to Gibraltar and Malta; to the banks of the Gambia, to Sierra Leone, and to the Gold Coast; to the Cape of Good hope; to Ceylon, to India, and to China; to the Colonists and Aboriginal tribes of Australia; to New Zealand, and the Friendly and Fiji Islands; to the islands of the Western as well as of the Southern hemisphere; and from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Puget's Sound. From 1803 to the present time Wesleyan Methodism has contributed more than twenty millions of dollars for foreign evangelization. In England the "Church Missionary Society" alone exceeds its annual collections for the foreign field; but the Wesleyan Society enrolls more communicants in its mission Churches than all other British missionary societies combined. The historian of religion during the last and present centuries would find it difficult to point to a more magnificent monument of Christianity.

Coke, the first bishop of American Methodism, was to the end of his life the representative character of Methodist Missions. In his old age he offered himself, as we shall hereafter see, to the British Conference as a missionary to the East Indies. He died on the voyage, and was buried in the Indian Ocean. His death struck not only a knell through the Church, but a summons for it to rise universally and march around the world. He had long entertained the idea of universal evangelization as the exponent characteristic of the Methodist movement. The influence of the movement on English Protestantism had tended to such a result, for in both England and America nearly all denominations had felt the power of the great revival not only during the days of Whitefield and Wesley, but ever since. Anglo-Saxon Christianity, in both hemispheres, had been quickened into new life, and had experienced a change amounting to a moral revolution. The magnificent apostolic idea of evangelization in all the earth, and till all the earth should be Christianized, had not only been restored, as a practical conviction, but had become pervasive and dominant in the consciousness of the Churches, and was manifestly thenceforward to shape the religious history of the Protestant world. The great fermentation of the mind of the civilized nations — the resurrection, as it may be called, of popular thought and power — contemporaneous in the civil and religious worlds, in the former by the American and French Revolutions, in the latter by the Methodist movement seemed to presage a new history of the human race. And history is compelled to record, with the frankest admission of the characteristic defects of Thomas Coke, that no man, not excepting Wesley or Whitefield, more completely represented the religious significance of those eventful times.

Though American Methodism was many years without a distinct missionary organization, it was owing to the fact that its whole Church organization was essentially a missionary scheme. It was, in fine, the great Home Mission enterprise of the North American continent, and its domestic work demanded all its resources of men and money. It early began, however, special labors among the aborigines and slaves. The history of some of these labors would be an exceedingly interesting and even romantic record, but our limits admit but this passing allusion to them, after the account lately given of their singular origin by Stewart, the African. Their subsequent progress belongs to the historian of the ensuing periods of Methodism, and will afford some of his most thrilling facts,

The year 1819 is memorable as the epoch of the formal organization of the American Methodist missionary work. Nathan Bangs, long distinguished as its secretary and chief representative, was also its chief founder. He made it the theme of much preliminary conversation with his colleagues and the principal Methodist laymen of New York city. Laban Clark introduced it by a resolution to the attention of the metropolitan preachers at their weekly meeting, "consisting," says Bangs, "of Freeborn Garrettson, Samuel Merwin, Laban Clark, Samuel Howe, Seth Crowell, Thomas Thorp, Joshua Soule, Thomas Mason, and myself. After an interchange of thoughts the resolution was adopted, and Garrettson, Clark, and myself were appointed a committee to draft a constitution. When this committee met we agreed to write, each, a constitution, then come together, compare them, and adopt the one which should be considered the most suitable. The one prepared by myself was adopted, submitted to the Preachers' Meeting, and, after some slight verbal alterations, was finally approved. We then agreed to both a public meeting in the Forsyth Street Church on the evening of the fifth of April, 1819, which was accordingly done. I was called to the chair, and, after the reading of the constitution, Joshua Soule moved its adoption, and supported his motion by a powerful speech, concluding by an appeal to the people to come forward and subscribe it. He was seconded by Freeborn Garrettson, who also pleaded in favor of the scheme from his experience in the itinerant field from Virginia to Nova Scotia."

The constitution was unanimously adopted, and the following officers were chosen: Bishop McKendree, President; Bishops George and Roberts, and Nathan Bangs, Vice-presidents; Thomas Mason, Corresponding Secretary; Joshua Soule, Treasurer; Francis Hall, Clerk; Daniel Ayres, Recording Secretary. The following managers were also chosen: Joseph Smith, Robert Mathison, Joseph Sandford, George Suckley, Samuel L. Waldo, Stephen Dando, Samuel B. Harper, Lancaster S. Burling, William Duval, Paul Hick; John Westfield, Thomas Roby, Benjamin Disbrow, James B. Gascoigne, William A. Mercein, Philip J. Arcularius, James B. Oakley, George Caines, Dr. Seaman, Dr. Gregory, John Boyd, I. H. Smith, Nathaniel Jarvis, Robert Snow, Andrew Mercein, Joseph Moses, John Paradise, William Myers, William B. Skidmore, Nicholas Schureman, James Wood, Abraham Paul.

The historian of the society says: "It is obvious that almost its entire business was conducted by Dr. Bangs for many years. In addition to writing the constitution, the address and circular, he was the author of every Annual Report, with but one exception, from the organization of the society down to the year 1841, a period of twenty-two years. He filled the offices of corresponding secretary and treasurer for sixteen years, without a salary or compensation of any kind, until his appointment to the first named office by the General Conference of 1836. That he has contributed more than any other man living to give character to our missionary operations, by the productions of his pen and his laborious personal efforts, is a well authenticated fact, which the history of the Church fully attests."

In this single instance of his manifold public life he was to be identified with a grand religious history. He was to see the annual receipts of the society enlarged from the $823 of its first year to $250,374, (including its offspring of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, to half a million,) and its total receipts, down to the last year of his life, more than four and a half millions, not including the southern society. He was to witness the rise (chiefly under the auspices of the society) of American-German Methodism, an epochal fact in the history of his denomination, next in importance to the founding of the Church by Embury and Strawbridge. Without a recognized missionary for some time after its origin, the society was to present to his dying gaze a list of nearly four hundred, and more than thirty-three thousand mission communicants, representing the denomination in many parts of the United States, in Norway, Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, Bulgaria, India, China, and South America. Assisting in this great work, and rejoicing in its triumphs, he was to outlive all its original officers but three, and all its original managers save three.

The next General Conference (in 1820) sanctioned the scheme. Emory submitted an elaborate report on the subject. After reasoning at length upon it, he asked, "Can we, then, be listless to the cause of missions? We cannot. Methodism itself is a missionary system. Yield the missionary spirit, and you yield the very life-blood of the cause. In missionary efforts our British brethren are before us. We congratulate them on their zeal and their success. But your committee beg leave to entreat this Conference to emulate their example." The Conference adopted, with some emendations, the constitution prepared for the society by Bangs. He thus saw his great favorite measure incorporated, it may be hoped forever, into the structure of the Church. He writes: "These doings of the Conference in relation to the Missionary Society exerted a most favorable influence upon the cause, and tended mightily to remove the unfounded objections which existed in some minds against this organization."

By the session of the General Conference of 1832 the society's operations had extended through the states and territories of the nation, and had become a powerful auxiliary of the itinerant system of the Church. Hitherto it had been prosecuted as a domestic scheme, for the frontier circuits, the slaves, the free colored people, and the Indian tribes; it had achieved great success in this wide field, and was now strong enough to reach abroad to other lands. It proposed, with the sanction of this Conference, to plant its standard on the coast of Africa, and send agents to Mexico and South America to ascertain the feasibility of missions in those countries. Thus were begun those foreign operations of the society which have become its most interesting labors.

Its domestic Indian missions had now become numerous, and some of them were remarkably prosperous; "attended," Bangs says, "with unparalleled success." In Upper Canada they numbered, in 1831, no less than ten stations, and nearly two thousand Indians "under religious instruction, most of whom were members of the Church. Among the Cherokees; in Georgia, they had at the same date no less than seventeen missionary laborers, and nearly a thousand Church members. Among the Choctaws there were about four thousand communicants, embracing all the principal men of the nation, their chiefs and captains." And, more or less, along the whole frontier, Indian Missions were established. Meanwhile the destitute fields of the domestic work proper were dotted with humble but effective mission stations, from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, and these stations were rapidly passing from the missionary list to the Conference catalogue of appointments as self-supporting Churches.

Melville B. Cox, whose baptism, and the reception of his family into the Church, by Kibby, in Maine, have been noticed, [9] sailed for Africa, the first foreign missionary of American Methodism. He organized the Liberia Mission. He fell a martyr to the climate, but laid on that benighted continent the foundations of the denomination, never, it may be hoped, to be shaken. About the same time a delegation from the distant Flathead Indians of Oregon arrived in the states soliciting missionaries. Their appeal was zealously urged through the Christian Advocate, and received an enthusiastic response from the Church. Bangs, who had been a leading promoter of the African Mission, now, in cooperation with Fisk, advocated this new claim with his utmost ability. Jason and Daniel Lee, and Cyrus Shepard, were dispatched as missionaries. An extraordinary scheme of labors was adopted, involving great expense; but, writes Bangs, "the projection of this important mission had a most happy effect upon the missionary cause generally. As the entire funds of the society up to this time had not exceeded eighteen thousand dollars a year, and as this mission must necessarily cost considerable, with a view to augment the pecuniary resources of the society a loud and urgent call was made, through the columns of the 'Christian Advocate and Journal,' on the friends of missions to 'come up to the help of the Lord' in this emergency."

As an evidence of the beneficial result of these movements, the amount of available funds more than doubled in the year in which the Lees and Shepard departed to their field. The surges of emigration have overwhelmed nearly all that grand ultramontane region; the aborigines are sinking out of sight beneath them; but the Oregon Mission became the nucleus of the Christianity and civilization of the new and important state which has since arisen on the North Pacific coast.

Meanwhile Fountain C. Pitts was sent on a mission of inquiry to South America. He visited Rio Janeiro, Buenos Ayres, Monte Video, and other places, and the Methodist South American Mission was founded the next year by Justin Spaulding. Thus had the Church borne at last its victorious banner into the field of foreign missions. It was to be tried severely in these new contests, but to march on through triumphs and defeats till it should take foremost rank among denominations devoted to foreign evangelization.

The operations of the Missionary Society had now assumed such importance, and involved such responsibility, as to justify, in the judgment of the General Conference, the appointment of a special officer, or "Resident Corresponding Secretary," who could devote his whole attention to them. Of course the mind of the Conference, as indeed of the general Church, turned spontaneously to Bangs as the man for such an office, and he was elected by a large majority.

He entered with energy upon his new functions. The first year of his secretaryship was signalized by the first recognition and announcement, by the Missionary Society, of one of the most remarkable events in the history of modern missions, the beginning of the German Methodist Missions. Professor Nast, a young German scholar of thorough but Rationalistic education, had been reclaimed by Methodism to the faith of the Reformation. He labored for some time among his countrymen in Cincinnati, and later on the Columbus District, comprising a circuit of three hundred miles, and twenty-two appointments. Thus originated the most successful, if not the most important of Methodist missions; and in the next Annual Report of the society the "German Mission," and the name of "William Nast," its founder and missionary, were first declared to the general Church. German Methodism rapidly extended through the nation, to Boston in the northeast, to New Orleans in the southwest. German Methodist Churches, circuits, districts, were organized. "In the brief space of fourteen years," says the historian of Methodist Missions, "the German Missions have extended all over the country, yielding seven thousand Church members, thirty local preachers, eighty-three regular mission circuits and stations, and one hundred and eight missionaries. One hundred churches were built for German worship, and forty parsonages. Primitive Methodism appears to have revived in the zeal and simplicity and self-sacrificing devotion of the German Methodists. May they ever retain this spirit! No agency has ever been employed so specifically adapted to effect the conversion of Romanists as that which is immediately connected with the German Mission enterprise. The pastoral visitations of the preachers bringing them into immediate contact with German Catholics, their distribution of Bibles and tracts, their plain, pointed, and practical mode of preaching, all combine to bring the truth to bear upon that portion of the population; and the result is he conversion of hundreds from the errors of Romanism."

The chief importance of the German Mission has, however, been subsequently developed. It has not only raised up a mighty evangelical provision for the host of German emigrants to the new world, but under the labors of Jacoby, it has entrenched itself in the German "fatherland," and is laying broad foundations for a European German Methodism. German societies and circuits, a German Conference, a "Book Concern," with its periodicals, a Ministerial School, and all the other customary appliances of evangelical Churches, have been established; and, in our day, this Teutonic Methodism comprises, on both sides of the Atlantic, nearly thirty thousand communicants, and nearly three hundred missionaries.

It is impossible here to trace in detail the further outspread of this great interest, especially under the successful administration of its ablest secretary, John P. Durbin, nor is it appropriate to the limits of the present work. Suffice it to say that the annual receipts of the society, which, the year before his administration began, amounted to about $104,000, have risen to more than $700,000; and that, besides its very extensive domestic work, the Methodist Episcopal Church has now missions in China, India, Africa, Bulgaria, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and South America. Its missions, foreign and domestic, have 1,059 circuits and stations, 1,128 paid laborers, (preachers and assistants,) and 105,675 communicants. The funds contributed to its treasury, from the beginning amount to about $8,000,000. About 350 of the missionaries preach in the German and Scandinavian languages, and more than 30,000 of the communicants are German and Scandinavian. The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, had, in addition to these before the Rebellion, missions in China, among our foreign settlers, among the American Indians, and the southern slaves. About three hundred and sixty of its preachers were enrolled as missionaries.

American, like British Methodism, has become thoroughly imbued with the apostolic idea of foreign and universal evangelization. With both bodies it is no longer an incidental or secondary attribute, but is inwrought into their organic ecclesiastical systems. It has deepened and widened till it has become the great characteristic of modern Methodism, raising it from a revival of vital Protestantism, chiefly among the Anglo Saxon race, to a world-wide system of Christianization, which has reacted on all the great interests of its Anglo Saxon field, has energized and ennobled most of its other characteristics, and would seem to pledge to it a universal and perpetual sway in the earth. Taken in connection with the London and Church Missionary Societies, the British and Foreign Bible Society, the London Tract Society, to all of which Methodism gave the originating impulse, and the Sunday-school institution, which it was the first to adopt as an agency of the Church, it is not too much to say that it has been transforming the character of English Protestantism and the moral prospects of the world. Its missionary development has preserved its primitive energy. According to the usual history of religious bodies, if not indeed by a law of the human mind, its early heroic character would have passed away by its domestic success, and the cessation of the novelty and trials of its early periods; but by throwing itself out upon all the world, and especially upon the strongest citadels of paganism, it has perpetuated its original militant spirit, and opened for itself a heroic career, which need end only with the universal triumph of Christianity. English Methodism was considered, at the death of its founder, a marvelous fact in British history; but today the Wesleyan missions alone comprise more than twice the number of the regular preachers enrolled in the English Minutes in the year of Wesley's death, and nearly twice as many communicants as the Minutes then reported from all parts of the world which had been reached by Methodism. The latest reported number of missionary communicants in the Methodist Episcopal Church equals nearly one half the whole membership of the Churches the year (1819) before our narrative closes — the year in which the Missionary Society was founded — and is nearly double that with which the denomination closed the last century, after more than thirty years of labors and struggles.

Such, then, were some of the results with which Methodism was pregnant, by the development of its practical system, at the period of its history which we have reached, for all these great measures were initiated, as has been shown, before 1820. Nor are these all the results of those measures, for Methodism was yet a unit, save the comparatively limited schisms of O'Kelly (in our day extinct) and the African Methodist. All the existing Methodist bodies of the country have sprung from it, and their combined strength alone properly shows the aggregate result. Most of them have Book Concerns, periodicals, Sunday-schools, missions, academies, and colleges, all primarily the product of the Church of 1820, as of that of 1766. Half the Methodism of the country stands to day beyond the ecclesiastical limits of the Methodist Episcopal Church, but it all legitimately belongs to the prospective view of our present standpoint.

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ENDNOTES

1 At the organization of the Church, Vol. ii, b. 3, particularly chaps. 4 and 5.

2 Lackington, The famous London publisher, claimed this distinction; but Wesley preceded him, at least in religious literature, and Lackington, who was a Methodist, was set up in business by the aid of Wesley's "Fund," established at City Road for the assistance of poor business men.

3 Vollstandige Geschichte der Methodisten in England, aus Glaubwiirdigen Quellen, etc. Von Dr. Johan Gotlieb Burkhard, etc. Nurnberg, 1795. My copy of this work is the only one in this country, so far as I know. It was printed within four years after the death of Wesley, and is the first History of Methodism ever published, if we except Wesley's own pamphlet sketch. Burkhard was pastor of a German Church "in the Savoy," London. He was personally acquainted with the Wesleys, Whitefield, the Countess of Huntingdon, and the other Methodist founders, and obtained his data from immediate sources. No Methodist writer has hitherto seemed to be aware of the existence of his "history." Whitehead, the executor and biographer of Wesley, says that he found among his papers a Latin letter from Burkhard, requesting commentary materials, etc., but knew nothing of the result. The work is in two volumes in one. I have availed myself of it in the "History of the Religious Movement of the Eighteenth Century, called Methodism," etc.

4 See "History of the Religion,. Movement," etc., vol. ii, p. 491, et seq., where a fuller account of Wesleyan literature is given.

5 While preparing the present work the author was called upon to provide a "Centenary Book" for the celebration of 1866, by condensing such parts of his published volumes, and the manuscript contents of this, as might be appropriate. In abridging some portions he also changed others, especially the minuter statistics, in order to adapt the book to its special occasion. Readers who wish more complete figures on this and the ensuing subjects are referred to the "Centenary Book," and also to the "Life of Dr. Bangs."

6 Vol. ii, p. 503.

7 Bishop Clark's Life of Hedding.

8 Ellis' History of the London Missionary Society, vol. i, p. 3.

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