when the vessel reached the Indian Ocean he was suddenly stricken with death. His body found a not unsuitable grave in the restless waters of the great deep. The death of Coke led to formation in 1816 of a Connectional missionary society for the Wesleyan Methodist Church.

Methodism in America soon awoke to a like duty, in the recognition by the General Conference in 1820 of the Mission Society as an integral part of organized American Methodism. For more than a century Methodism has been seeking to be true to the "heavenly vision", and has become indeed a world-wide movement. The full story of this growth to world-wide proportions cannot be told here. It is best visualized in what are known in Methodist phraseology as "ecumenical conferences". The first ecumenical conference was held most appropriately at City Road Chapel, London, in 1881. Its four hundred delegates represented some five millions of Methodists, speaking thirty different languages and distributed in twenty-eight different denominational organizations. "They came from England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Africa, India, China, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Polynesia, United States, Canada, South America, and the West Indies." It was indeed a most impressive world assembly.

The second ecumenical conference met in Washington, D. C., in 1891. It was attended by nearly five hundred delegates, representing twenty-nine different Methodist organizations. The stress of this conference was upon the substantial unity existing among the various Methodist churches. A plea was made for a closer co-operation of the Methodist churches at home and abroad. These recommendations, while not of any binding force, were really made the basis of an important action by the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in 1894. Steps were there taken which resulted in a joint commission for the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, with a view to "abating hurtful competitions and a waste of men and money in home and foreign fields". The recommendations of the joint commission led to a

common hymnal and order of worship for the two churches; an easy transfer of preachers from the one Church to the other; a plan for avoiding competitive building of Methodist churches in the communities; the placing of all the mission work of the two churches in Brazil and Cuba under the board of missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and the allotment of all the work in the Philippine Islands and Porto Rico to the mission board of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and plans for joint publishing interests in China and Japan.

The ecumenical conference of 1901 again assembled in the Wesley Chapel, City Road, London. The key-note of this conference was sounded by Bishop C. B. Galloway, who succeeded Dr. Coke in wearing the title, the Foreign Minister of Methodism. He called Methodism back from Church formalism to vital Christ-likeness. "God has made us a great people because we have been a witnessing people. Our itinerants from Wesley to the present day have preached out of full hearts and by the constraints of Christ's love." This conference faced most earnestly the place Methodism should take in solving "the world problems of evangelization, reformation, and missions". One feature of this conference anticipated the current discussions of possible plans for unification between the established and the free churches of England. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London both sent cordial communications to the conference, carrying a note of sympathy with the spirit of Methodism, and suggesting the desirability of finding a way of union between the Anglican and Methodist churches. The conference responded to the archbishop as follows: "The ecumenical Methodist conference, representing more than seven millions of communicants, earnestly prays that the blessings of God may abundantly rest upon the Reformed Church of England over which you preside."

The fourth ecumenical conference met in Toronto, Canada, October, 1911. Its five hundred delegates were divided into three hundred for the Western section, including Japan, and two hundred for the Eastern or European section. There were ascertained to be nearly seven and one-half millions of

Methodists in the Western section, and close to one and onethird millions in the Eastern section. The Western section represented twenty-one distinct Methodist units and the Eastern nine. It was noticeable, however, that the distinct units were becoming increasingly merely geographical. The key-note of the conference was truly ecumenical: "Side by side with the endeavor after a world-embracing Evangelism must go the ceaseless effort to establish a Christian civilization in every land.” Methodism was urged to add the gospel of social salvation to its triumphant gospel of personal salvation. The quest for a secret of world peace seemed to sense the impending disaster of the World War. Methodism was voicing its final warning to the powerful and progressive races, namely that their exploitation of the backward races, their weaker brethren, spelled disaster to themselves.

The latest and most strategic of these decennial ecumenical conferences convened in Central Hall, at Westminster, London, September, 1921. Some ten and three-quarters millions of Methodist communicants were represented by five hundred and fifty delegates to this conference. Six and three-quarters millions of these were to be found in the two major Methodisms of the United States. Because of differences in public opinion. of the English and Americans, only compromise relations could be passed on the League of Nations and on Prohibition. However, the message of the conference to the world-wide brotherhood rings with the best convictions of the old faith and the most challenging summons of the new tasks:

"The world sighs for a great leader; we have found ours in Jesus. The times are indeed ripe for Christ. We summon you to an aggressive and militant Christianity. Every social problem is a Christian problem. War breaks the fellowship; let us destroy it. Intemperance murders tens of thousands; let us slay it. Social injustice makes slaves of God's children; let us break the fetters and live and suffer to make men free. Christ claims all life. Every province of life needs the vitalizing power of love-nationalism, internationalism, the home, education, art, literature, and especially the

industrial world.

Let us learn to look upon every land

as our Father's land, and the inhabitants thereof as our brothers. Wesley still calls to us today: "The best of all is, God is with us.''

A fitting close for this outline story of Methodism may well be the placing side by side of one of the latest and one of the earliest Methodist platforms of Christian fellowship.

In 1921 the voice of the Methodist millions said: "Every man who fights for peace, for freedom, for the rights of small nations. and races, for temperance, for the unlocking of the treasures of education, is a soldier in the great campaign of Christ. We need a more spacious conception of the tasks of faith." In 1742 the founder of Methodism himself said, describing the character of a Methodist: "Is thy heart right, as my heart is with thine? I ask no further question. If it be, give me thy hand. For opinions, or terms, let us not destroy the work of God. Dost thou love and serve God? It is enough. I give thee the right hand of fellowship."

CHAPTER XXVII

THE ORGANIZING GENIUS OF METHODISM

No organization is so effective as that of a free community of men and women inspired by a common ideal. This is the fundamental principle of democracy, and it has never been better illustrated than in the story of Methodism.

N John Wesley as in Martin Luther we have an illustration

of the momentous results which follow when creative social forces give a great opportunity to a great man. The Christian Church can point to many a man of profound piety, to many great teachers and administrators, but Wesley is the one man who has been able to organize a religious movement which has both embraced the attitudes of democracy and preserved the efficiency of centralization, which is evangelical without being theologically minded, and emotional without losing institutional efficiency. Methodism is indeed an organization of Christian experience.

The explanation of the rapid expansion of Methodism, like that of the growth of the Baptist movement, lies in its appeal to a rising democracy. There were plain people in England before Wesley began to preach to them, but they had not won any recognition except as instruments of production. Both the Methodist and Baptist movements extended full religious privilege to men and women who were socially negligible and in many cases poor.

A striking characteristic of the Wesleyan movement is the fact that it was not born in theological controversy, and does not stand for any particular church polity or rite. It found its great opponent in deism and religious indifference. We have already seen how the Reformation led to the establishment of State churches and through theological differences to organization