are called by the same name! Every chance for help to others, when it is in our power to afford it, ought to be hailed as a privilege as a blessed opportunity to develop that which makes us most akin to Him who came, not to be ministered unto, but to minister. Instead of treating coldly those who come to us with duly accredited commissions from sister Churches to solicit aid, let us rather bid them Godspeed, and rejoice to assist them as of the ability which God giveth. If, therefore, the Ecumenical Conference has done aught to increase enlarged Christian liberality, it has done a glorious work. And this is what we believe it has done; so confident are we of it, that we do not hesitate to set it down as one of its more important spiritual results. If it give to Wesleyan Methodism that for which it has been by no means pre-eminent, it will have accomplished a good thing. If Wesleyan Methodists be made "to abound in this grace also," that will have been added to their otherwise eminent Christian character which will give to it a fullness and roundness that will cause, through many, abundant thanksgivings to God.

And now it will be in place to notice somewhat the influence of the Ecumenical Conference upon catholicity. In the Conference there were, if I remember rightly, twenty-seven different Methodisms. Among these there were differences in Church polity. On the floor of the same Conference there were Episcopal Methodists, and there were non-Episcopal Methodists; there were ordained Bishops, and there were unordained-not ordained for special work as Bishops are-presidents and ex-presidents; and there were presiding elders of districts, and there were superintendents of the same. On the same floor there were liturgical and there were non-liturgical Methodists; there were those who use a liturgy and there were those who worship without, or according to the simplest, forms. These differences had been, in the past, fruitful sources of bitterness and strife; of alienation and separation; of bigotry and intolerance. Advocates of opposing views though they had come together in a great Ecumenical Conference; though they had greatly succeeded in burying the bitterness of past conflicts; and though they had come to hail one another as brethren beloved of the same Lord, and fellow-heirs of a common Methodist heritage-yet they still retained much of

the old feeling which claims that rather "in Jerusalem" than "in this mountain " men should worship the Father. But when it was seen what God had wrought in all parts of the world through the people called Methodists-by whatever additional distinctive name they are known, and whatever their differences in Church polity-a profound respect for one another, and a great catholicity toward all, became the universal feeling. It was seen that God had been with all, and had blessed all-episcopal and non-episcopal-liturgical and non-liturgical. There, for instance, it was manifest that if God had greatly enlarged the Episcopal Methodisms of America, he had given to the non-Episcopal Methodisms of Great Britain more converts in heathen lands than he had given to all the Episcopal Methodisms in the world. There were we more clearly taught the meaning of the Master, when, at Jacob's Well, he announced to the woman of Samaria the culminating truth of inspiration: Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, and now is, when neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, shall men worship the Father. God is a Spirit: and the true worshipers are they-anywhere, every-where, and by whatever forms--who worship him in spirit and in truth. Into the truth and spirit of this no one had drank more freely or more deeply than John Wesley, the catholic founder of Methodism. No one, more fully than he, believed that no form of Church government or of Church service is prescribed, or proscribed, by the New Testament; and no one more fully than he was more liberal to those whose tastes and whose views of Church polity and methods of worship differed from his own. Many called by Wesley's name had not his catholicity. But at the Ecumenical Conference they drank deeper into the spirit which Wesley received from the Master. There we all were taught, as perhaps we were never taught before, that the harp of God sends forth the same divine strains, whether the delicate hands of Miriam or the manly hands of Israel's warrior king sweeps its responsive chords along; and that the true prophet of God stands confessed, whether he who speaks to us in the name and by the authority of God speaks to us arrayed in the splendid vestments of Aaron, the Lord's anointed high-priest, or in the royal robes of David, the Lord's anointed king; or whether he who thus speaks to us speaks to us wrapped in the humble FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXXV.-31

mantle of the Tishbite, or clad in the coarse raiment of camel's hair of the Baptist. Nor was this all. The various Methodisms represented on the floor of the Conference-more than ever before-were brought face to face, in the world's metropolis, with the other great evangelical Churches. We saw their work for the Master as we had never seen it; and what we saw gave to us a profounder respect for, and a greater catholicity toward, them and their work. And this respect and this catholicity, we are persuaded, were mutually and fully reciprocated. Never can Methodists forget how they were received and welcomed by other Christian Churches of Great Britain and Ireland. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, was the one confession of faith; to walk worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love, and endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, was the one purpose of all; and that to every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ, was the one common acknowledgment.

And we were more convincingly taught by the Conference in what Methodist power consists, and to what Methodist success must be ascribed. Methodist power is not in outward things; it is not in Church polity, or in any prescribed formula of worship. In these we differed; and yet, as we have seen, we all have power; we all had success. This common power and this common success lay in our doctrines of free grace, in the similarity of our usages-the class-meeting and the lovefeast-and in the oneness of our Christian experience. With marvelous unity all these had been preserved by Methodists all over the world. The success of Methodism was seen, not only in the millions that Methodist preaching and Methodist usages and Methodist living had added, under God, to Methodist Churches; but in the numbers which the same things had added to our sister evangelical Churches, and in the modifica tions which they had made in their doctrines, in their usages, and in their Christian experience. Every delegate came away from the Ecumenical Conference more fully determined to adhere, with tenacity and unwavering faith, to our doctrines as embodied in the sermons of John Wesley and the lyrics of Charles Wesley; to our class-meetings and love-feasts; and to

our common experience of a personal and conscious acceptance with God, confirmed and sanctioned by the witness of the Spirit. To preserve the unity and purity of Wesleyan Methodism as the best means, under God, of saving sinners and spreading scriptural holiness over all the earth, was the one and fixed resolve of each and all.

Nor was the Conference without results to Methodist unity in other regards. In England, Methodism is divided into various bodies, the most important of which are the Wesleyans, the New Connection Methodists, and the Primitive Methodists. The two Methodisms last named, as well as the first, are doing a great and noble work. The New Connection is adorned by two of the purest, noblest, and ablest Methodists in the world -the venerable William Cooke, D.D., of Forest Hill, London, and Thoinas Austin Bullock, LL.D., of Manchester. The Primitive Methodists, who are more like our American Methodists than any other Methodist body in England, are especially engaged in preaching the Gospel to the poor. The causes which gave rise to these two Methodisms are well known to the student of English Methodist history. Not long after Mr. Wesley's death, a party arose in the Wesleyan Conference demanding lay ordination. This was refused by the majority, who still depended for the sacraments upon the parish priests of the Church of England. Those who claimed lay ordination for themselves pleaded that Mr. Wesley had ordained lay preachers for America and Scotland; that what he had a right to do as a presbyter other presbyters had an equal right to do; that this Mr. Wesley himself fully admitted when he came to regard apostolic succession as a mere figment, and of no scriptural authority whatever. In a word, when the Conference refused, they who demanded lay ordination withdrew and set up for themselves. The Methodist New Connection was the result. The camp-meeting, and-passing strange-preaching in market-places and on the highways, was the cause of another separation from the Wesleyan body. The result was the Primitive Methodists. But that which caused the widest divergence between them and the parent body was the adoption of lay representation by the seceding Churches.

But, in process of time, the Wesleyans ordained lay preachers for themselves; and at Bradford, in 1878, they admitted lay

representation into the Conference. And thus have the chief causes of difference been providentially removed. These causes removed, there is no good reason why the three bodies should not be organically one. And this will be accomplished when the Wesleyans, for the common good, are unselfish enough to divide endowments and incomes with their poorer brethren. Upon organic union between them the Ecumenical Conference exerted a strong and persuasive influence. At all events, as one of the blessed results of the Conference, if organic union does not follow, unquestionably there will be a truer and warmer fraternity, and a more cordial co-operation. We have seen signs which lead us to hope that the former will be the result at no very distant day. Calls, we hope, similar to that which was made soon after the Ecumenical Conference adjourned, for the various British Methodisms to meet at Birmingham to consider the question of a more perfect union, will be repeated, until, as the English Wesleyans and the Irish Wesleyans were lately united, all the Methodisms of Great Britain and Ireland are inseparably joined in one body.

And what we pray-what we anticipate-for British Methodists, we hope may be the result of the Ecumenical Conference to the Methodisms of the Canadas and to the Methodisms of the United States. Here, too, in America, causes which divided Methodism have been providentially put out of the way. In this we greatly rejoice, and hail it as the harbinger of more united and fraternal Methodisms in the Canadas and in the States of the American Union.

But we must not conclude this paper without a passing reference to the colored brethren who, in the Ecumenical Conference, represented their respective Churches in America. Every eye-witness will testify to the perfect harmony which was manifest between them and the delegates of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. It is with gratitude that, as one of the delegates of the latter Church, the writer can bear witness to the courteous and manly acknowledgment of their indebtedness to the ministers and laymen of that Church for the Christian experience and culture which their race, in the Southern States of the United States, possessed before the late fratricidal war. In an estimate of the results of the Ecumenical Conference the impartial historian of our future Methodism