469 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 modifications 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 Thomas 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 will truthfully record that among those results none, perhaps, were more important than the meeting of representative colored Methodists and representative white Southern Methodists from America in City Road Chapel, and the mutual respect and confidence which that meeting produced. We returned home from the pilgrimage to our common Mecca mutually resolved to work side by side in Southern fields for the elevation of both races, and the advancement of our common country. And now, as the last result of the Conference which we mention, we add that we all returned to our respective Methodisms baptized anew with the Spirit of Wesley's Master and ours, and more than ever persuaded of the possibilities of Methodism. Nor was this persuasion diminished by the fact that Methodism is to-day increasing in many parts of the worldthe Old and the New-in a greater ratio than at any period of its history. But the rather were we persuaded that, if Methodism be true to its great mission, before the first sun of the next century shall have arisen from his nightly bath in the waters of Oceanus, Methodism will have become the most prevalent Protestant religion of the world, and will have fully pervaded all its sister evangelical Churches with the spirit of John Wesley and the great Methodist movement of the eighteenth century. ART. IV.-JOHN KEBLE AND THE TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT. A Memoir of the Rev. John Keble, M.A., late Vicar of Hursley. By the Right Reminiscences Chiefly of Oriel College and the Oxford Movement. By Rev. T. Moz- The Oxford Counter-Reformation. By JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, A.M., in his "Short Keble. By Professor J. C. SHAIRP, in "Studies in Poetry and Philosophy." MR. MOZLEY'S gossipy "Reminiscences" of the Oxford Movement, and Mr. Froude's "Essay," have somewhat revived public interest in the distinguished writers known as "Tractarians," whose famous tracts shook the Church of England from center to circumference some fifty years ago. It has, therefore, occurred to the writer that a brief resumé of the events connected |