288 EVANGELICAL ASSOCIATION. 



EVENTS OF 1890. 



scription. A large part of the permanent way 

 has been completed, 17 miles are graded and 

 ready for the rails, and the masonry for the great 

 hydraulic lifts at either end of the railway is well 

 advanced. The lifts are calculated to raise 2,000 

 pounds to a height of about 40 feet. 



The tunnel under the Hudson river between 

 New York and Jersey City is making fair prog- 

 ress at the rate of about 8 feet a day, and may be 

 finished during the coming year. 



Work has been begun on the fine bridge across 

 the Danube, connecting Roumania and Do- 

 brutcha. It is to cross between Czernavoda and 

 Tetesti. The bridge proper will be 2,460 feet 

 long, in five spans, and when completed will be 

 one of the finest in Europe. 



EVANGELICAL ASSOCIATION. The fol- 

 lowing is a summary of the statistics of this 

 denomination for 1890 : Number of conferences, 

 26 ; of itinerant preachers, 1,227 ; of local preach- 

 ers, 637 ; of members, 148,508 ; of churches, 2,- 

 043|, having a probable value of $5,047,853 ; of 

 parsonages, 681, valued at $831.717 ; of Sunday- 

 schools, 2,509, with 28,420 officers and teachers 

 and 176,557 pupils ; of baptisms during the year, 

 2,668 of adults and 9,436 of children. Amount 

 of collections : For conference claimants, $7,529 ; 

 for the Missionary Society, $107,873; for the 

 Sunday-school and Tract Union, $2,494 ; and 

 for the Orphans' Home, $5,570. 



The receipts of the Missionary Society, as re- 

 turned by the treasurer for the year ending Aug. 

 31, were : For home missions (general treasury), 

 $31,019 ; for the European treasury, $3,720 ; for 

 the heathen treasury, $7,496; for conference 

 treasuries, $91,811; total, $134,047. The ex- 

 penditures were $158,629, showing a deficiency 

 of $24,482. The society has a permanent fund 

 of $74,320, a current fund of $4,950, and annuity 

 fund of $50,612. 



Controversy over the Bishops. This 

 Church has been disturbed by a controversy 

 which has penetrated to every part of it, has di- 

 vided conferences and local church organiza- 

 tions, and threatens to be the source of most 

 serious embarrassment, if not of complete and 

 permanent division, at the General Conference 

 of 1891. It turns immediately upon the position 

 and official standing of the three bishops, Rev. 

 Rudolph Dubs, Rev. J. J. Escher, and Rev. 

 Thomas Bowman, but arose in 1885 over ques- 

 tions concerning the administration of the mis- 

 sion in Japan, and has been traced back to the 

 election of bishops at the General Conference of 

 1875. Affairs in the mission in Japan requiring 

 episcopal attention in 1885, an official visit was 

 made there by Bishop Escher. and resulted in his 

 preparing a report unfavorable to the superin- 

 tendent. The bishop's course was- attacked by 

 the " Evangelical Messenger," the Church period- 

 ical, the editor of which was a brother of the su- 

 perintendent, and he was removed from office on 

 trial by the General Conference of 1887. A paper 

 in opposition to the official journal was begun, of 

 which the suspended editor was made conductor. 

 Bishop Dubs, whose sympathies were with the su- 

 perintendent of the Japan mission, was accused 

 of slander for some charge he had made against 

 one of the persons active in the controversy ; 

 was tried in accordance with the forms of the 

 Church, and suspended from his office until ac- 



tion could be taken by the General Conference of 

 1891. He has paid a formal obedience to the 

 sentence of suspension. Charges having been 

 brought against Bishops Bowman and Escher, 

 they procured a preliminary investigation, as is 

 required by the discipline of the Church, before a 

 court of three elders, who declared that no cause 

 of action was shown against them. They claimed 

 that these proceedings were a final disposition of 

 the case and of their liability on those charges. 

 The adherents of the other party disputed this 

 position, and attempted to subject them to full 

 trials. A court sitting in the case of Bishop 

 Bowman at Chicago declared, March 7, that he 

 be suspended from the exercise of his episcopal 

 functions. A similar court sitting at Reading, 

 Pa., pronounced a like sentence against Bishop 

 Escher, March 21. Both bishops, taking the 

 ground that these later proceedings were fore- 

 stalled by the decision of the preliminary court 

 of three elders, have disregarded them as void, 

 and have continued to hold conferences and ex- 

 ercise episcopal authority. In this they have 

 been sustained by the majority of the confer- 

 ences and members of the Church. The Church 

 has, therefore, no bishops whose authority is rec- 

 ognized throughout its borders; and frequent 

 conflicts arise over questions of authority or the 

 possession of property, which have to be taken 

 to the civil courts. As yet no final decision has 

 been made over any of these cases, either in the 

 courts of the Church or of the land. While the 

 controversy appears in its outward manifesta- 

 tions to be mainly a personal one, the leaders of 

 the minority party, or those who support Bishop 

 Dubs, assert that a fundamental question of 

 church polity lies at the bottom of it. This 

 question is said to concern the nature of the 

 office and the extent of the authority of the bish- 

 ops in the Evangelical Association. The mi- 

 nority accuse Bishops Bowman and Escher of 

 unduly exalting their office, of usurping func- 

 tions not conferred upon it by the constitution 

 of the Church, and of arbitrary and unjust ex- 

 ercise of the powers which they are thus accused 

 of having taken to themselves. 



EVENTS OF 1890. The year has been with- 

 out events of very great international impor- 

 tance, but the general drift of affairs has been 

 significant. The frequent occurrence and seri- 

 ous character of strikes all over the civilized 

 world has been especially noteworthy. So too 

 has been the stand taken by the German Em- 

 peror in behalf of labor interests, and the con- 

 spicuous failure of certain strikes that were 

 obviously instigated by demagogues. The rival 

 European powers appear to have agreed that a 

 peaceful adjustment of boundaries in Africa is 

 better than settling disputes by war. The great 

 Republic of Brazil has seemingly passed beyond 

 the experimental stage. The Behring Sea ques- 

 tion between the United States and Great Britain 

 bids fair to be peacefully settled by arbitration, 

 and the Pan-American Congress points to inter- 

 national harmony on the Western Continent. In 

 politics the most sensational event was the rupt- 

 ure between English Liberals and Irish Nation- 

 alists. The list given herewith includes most of 

 the occurrences that, from day to day, have com- 

 manded a considerable share of public atten- 

 tion. 





