METHODISTS. 



563 



The General Conference of this Church 

 meets every four years ; the next meeting is 

 appointed to be held in May, 1884. The 

 general interests of the Church and its various 

 enterprises between the sessions of the General 

 Conference are placed in charge of the Annual 

 Council, which consists of the Boards of Min- 

 isterial Education, Missions, and Publication, 

 with their secretaries and agents, editors and 

 publishers, and the presidents of the colleges, 

 and meets in July of each year. The Board 

 of Publication, which is elected by the General 

 Conference, has two principal offices or direc- 

 tories one at Baltimore, Maryland, the other 

 at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania at each of which 

 a general weekly religious paper and a num- 

 ber of Sunday-school periodicals are published. 

 Besides these, a general religious weekly paper 

 is published at Greensboro, North Carolina, a 

 semi-inonthly paper at Magnolia, Arkansas, 

 and a monthly missionary paper at Springfield, 

 Ohio. The literary institutions of the Church 

 include Adrian College, Adrian, Michigan ; 

 Western Maryland College, "Westminster, Mary- 

 land ; Yadkin College, Yadkin, North Carolina ; 



and Gittings Seminary, La Harpe, Illinois. The 

 Board of Missions supports four " home mis- 

 sions," a mission in the Choctaw nation, In- 

 dian Territory, and a mission in Japan, where 

 one woman missionary and an assistant are 

 employed and a girls' school of twenty-eight 

 pupils is taught. Its receipts for the year 

 were $4,761. A Woman's Foreign Missionary 

 Society co-operates with this board. The 

 Board of Ministerial Education received $3,227, 

 and gave assistance during the year to four- 

 teen young men preparing for the ministry. 

 The publication offices, colleges, boards, and 

 benevolent societies have together property 

 valued at $402,550. 



IV. WESLEYAN METHODIST CONNECTION. 

 The following is a summary of the statistics 

 of the British and Affiliated Conferences of this 

 Church : 



The statistics of the Sunday-schools are: in 

 the British Conference, 6,426 schools, 121,493 

 teachers, 810,280 scholars; in the Irish Con- 

 ference, 309 schools, 2,760 teachers, 24,500 

 scholars ; in the French Conference, sixty 

 schools, 340 teachers, 2,900 scholars; total, 

 6,795 schools, 124,593 teachers, 837,680 schol- 

 ars. 



The report of the Chapel Committee to the 

 British Conference showed that 141 new 

 chapels had been completed, at a cost of 299,- 

 912, which, with the enlargements that had 

 been made to the other chapels, provided 27,- 

 669 additional sittings. 



The committee of the Metropolitan Chapel 

 Building Fund reported that thirty of the fifty 

 churches contemplated by the plan of the fund 

 had been constructed within the Metropolitan 

 District, eleven others were in course of con- 

 struction, and five more were contemplated. 



The Boole- Roomh&d published forty-two dis- 

 tinct works and fifty-three new tracts, had sold 

 1,779,000 copies of periodicals and 4,976,572 

 tracts, besides hymn-books, catechisms, reward- 

 books, etc., and returned 4,300 of funds for 

 distribution to beneficiaries. 



The annual meeting of the Wesleyan Mis- 

 sionary Society was held in London, May 2d. 

 The Rt. Hon. William McArthur, M. P., 

 Lord Mayor of London, presided. The total 

 income of the society for the year had been 

 130,093, of which 10,162 had been received 

 from the mission districts, and the expendi- 

 tures had been 168,403, leaving a deficiency 

 in the accounts of 38,310. The Ladies' 

 General Committee for Education in Foreign 

 Countries had also expended 3,166, besides 

 furnishing school materials, clothing, etc., for 

 the missions. The following is a general sum- 



