METHODISTS. 



549 



pal Church, to constitute a joint commission 

 charged with the duty of devising a plan of 

 Methodist comity and federation, " whereby 

 there shall be avoided, as far as possible, the 

 sin of two Methodisms occupying the same ter- 

 ritory, either at home or in foreign fields." It 

 also asked for the appointment of committees 

 to prepare a common hymnal for Methodism. 

 This paper was referred to a committee of one 

 from each annual conference, which reported 

 adversely to any measure looking to the unifi- 

 cation of Methodism in foreign fields and in 

 small towns and villages at home. A proposi- 

 tion was then adopted by a small majority em- 

 powering the bishops and Board of Missions to 

 ask that a commission to consider with them 

 the question of comity be appointed by the next 

 General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal 

 Church. Four of the bishops of the Church had 

 died since the preceding General Conference : 

 Bishop Paine in 1882, at the age of eighty -four ; 

 Bishop Kavanagh in 1884, in his eighty-second 

 year ; Bishop Pierce in the same year, in his 

 seventy-third year ; and Bishop Parker in 1885, 

 in his fifty-sixth year. Four new bishops were 

 elected : W. W. Duncan, D. D., of Virginia ; 

 C B. Galloway, D. D., of Mississippi; Eugene 

 R. Hendrix, D. D., of Missouri ; and Joseph S. 

 Key, D. D., of Georgia. A memorial asking 

 that the appointment of evangelists be per- 

 mitted was denied. An amendment was made 

 to the disciplinary rule under which the selling 

 of intoxicating liquors was classed among mis- 

 demeanors, declaring it to be an immorality. 

 The Publishing-House was authorized to issue a 

 series of tracts and leaflets on the evils of in- 

 temperance. The law of church trials was 

 amended so as greatly to extend the rights of 

 the accused to challenge for cause. It was de- 

 cided that a traveling preacher who may have 

 been located by his annual conference for in- 

 efficiency or want of adaptation to the itiner- 

 ancy, shall not have the right of appeal to the 

 General Conference. On the question of di- 

 vorce the Conference decided that no minister 

 of the Church shall solemnize the rite of mar- 

 riage between parties when one or both of 

 them are divorced from a wife or husband 

 still living, provided that the inhibition shall 

 not apply to the innocent party to a divorce 

 obtained on scriptural ground. In view of the 

 great demand for intelligent preachers among 

 the colored people of the South, the bishops 

 were authorized, when requested to do so by 

 an annual conference, to appoint a preacher to 

 travel within the bounds of the Conference 

 and organize churches in connection with the 

 Colored Methodist Episcopal Church in Ameri- 

 ca. The educational report recommended that 

 each conference should have at least one acade- 

 my or seminary directly under its supervision, 

 and that several conferences should unite in 

 the support of a university or college ; that 

 institutions of a high grade should not be too 

 mnch multiplied ; and that Bible-schools be 

 established everywhere. For providing a place 



for holding the General Conference, a com- 

 mittee was appointed to select from the places 

 inviting the Conference and negotiate for rail- 

 road fares and hotel rates, and to report 

 through the Church papers at its discretion. 

 The " Quarterly Review," hitherto published 

 as a private enterprise, was put under the care 

 of the Publishing-House. The Conference di- 

 rected that the decisions of the bishops on le- 

 gal questions be published in book-form. 



HI. Methodist Church in Canada. The statis- 

 tical reports of this Church, made to the General 

 Conference in September, give the number of 

 itinerant ministers as 1,810, of local preachers 

 2,682, and of members 199,479. 



The General Conference of the Methodist 

 Church in Canada met in Toronto, September 

 1. It was the first General Conference of this 

 Church since the consummation of the union 

 of the four Methodist denominations three 

 years before. Included within the organiza- 

 tion of the body are the Methodist churches of 

 the -Dominion of Canada, Newfoundland, and 

 the Bermuda Islands, with missions among the 

 Indians of the Northwest and the Pacific coast 

 and in the empire of Japan. In the reports 

 made to the General Conference, the most 

 beneficial results were claimed to have accrued 

 from the union. An increase of 20,000 mem- 

 bers had taken place in the first year, and a 

 further increase of 10,000 members had oc- 

 curred in the second year after the completion 

 of the movement. The missionary income had 

 been augmented by $10,000. The missions 

 among the Indians had been of salutary influ- 

 ence in preserving the loyalty of that people. 

 Not one of the Methodist Indians, it was said, 

 had taken part in the outbreak by which the 

 Western Territories of the Dominion had been 

 disturbed. The most important subject con- 

 sidered by the Conference was the proposition 

 for the federation of the Methodist Victoria 

 University at Cobourg with the Provincial 

 University of Ontario at Toronto. A large 

 quantity of land had been set apart in the last 

 century " for the support of a Protestant cler- 

 gy," and had afterward been sequestrated and 

 applied to the endowment of King's College 

 University. This institution being under the 

 control of the Anglican clergy and requiring 

 religious tests from its students, the Presby- 

 terians and Methodists established universities 

 of their own. Since then King's College had 

 been converted into the Provincial University 

 of Toronto and opened without tests to students 

 of all denominations ; and the Minister of Edu- 

 cation, of Toronto, had conferred with the 

 heads of the Presbyterian and Methodist insti- 

 tutions and submitted to them a plan for the 

 affiliation of all with the Provincial University, 

 which alone should confer degrees. The Pres- 

 byterian Queen's College and the Anglican 

 Trinity College had declined to come into this 

 arrangement, although the denominations they 

 represented, with the Baptists and Roman 

 Catholics, had grouped their theological insti- 



