454 



METHODISTS. 



annual meeting of the Woman's Home Mission- 

 ary Society was held at Grand Rapids, Mich., 

 Oct. 27. The total receipts in money and sup- 

 plies had been $127,133. Industrial homes had 

 been erected at Morristown, Tenn., and Ocala, 

 Pla. ; mission buildings at Speedwell, near Sa- 

 vannah, Ga., for the Indian work among the 

 Navajos and for the Apaches in New Mexico. 

 Deaconesses' homes had been secured by co-op- 

 erating conference societies at Baltimore, Md., 

 Brooklyn, N. Y., Des Moines. Iowa, Philadel- 

 phia, Pa., and Grand Rapids, Mich. ; and through 

 the influence of the society in Cincinnati, Ohio, 

 industrial training and instruction in cooking 

 had been introduced into the schools of that 

 city. The Lucy Webb Training School for Mis- 

 sionaries in Washington had achieved a remark- 

 able success. The society had 50 missions in 

 the South and West, owned property in indus- 

 trial schools and buildings worth $250,000, and 

 employed, not including those engaged in local 

 work, 150 missionaries. From its organization 

 in 1880 till October, 1892, it had raised and ex- 

 pended $605,363, and had distributed supplies 

 valued at $405,659 in aid of frontier work and 

 missions. The society decided to discontinue 

 receiving aid from the general treasury of the 

 United States for religious and educational work. 

 General Conference. The General Conference 

 met in Omaha, Neb., May 2. A motion was 

 passed at the beginning that the lay delegates 

 be permitted to sit separately from the minis- 

 terial delegates, and a considerable proportion 

 of the lay members seated themselves thus, 

 while others continued to sit with the ministe- 

 rial delegates of their several annual confer- 

 ences. A question arose, on the appointment of 

 the Committee of the Judiciary, as to whether 

 its members should be named by the bishops, as 

 had usually been done, or by the General Con- 

 ference. It was decided that the bishops should 

 nominate the members of the committee, and the 

 General Conference should confirm them. A 

 committee appointed by the previous General 

 Conference to determine and define the consti- 

 tution of the Church that is, to mark the dis- 

 tinction between those parts of the Discipline 

 which are constitutional and can not be changed 

 except in the method prescribed for constitu- 

 tional amendment, and those parts which are 

 only statutory and can be changed by vote of 

 the General Conference presented a report desig- 

 nating certain sections of the Discipline as organic 

 law, including the Articles of Religion and the 

 "General Rules," which the General Confer- 

 ence is prohibited from changing, and the con- 

 stitution of the General Conference, which con- 

 sists of the six restrictive rules, limiting the 

 power of the General Conference, and certain 

 other sections of the Discipline, which provide 

 for that body itself. New chapters or sections 

 were proposed for adoption, subject to the ap- 

 proval of the annual conferences, for bringing 

 into an orderly arrangement all portions of the 

 organic law. Instead of this report, a substi- 

 tute was adopted declaring that the section on 

 the General Conference in the Discipline of 1808, 

 as adopted by the General Conference of 1808, 

 has the nature and force of a constitution, and 

 that it, together with such modifications as have 

 been adopted since that time in accordance with 



the provisions for amendment in that section, is 

 the present constitution of the Church, except 

 ing (1) the change of the provisions for calling 

 an extra session of the General Conference from 

 a" unanimous to a two-third vote of the annual 

 conferences; and (2) that which is known as the 

 plan of lay delegation as recommended by the 

 General Conference of 1868 and passed by the 

 General Conference of 1872. A report was made 

 by the Committee on the Itinerancy favorable 

 to the removal of the " time limit " in the pas- 

 torate, or the rule under which a minister can 

 not serve as pastor in the same charge more than 

 five years in any ten ; but the Conference disap- 

 proved the proposition, and declared that, as it 

 did not appear that the people desired a removal, 

 the present time limit of five years should be 

 allowed to stand until the Church has had time 

 to give it a fair and reasonable trial." A propo- 

 sition was submitted to the annual conferences 

 for approval making the number of lay delegates 

 in the General Conference equal to the number 

 of ministerial delegates, and providing for the 

 election by the several annual conferences of 

 equal numbers of both orders. The Epworth 

 League was adopted as a connectional society of 

 the Church, and provision was made for its rec- 

 ognition in the local churches through their quar- 

 terly conferences. The minute embodying this 

 action sets forth that the Epworth League was 

 formed at Cleveland, Ohio, during the preceding 

 quadrennium at a conference of delegates from 

 five already existing societies, all of which had 

 been formed since 1883 ; that its purpose was to 

 seek to promote among the young people the 

 most earnest piety, loyalty to the Church, and 

 active works of usefulness; and that it had 

 grown in only three years to the number of 

 1,000 local chapters, embracing a membership of 

 more than 400,000 young people. A note added 

 to the minute explained that it was not intended 

 by this action concerning the Epworth League 

 to disturb the present status of other young 

 people's societies now organized in the Church, 

 which are under the control of the pastor and 

 quarterly conference. 



In relation to the admission of women as lay 

 delegates in the General Conference, the confer- 

 ence directed that a proposition be submitted to 

 the annual conferences and the people of the 

 Church, 



To amend the second restrictive rule by adding the 

 words, "and said delegates must be male members," 

 after the words " 2 lay delegates for an annual con- 

 ference." so that it will read, "nor of more than 

 2 lay delegates for an annual conference, and said 

 delegates must be male members"; and that if the 

 amendment so submitted did not receive the votes of 

 three fourths of the members of the annual confer- 

 ences and two thirds of the General Conference, the 

 second restrictive rule shall be BO construed that the 

 words " lay delegates " shall include men and women, 

 and thus be in harmony with the legislation of previ- 

 ous General Conferences. 



In view of the action of the (Ecumenical Con- 

 ference at Washington, D. C., in 1891, in favor 

 of the organic union of Methodist bodies in the 

 United States, of a similar recommendation by 

 the bishops in their quadrennial address, and 

 of the widely expressed evidence of the desire 

 of the Church for union, the bishops were re- 



