In South Carolina. 505 



should wish kings never to forget, and their subjects seldom to re- 

 member." The gratuitous charge that the division of the Meth- 

 odist Episcopal Church in 1844 was designed by the Southern mem- 

 bers to impair the integrity of the American Union by inviting to 

 a corresponding political division, fabricated by designing persons" 

 to render the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, an object of dis- 

 trust to the General Government, never obtained credit propor- 

 tionate to the zeal with which it was circulated, and signally failed 

 of accomplishing its object. The Methodist Episcopal Church, 

 South, was from the beginning, and is now, loyal to the existing 

 government, in conformity with her twenty-third article of religion. 

 The solemn declaration of the Louisville Convention at the organi- 

 zation of the Church must be taken as an honest statement of polit- 

 ical sentiment and motive as far as they had influence in that im- 

 portant movement. After pointing out the way in which such 

 effect had been produced, it is declared that " the assumed conser- 

 vative power of the Methodist Episcopal Church with regard to 

 the civil union of the States is, to a great extent, destroyed, and we 

 are compelled to believe that it is to the interest and becomes the 

 duty of the Church in the South to seek to exert such conservative 

 influence in some other form; and after the most mature deliber- 

 ation and careful examination of the Avhole subject, Ave know of 

 nothing so likely to effect the object as the jurisdictional separation 

 of the great Church parties unfortunately involved in a religious 

 and ecclesiastical controversy about an affair of State, a question of 

 civil policy over which the Church has no control, and with which 

 it is believed she has no right to interfere. Among the nearly five 

 hundred thousand ministers and members of the Conferences repre- 

 sented in this convention, we do not know one not deeply and in- 

 tensely interested in the safety and perpetuity of the National 

 Union, nor can we for a moment hesitate to pledge them all against 

 any course of action or policy not calculated, in their judgment, to 

 render that Union as immortal as the hopes of patriotism would 

 have it to be. 



The question of a reunion of the Southern and Northern Method- 

 ist Churches, which has been obtruded on your notice since the close 

 of the war, can be most readily and satisfactorily determined, in the 

 light of a history, of course, of the prominent facts relating to the 

 separation, abridged from the records of the Church, and taken in 

 connection at the same time with the spirit that has declared the 

 policy regularly pursued by the Methodist Episcopal Church, North, 



