RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Methodists
a conditional offer by Coke, were rapidly gaining adherents, until Bishop Asbury intervened. Coke himself made a conciliatory speech, and Lee's party lost the day. Coke, while remaining a member of the Wesleyan conference, continued to perform the duties of general superintendent when in America. The general conference, of 1800 from the beginning took on a radical form, but conservative views prevailed. Richard Whatcoat was elected to the episcopacy by only four majority, his competitor being Jesse Lee. The general conference of 1804 is celebrated for the enactment of the rule forbidding bishops " to allow any preacher to remain in the same station or circuit more than two consecutive years," except presiding elders. In 1807, the New York conference adopted a memorial expressing its conviction that a representative or delegated general conference, composed of a specific number, on principles of equal representation, from the several annual conferences, was essential to unity. This was submitted to the other conferences, and presented to the conference of 1808, in which the proposition was launched by a motion to proceed to " the business relative to regulating and perpetuating general conferences. " A committee was formed of two members from each annual conference, who agreed upon a plan, the first provision of which was: " The General Conference shall be composed of delegates from the annual conferences." This was lost by a majority of seven in 121 votes. Confusion reigned, and various members from distant conferences began preparations to return home, but unanimity being attained, the conference provided for a delegated general conference to have full powers to make rules and regulations for the church under six restrictions. At this conference William McKendree was elected bishop, the first of American birth to be invested with that responsibility. The membership was now 144,590 laymen and 516 preachers. There were more than four times as many adherents. The general conference of 1812, the first delegated body in the history of the church, gave attention to the operation of the restrictive rules, and it was soon seen that in McKendree a will as firm as that of Asbury was being rapidly developed. In 1820 the conference enacted that the bishop should nominate three times the number of presiding elders needed and the conference, without debate, should elect from those thus nominated the number desired, and that presiding elders should become the advisory council of the bishop or president of the conference in stationing the preachers. The passage of these resolutions caused Joshua Soule, who had been elected — but not consecrated — to the episcopacy, to state that he considered them unconstitutional, and that he would not be governed by them. The conference was equally divided, and Soule resigned; but action on the resolutions was by vote " suspended " for four years. After adjournment McKendree wrote a circular letter to the annual conferences protesting against the suspended resolutions as unconstitutional. Seven conferences voted them to be so, but six of these recommended their legalization by a change in the constitution. The remaining conferences, indignant at what they considered the dominating manner of the senior
bishop and the obstructive attitude of Soule, refused to pay any attention to McKendree's letter. In 1824 these resolutions were pronounced void and Soule and Elijah Hedding, representing opposite sides on the presiding-elder question, were elected bishops.
By 1828 the astonishing increase in members became a topic of public discussion. The increase in the next quadrennium was thirty-three per cent., and placed the membership more than 13,000 beyond the half-million mark. In 1836 the church established an annual conference in Africa, and plans were made to enter China.
Notwithstanding several petitions, the conference refused to change the section on slavery, or to countenance the agitation on the slavery question then assuming the aspect of a crisis. Perplexing questions presented themselves in 5. Slavery 1840. A resolution was adopted " that and the it is inexpedient and unjustifiable for Church in any preacher among us to permit colthe South, ored persons to give testimony against white persons in any state where they are denied that privilege in trials at law." To quell the commotion which this created, explanatory resolutions were passed. The material and spiritual progress of the denomination is indicated in part by the election of four book-agents, editors of the Quarterly Review, Christian Advocate, Western Advocate, Christian Apologist, Ladies' Repository, Southern Christian Advocate, Richmond Advocate, and the South-Western Advocate; and the fact that, in addition to the main centers, depositories were appointed at Charleston, Pittsburg and Boston. The subject of slavery came up with explosive force in the conference of 1844. The Baltimore conference had expelled a member for holding slaves through his wife. He appealed to the general conference, which affirmed the expulsion by 117 to 56. The numerous petitions for the enactment of laws to exclude slave-holders from the church might have been dealt with to the pacification of a majority; but a fatal element entered with the knowledge that Bishop James O. Andrew had become a slaveowner by inheritance and marriage. A motion was made that he be asked to resign. Efforts to reach a peaceable solution were futile, and the conference finally declared, by a vote of 111 against 61, " That it is the sense of this conference that Bishop Andrew desist from the exercise of his office so long as this impediment remains." The southern delegates presented a protest " in behalf of thirteen annual conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and portions of the ministry and membership of several other conferences, embracing nearly 5,000 ministers, and a membership of nearly 500,000 constitutionally represented in this general conference." A plan of separation was passed, and a prominent member, Leonidas Lent Hamline, educated to the law, maintained that the only point in it which touched the constitution related to the division of the funds of the Book Concern, and that was the only one to be sent to the annual conferences. On a test resolution there were 135 votes in the affirmative, and fifteen in the negative. After ten months of excited discussion throughout the country, the
Methodists