RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Methodists
members with 180,000 children under regular catechetical instruction." In 1848 the church organized a mission in China. About thirty missionaries, exclusive of those connected with the Women's Foreign Missionary department, were sent to China before 1890. At present there are 21 missionaries and their wives, 22 native preachers, 1,883 members. The Mexican mission, founded in 1873, has been successful, having at present 6,405 members, 16 missionaries and 63 native preachers. The Brazilian mission, dating from 1875, shows the largest increase in membership, the largest collections in the field, and more self-supporting churches than any other. The Japan mission, together with the Methodist Episcopal and the Canadian Methodist missions, has become an integral part of the Japan Methodist Church (see Japan). There were included in this mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church South 26 missionaries and 1,573 members. The missionaries are still under the final control of the church which sent them out. The Korean mission (see Korea), but 12 years old, has 15 workers and has gathered 1,600 members. Prior to the Spanish War, mission work was done in Cuba. After independence was achieved, the mission was reorganized, and has already, resident in five cities, about 2,500 communicants. The Methodist Episcopal Church South sustains many schools and colleges, the most important being Vanderbilt University, Nashville, founded in 1872, largely endowed by members of the family whose name it bears. Its theological department is steadily advancing in reputation and efficiency. Altogether there are 175 institutions, the titles to which are held by the Methodist Episcopal Church South. These institutions, of every grade, with the exception of perhaps fifteen, have been founded since the organization of the Methodist Episcopal Church South. The church supports twelve orphanages in as many states.
No small elected body has included a larger majority of competent men of different types than the college of bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church South. In its early period Bishops 4. Repre- Soule and Andrew and William Capers sentatives and Robert Paine were the most reandResults.Vered. H. B. Bascom, already renowned, died less than six months after he was elected. The oratorical fame of Bishop George Foster Pierce spread throughout the United States, and he lived to diffuse it more than thirty years after his election. No more potential bishop arose in that body than Holland Nimmons McTyeire (q.v.), legislator, administrator, historian. John Christian Keener (q.v.) was for half a century unusually influential in several spheres. The sage Lovick Pierce, who survived to be appointed fraternal delegate to the general conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Nathaniel of the church, and John Berry McFerrin, the rejuvenator of every embarrassed enterprise, were pillars amidst the changes of their times. In all the diverse and increasing modes of Christian effort upon which Methodism, in Europe and America, has been so ready to enter, the Methodist Episcopal Church South is energetically working, being rewarded by a
constant increase of members and liberality. The tendency to federation, if not to union, between the two great divisions of Episcopal Methodism is shown in their copartnership in the publishing-work in China, a common catechism, and a common hymnal, compiled by joint commissioners, authorized by the general conferences and introduced to the congregations by the signatures of the bishops of both communions.
The membership of the Methodist Episcopal Church South was computed at the end of 1909 to be 1,780,778, and in the foreign missions over 15,000, making a total membership of about 1,800,000.
3. The Methodist Protestant Church; William S. Stockton, an influential layman of the Methodist Episcopal Church, began, in 1821, the publication of the Wesleyan Repository, its contributors being ministers and members of the Methodist Episcopal Church. " Church polity " was criticized in successive numbers by Nicholas Snethen (q.v). As its circulation increased, its utterances became more aggressive, and it encountered wide opposition, but on account of an announcement in the Methodist Magazine of 1823 that its editors would not admit " subjects of controversy which act to disturb the peace and harmony of the church," the Wesleyan Repository gained a large patronage.
While the general conference of 1824 was in session in Baltimore a convention of reformers was held there. It consisted of local and itinerant ministers, several of whom were members of the general conference, and numerous laymen. To take the place of the Wesleyan Repository this convention established a periodical entitled The Mutual Rights of the Ministers and Members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and made preparations to organize union societies in various parts of the country. The Methodist Episcopal Church, considering this movement revolutionary, took steps to suppress it. Dennis B. Dorsey, a member of the Baltimore conference, was excluded from the church for refusing to pledge himself to desist from " spreading incendiary publications." W C. Pool was similarly dealt with, and within thirty days eleven local preachers and twenty-two laymen were expelled in Baltimore; they took an appeal. When the general conference of 1828 drew nigh, the reformers adopted a memorial to be presented to that body and also issued an address to the public. Thomas Emerson Bond, a physician of Baltimore and a local preacher, issued a powerful appeal to Methodists in opposition to the changes proposed by the reformers; these were the elimination of the episcopacy and the presiding eldership, and the admission of laymen to the general and annual conferences. The general conference confirmed the expulsion of Dorsey and Pool. Prior to this a number of expelled members and their sympathizers formed themselves into a society named Associate Methodist Reformers. Its members were most numerous in New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburg, and Cincinnati. A book issued by one of their number, Alexander McCaine, which proved peculiarly irritating, was chiefly devoted to attacks upon episcopacy as a form of government, and upon the
Methodists