THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
cure the best modern equipment for extension. Foreign missions were made a separate department in 1884. The home membership (1909) is 545,681.
8. The Colored Methodist Episcopal Church: In 1866 the conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church South authorized the bishops to organize its colored members " into an independent ecclesiastical body," if it should appear that the members desired it. The bishops then formed a number of annual conferences, consisting wholly of colored preachers. These requested in 1870 the appointment of five as a commission to meet five of their own number to create an independent church. The convention chose as the name of the body " The Colored Methodist Episcopal Church." Two bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church South presided and ordained to the episcopacy two colored elders, W. H. Miles and R. H. Vanderhorst, selected by the eight colored conferences. The total value of church property then made over by the Methodist Episcopal Church South to the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church was $1,500,000. Members of the Methodist Episcopal Church South have given them plots of ground and aided them in building churches. Paine College, Augusta, Ga., (with an enrolment of 300 in 1907), and Lane College, Jackson, Tenn., are carried on by the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church in connection with the Methodist Episcopal Church South. This church took over, from the body that had nourished it, the articles of religion and the forms of government. Its rules will not allow any others than negroes the privilege of membership. At the outset there were but little more than 60,000 members; in 1909 it had 233,911, shepherded by 2,809 ministers and housed in 2,619 churches.
9. Minor Methodist Churches: The Primitive Methodist Church, as it exists in the United States, came from England. It has three annual conferences subdivided into districts and maintaining itinerant and local ministers and class-leaders. They are slowly growing, having had 4,764 communicants in 1890 and 7,295 in 1909. The Independent Methodist Churches are composed of congregations in Maryland, Tennessee, and the District of Columbia. Their statistics are inaccessible. The Evangelist Missionary Church comprises ministers and members in Ohio, who in 1886 withdrew from the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. They have now about 5,000 members. They have one bishop and profess to have no creed but the Bible. The New Congregational Methodists withdrew in 1881 from the Methodist Episcopal Church South in Georgia on account of alleged arbitrary action. Seven years later a number of its churches united with the Congregationalists. At the present time they report 1,782 members. The Congregational Methodists originated in Georgia in 1852. When the Congregational body began to establish congregations in the South after the war many of the churches and ministers that organized the Congregational Methodist Church went over to them. In doctrine, the Congregational. Methodists agree with other Methodist bodies; and in polity they are not strictly Congregational. Appeals from the decision of the lower church may be taken
to a district conference, thence to the state conference, and ultimately to the general conference. This church has 15,529 members, chiefly in the southern states. The African Union Methodist Protestant Church dates from 1816, and differs from the African Methodist Episcopal Church in opposing itinerancy, paid ministers, and episcopacy. It has 3,867 members in eight states. The Union American Methodist Episcopal Church agrees in doctrines and usages with other Methodist bodies. It antedates the African Methodist Episcopal Church, being organized in 1813 in Wilmington, Del., is divided into conferences, and elects its bishops for life. In 1890 it had 2,279 members, and now reports 18,500. The Zion Union Apostolic Church was organized in 1869 in Virginia. It was reported in 1890 to have 2,346 communicants, and at the end of 1909 reports 3,059.
10. In Canada and the Maritime Provinces: Methodism was introduced into Newfoundland in 1765 by Lawrence Coughland, who was admitted as a traveling preacher by John Wesley in 1755.
Coughland preached there until 1773,
1. Begin- his work being strengthened by local
ning-s. preachers. In 1785 Wesley sent John
McGeary especially to that colony. Methodism came into being in Nova Scotia in 1779 by the conversion of William Black through the influence of Wesley's sermons, and the efforts of newly arrived Methodists. Black in 1784, seeking for reinforcements, visited the conference called at Baltimore, Md., to receive Dr. Coke and form the Methodist Episcopal Church. By 1791 the work had so prospered in Nova Scotia as to demand a district with Black as elder, to act as superintendent of six stations, manned by as many preachers from the United States. Other preachers had been sent to various parts of the provinces. Methodism reached New Brunswick by way of Nova Scotia and the United States. In the Province of Canada local preachers had been working before the year 1790, but to William Losee, a preacher on trial without a definite appointment, belongs the honor of being the first missionary to Canada. His experiment proving successful, the next year he was regularly appointed. By 1799 a flourishing, presiding elder's district existed. In 1810 the Genesee conference was organized, and preachers in Canada for the most part assumed relations with that body. Until 1812 they had been associated with the Methodist Episcopal Church. From the beginning there had been steady advance till the war between the United States and Great Britain; but during that conflict the members were dispersed, and at its close only 1,785 could be found. The Methodists of Lower Canada, having no preacher competent to administer the ordinances, applied to Nova Scotia for aid, and a regular minister was sent from the British conference. This created confusion, which continued till 1820, when the upper province was allotted to the American preachers, and the lower to the British. In 1824 Methodism in Upper Canada, then comprising thirty-five ministers and preachers on trial and 6,150 members, was organized into a single annual conference, and during the next four years increase was