house of seventeen rooms, on Massachusetts Avenue, has been purchased and thoroughly fitted for hospital purposes.

This philanthropic movement is destined to spread until every large city in the Union will contain such a hospital, and it will be recognized that, though Methodists entered upon this phase of beneficent activity later than most other religious bodies, their zeal and liberality have been stimulated by that fact.

CHAPTER XXVI.

ACHIEVEMENTS AND OUTLOOK.

THE early history of American Methodism is a record of toil, hardship, self-denial, frugality, and intense devotion; abstinence was required from all forms of dissipation, from every amusement of an evil or absorbing nature, and from worldly display. Systematic giving was the rule, and all the pecuniary resources of the church were utilized. The conversion of souls was the principal object. Special attention was given to the poor and to children and youth, and total abstinence from intoxicating liquors was enforced, until no body of Christians, except the Society of Friends, was so universally temperate and so generally abstinent.

The divisions in Methodism arose from causes which in all ages have produced ecclesiastical controversy, and which, with the decline of genuine unity and individual devotion, lead to rupture when not suppressed by force, or to external decay unless the church is sustained by the state, and to infidelity and immorality in large degree where the outward forms of religion are maintained by endowments or taxation; namely, differences of judgment concerning discipline, ceremony, and doctrine, and, more potent than all, the personal ambitions of men who when disappointed become imbittered, or when successful grow insupportable by reason of the spirit of tyranny engendered.

INTERDENOMINATIONAL RECIPROCITY.

683

All these causes, except radical divergencies of doctrine, can be traced in the development of American Methodism.

Yet it has nearly five millions of communicants in the United States alone, the vast majority of whom have been received by conversion. The influence which has led so great a multitude to affiliate with Methodism is the power of the fundamental principles of Christianity as taught and preached by it, the attractiveness of its services, and the hand-to-hand conflicts waged by pastors and people against the powers of darkness.

By its stimulus and example it has powerfully affected other religious bodies, with resulting modifications in their spirit and methods in preaching, singing, exhortation, lay coöperation, and revivals. By the number of attendants at other churches who were converted among Methodists and returned to their former associations carrying this spirit, and by the countless revivals kindled by their zeal which have spread through entire communities, much has been contributed to the vitality, and consequently to the permanent growth, of other religious denominations. Ministers who have changed their views and entered other Christian churches, carrying with them the peculiar zeal and working plans of Methodism, have contributed a similar influence, which a large proportion of those who have been the subjects of it have gladly acknowledged.

It is proper that Methodism should render such contributions, since it owes so much of spiritual impulse to the Moravians, derived its liturgy from the Church of England, was trained in analysis and argumentation in the conflicts made necessary by the stalwart resistance of the Calvinistic bodies to what they supposed to be its dangerous departures from sound doctrine, and after invading New England was liberalized by the democratic spirit of its Congregational form of government, and prevented by

the intellectual vigor and ceaseless activity of the American Baptists from placing too strong a reliance upon a sacramentarian view of the baptism of infants.

As Methodism has grown in wealth, and its educational enterprises have modified the views and refined the tastes. and manners of its people, immigration from other religious denominations through marriage has increased; and the growth of the spirit of Christian unity has operated in the same direction, until within the past quarter of a century the separating walls of denominations have become less and less palpable.

Prophecy is beyond the sphere of the historian, but his domain extends to the utmost margin of the present.

Whether there are marked tendencies to organic union of the different branches of Methodism is a question difficult to determine. Addresses, however fervent, upon complimentary occasions indicate little; often, indeed, they are followed by reaction. Gladstone, whose all-inclusive genius irradiates if it does not illuminate every subject, has recently said:

"Religious controversies do not, like bodily wounds, heal by the genial force of nature. If they do not proceed to gangrene and to mortification, at least they tend to harden into fixed facts, to incorporate themselves with law, character, and tradition, nay, even with language; so that at last they take rank among the data and presuppositions of common life, and are thought as inexpugnable as the rocks of an iron-bound coast. A poet of ours describes the sharp and total severance of two early friends: ‘They parted, ne'er to meet again,

But never either found another

To free the hollow heart from paining.
They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
Like cliffs which had been rent asunder;
A dreary sea now rolls between.'"

THE PAST AND THE PRESENT.

685

Certainly among American Methodists the scars grow less and less visible, the tides now frequently cover the cliffs. The spirit of fraternity is generally manifest; brotherly kindness is of near kin to unity, and organic union may be safely left to the further evolution of experience. The deeper question is, Has Methodism lost to a dangerous degree its original vital impulse? No attention need be paid to ecclesiastical pessimists who allege that every departure from the past shows a tendency in the wrong direction. Methodism as represented by many of its early converts had defects of theory and practice which denominational pride or amiability has often covered with the veil of charity or forgetfulness; but as the Master rebuked the disciples for not discerning the signs of the times, there is always a place for self-examination of the individual and devout consideration of the state of the church. The history of Christianity shows that the time when such heart-searchings should be made is when the distinction between the world and the church is faintly marked, and transitions are so easy and frequent as not to attract attention, and when luxury waits upon liberality.

The founders of Methodism had no enterprises that were not distinctly subordinate to the conversion of men and their spiritual training. Now its enterprises are many and complex, often pervaded by a distinctly secular element, which contends constantly with the spiritual. Yet the flames of pure devotion burn upon many an altar, accessions by conversion are numerous, many preachers deliver truth in the power of the Holy Ghost, and every society contains those who cry continually, "Wilt Thou not revive us again, that Thy people may rejoice in Thee?" All these institutions can be rendered tributary to the great work for which Methodism was established. If the seminaries, colleges, and universities retain the spirit of