The General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church held in
Philadelphia last May was in several respects remarkable. It was in
the first place a picturesque body for the eye of a moral artist.
The “war horses” of older days were there with the sound stentorian
neigh which one expects to hear at a camp meeting. Probably there were
more of these than in recent sessions of the body. There was William
Taylor from everywhere, Ram Chandra Bose from India, and the venerable
men of a former generation who are called Trimble and Curry. But the
moral picturesqueness of the Conference lay rather in the variety and
independence of young Americans from all sections. There was a very
lively Bear from Wall Street, a still livelier lay preacher from New
Jersey, a choice collection of young pastors from all over Zion, and
a sprinkling of college men and newspaper men, bankers, railroad men
and physicians, ex-generals, ex-chaplains, and farmers. The face of the
body was so variegated and its separate limbs so independent that some
spectators said it was not a body at all because it had no community of
life and no head. Its independence of traditions and its refusal to be
led by anybody added to the picturesqueness of the assembly. Nothing
could be thrust down its throat. It threw all the men who successively
tried to lead it. It voted with reference to an order of ideas and
aspirations which no one can find written down in the press of the
denomination. We believe there was but a single caucus, and that was
a gathering of the colored delegates. It was a piece of most adroit
management. It will probably be the last of that series of caucuses; and
if it had been held half a day sooner, it would have defeated its own
purpose. The white delegates would have defeated anybody who had asked
them to go into a caucus. A very manly and self-respecting independence
of dictation or management was in the air.
Another striking fact was the form which the independence of the body
took on—the results which it reached. It might be called the Missionary
Reform Conference. From the first it was clear that this branch of church
work would receive a push forward on new lines. The single large debate
of the session was over the proposition to locate a regular bishop
in India. The bishops opposed it vigorously. The special adherents
of “presbyter writ large” opposed it. And yet the measure received a
majority of votes, and was defeated only by “dividing the house” and
getting a lay majority against it to kill a clerical majority for it.
After that defeat by a formal device for distributing a minority so as
to give it veto power, the Conference had its own way. It made Chaplain
McCabe Missionary Secretary, and elected William Taylor a Missionary
Bishop for Africa, and it lifted Daniel Curry, who had led the movement
for an Episcopal residence in India, sheer over the heads of all the
editorial staff and set him down in the chair of the _Quarterly Review_.
Each of these facts means more than meets the eye. Chaplain McCabe is the
prince of collection-takers. The best man in the church to raise money
is set to increasing missionary collections. William Taylor has been a
bishop for thirty years—a bishop _de facto_—he is now bishop _de jure_
in Africa. We doubt whether he will confine himself to Africa; but it
will certainly require all of Africa to hold him. The Liberian grave-yard
ceases to be the Methodist Africa. Bishop Taylor will lay siege to the
whole continent—the Nile, the Soudan, the Congo, the Cape, as well as
Liberia. Nor is this all. He believes in self-supporting missions,
and will give a great impetus to the movement toward self-directing
independence in all missions. Some time or other a mission must become a
church; that time, many believe, is at hand in India, Africa and Europe.
The reversal of judgment in Dr. Curry’s case is a conspicuous proof of
the independence of the Conference. Eight years ago he was retired from
the _Christian Advocate_ at New York for insubordination. Part of his
offense was a singular freedom of pen on this same subject of missions.
For example, he once wrote (concerning the return visits of missionaries
in the other hemisphere): “We need a few graves of missionaries in
heathen soil,” or words of this significance. The General Conference was
persuaded to vote him out in 1876; but the act emancipated the paper, and
under Dr. J. M. Buckley it is independent in a wider sense than Dr. Curry
ever dared to make it. And now with the burden of seventy-five years
upon him, Dr. Curry succeeds the other venerable Daniel as the editor of
the chief and only universal organ of the denomination. “Whedon on the
Will” will probably cease to be the conspicuous feature of the _Quarterly
Review_, and if it should drop out of the “course of study” for young
ministers, the loss might be a gain.
The choice of the Conference for new bishops will probably be approved
after some experience. Bishops Ninde and Mallalieu are probably
universally popular selections. Bishops Walden and Fowler are yet to be
approved by the intelligence of the denomination. But from one point of
view the last two are better selections than the former. Bishops Ninde
and Mallalieu have to be seasoned to a life of travel and hardship. They
have lived in the study; and men past fifty (Bishop Mallalieu is 56)
usually break down in the Methodist Episcopacy. The other pair of new
bishops have long been inured to travel; and their physical preparation
for the hard work before them may prove, on trial, that these were
_almost_ the best selections that could have been made. If Ninde and
Mallalieu should soon follow Kingsley, Thompson, and the two Havens,
the effect would probably be to direct the choice of the denomination
in future elections to men accustomed to real itineracy. But, after
all, on that view, or any other proper view, the largest bishop chosen
by the last General Conference is the one who must write “Missionary”
before his title. William Taylor has long been a bishop; his church
has merely recognized, at rather a late hour, a fact which has long
been conspicuous. Whether or not there is a great bishop, or more than
one, among the other group of four remains to be proved by their work.
There is little doubt that the judgment of the Conference was perplexed
in the matter of voting Dr. J. H. Vincent into the Episcopacy, and so
voting him out of that vast work which he supervises as the head of the
Sunday-school organization. His friends will see in the vote of 178
for bishop, a proof that the Conference wanted him on the platform;
they will see in the fact that for his old place the Conference gave
him 316 ballots—_all but nine_ of its votes—the reason why he was
not made bishop. The figures are in both cases the highest possible
compliment—both votes were complimentary.