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Today the schools number 7,147, the officers and teachers 131,145, and there are in the schools 965,201 children and young people. The formation in 1869 of the Circuit Sunday-school Union, and in 1874 of the Connexional Sunday-school Union, has done much for the schools, in providing suitable literature for teachers and scholars, and in organising their work.
Parker began his ministrations as a Methodist local preacher; while Dr. Dale has shown the indebtedness of Nonconformity to Methodism. In France and Germany Methodist agency has been one of the strongest forces in re-awakening the old Protestant Churches; the services held by our Connexional evangelists send many converts to swell the fellowship of Churches not our own.
This "powerful arm of Christian work" not only rescues helpless little ones from degradation and misery; it undertakes the special training of the workers amongst the children in industrial homes and orphanages; and hence has arisen the institution in 1895 of the order of Methodist deaconesses, which is recommended by Conference to Connexional sympathy and confidence, the deaconesses rendering to our Church such services as the Sisters of Mercy give to the Church of Rome.
Local Church meetings were guaranteed the right of appeal to Conference, and circuits were allowed to memorialise Conference on Connexional subjects, within proper limits. The quarterly meetings, having considered these resolutions, gave them a cordial reception, and they were confirmed by the Conference of 1853.
One-sixth of the laymen on Connexional committees retire yearly; they may be re-elected, but must receive a four-fifths vote. Visitors may be present when the President is inducted into office, and during the representative session, when also reporters other than ministers are now allowed to take notes.
This was no sudden revolution; laymen had long had their share in the work of quarterly meetings, district synods, and great Connexional committees; in 1861 they were admitted to the Committees of Review, which arranged the business of Conference; they sat in the nomination committee each year, and had power to scrutinise, and even to alter, the lists of names for the various committees.
In the case of a candidate for the ministry some Connexional Committee sitting in some distant town "may take a stand we cannot take who are on the spot." These providences do not always come to pass. The brother concerned does not always discover his unfitness.
The missionary debt was paid, and the buildings for soldiers and sailors at Malta and Aldershot were cleared of debt. Such work could not be done if the circuits acted independently; but united as they are, and forming one vast connexion, much which would otherwise be impossible can be achieved by means of the great Connexional funds.
Patrick. The whole thing might be happening in Wimbledon. He went to the Wesleyan Connexional School. He went to hear Moody and Sankey. "I was," he writes, "wholly unmoved by their eloquence; and felt bound to inform the public that I was, on the whole, an atheist. My letter was solemnly printed in Public Opinion, to the extreme horror of my numerous aunts and uncles."
It would be an interesting employment to journey back across the past and listen for this note as it fell from the lips of the great preachers of bygone ages. Our own Connexional fathers, however, as the figures most familiar to our minds, may remind us how faithful the pulpit used to be in the execution of this hard task.
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