Lamoille newsdealer. [volume] (Hyde Park, Vt.) 1860-1877, 1867-08-28

BRtsToL, Eng, Aug. 2, 1867. eT
To the Editor Of The Boston Journal -
The Wesleyan Conference of Great Bril-
tain is holding Its annual assembly id
this city where Methodsm had It's begin:
Mug This body is one of the powerful
organizations of this cOuntry, and the
Methodist denomination must be ranked
as ote OF the most influential and progrcs.
sive bodies Id the world. 1t has had a
wonderful progress. Ole hundred ahl
twenty eight years ago John Wesley cattie
to Bristol to labor with George White.
field, who was pteaching here They
were old school fellows aud wafii hearted
friends Wesley had been to Savannah;
Georgia, with Oglethorpe, but his mission
had failed. He had been intetieely high
church; iDtolerant toward disscnters-t6
use his own words-"had been laboring
to convert men when he himself needed
to be converted" He fell in with a COM
pany Of Moravlans, and their sithplei
hearted piety brought to him view Of
religion such as he had never before
known. 1t was in 1888 that he landed
in England, and the next year found him
here preaching new doctrines and forming
religious body and hew poity Here
he preached his first sermons and gather
ed his little band Of followers t.
fitE CONFERENCE.
One hundred ani twenty -Elsht years
have passed, aud the grain Of seed has
become mighty tree. The city is filled
With ministers from all parts of the land
many of them men OF marked ability
whose sphere o. life and labor Is among
the lowly rather than among the high
born Of England Not many of the
mighty ones are called to be Methodists.
Aristocracy attends the established
church, or just now seems to be making
pilgrimage to Rome, and looks cohtamp4
tCously upon dissenters, placing Method
lists at the fag end Of the tail.
Many of the ministera whom we meet
on the streets, aud whom We see id the
conference meeting. are looked Upon by
clereymen of the established church ss
but little better than common brawlers or
rhountebapks, 1t REQUIRES some pluck to
be disseuter ii England. A man may
have no religion and maihtain his posi-
tion III the upper circles of soeicty u bdt
let him become a dissent6r especially
Methodist and he is accounted lunatic,
Or weak headed, and is ostracised thence:
forth. 1t is better to have no religion
than to Re Methodist The rhati Who
becomes Wesleyan preacher here must
bid long farewell to honor or position
of trtst and confjencc outside Of his own
church, or the sphere of the humble poor.
The circumstances which surround
these men tend to make thcti self dehy.
ing. Their sphere of life Is with the poof
and the middling class, and the fact that
the established church does not recognize
them as being in any sense ministers or
preacheas of the GOSPEL, gives them great
energy and independence Of character, Of
thought and action. af
1t is hne body Of fteh which we ses
assembled III the church. on Old Market
street, in the eastern section of the city.
1t is an edifice of moderate sizc--galleries
on three sides--the space in front of the
pulpit foorcd over and raised, where the
officers sit There are venerable men,
with gray locks and bald heads. who
have been for half century labbting
among the poor, As body, pethaps
they do not show quite as favorably as
their brcthern iu America. The lower
and middliDg classes of England are far
below the masses in the United States for
intelligence. Anthony Trollope in his
notes on America, written in 1868, COM
d es society In ,he two countries as two
crowds upon grand stairway; the pick
Of English society is IN his view, above
the best of American, but the multitude
at the bottom of the English is immensely
larger than that IN America, and great
deal lower down 1t has been one Of the
standard arguments Of tho opponents oil
Reform that the English masses were go
much more debasel than those of .any
other civilized country that they were not
fit to be eDlrsnchised.