Morning journal and courier., 1884-11-17
CENTENARY OF MBTHODIsm.
Interesting Discourse by Rev. pr.

Interesting Discourse by Rev. Dr. J. O. Peck-The Growth of a Great
 Protestant Denomination.
 Rev. Dr. Peck, of the Trinity Methodist Episcopal church, delivered very interest ing discourse yesterday morning on the Gen. tenary of Methodism in the United States. The basis of his remarks was Isaiah, Goth chapter, 22d verse, "A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one strong nation; I, the Lord, will hasten it in his time"
 This magnificent prediction is the climax of one of the great messianic chapters of prophecy. This chapter of Isaiah, whose lips were touched and made burningly elo- quent by live coal which a seraph flew and caught from the altar of God and press ed to the prophets mouth, unfolds in un- surpassable majesty and triumph the glory of the church of Jesus Christ in it's culmi- mating splendors, it's mighty advances and it's wonderful conquests. She marches into a world of darkness with great 1ight-the glory of God shining upon her. The be- nighted peoples of earth come to the light; distant lands shall how to the cross; they shall pour out their gold and burn their in- cense upon the altars of our God; wealth, power and dominion shall flow to the church; conquest shall follow conquest; triumph shall crowd on triumph; the Lord shall be her everlasting light and thus the F'litt1e one shall become a thousand, and small one a strong nation"
 This prophecy of the universal church of God is approximately true of any branch of the church, in the measure that that branch of the church fulflls the purpose of the universal kingdom. And in no division of the great army of the living God, the church universal, has the sublime prophecy of the text been more startlingly and historically fulfilled than in that popu- lous denomination to which we are allied Methodism "A little one shall become a thousand, and small one strong nation. " A few years ago Congregationalisn celebra- ted on Plymouth Rock 250 years of history; and last week the Protestant Episcopal church celebrated the centennial of the con- secration of her first bishop, both sects by solemn services and eloquent eulogy com memorating these epochs. This is the cen tennial year of American Methodism. In a few weeks we shall have completed the first hundred years of organic life. It has been commended to all churches to commemorate the century of history. This is proper in it. self Besides, there are many in our congre- cations who have not fully acquainted them selves with our history and progress as a church.
 The four names that represent the mightl- est moral and religious revolutionsa move ments, epochs in the Christian centuries are Paul, Luther, Calvin, Wesley. They plowed human society with furrows so deep that the centuries have not effaced them. They organized move ments for the elevation and religious en- frapchisement of man that sweep through time and history as great gulf streams whose warm currents modify the conditions and de- velopments of all adjacent continents.
 The last of these great epochal men, Wes- lev. the gulf stream of whose work sweeps in warm and widening currents through AmeTi- can history, an influence warmer and wider than that of any other religious associate; Wesley, the founder of Methodism and the apostle of new evangelical zeal in all other denominations, belongs in special sense to us, as Abraham did to the Jews. He was our father. A clergyman of the English church, graduate of Oxford university, pro found in scholarship, with "a genius for gov ernment," says Macauley, ''not inferior to RicheIieu," impelled by an unappeasable hunger of soul to enjoy the saving grace of God to which he was hitherto stranger, as were most of the communlcants or alA cnufen- es in his day, he was converted one night after he had been an ordained clergyman several years, and began at once his great life work of calling sinners to repentance and preaching feYe must be born again. 1739 is the date assigned as the birth of Methodism in England The condition of religion in England which demanded that God should raise up Wesley may be seen in these state ments; Isaac Taylor, churchman, says the English church was ian ecclesiastical system under which the people of England had Iapsed into heathenism or a state hardly to