The Birmingham age-herald., 1920-04-18

sec i. whether man after being given the poor compliment of bare title is not left naked to any enemies his fidelity may have aroused, to have the face of his rep utation more marred than is possible in the case of any other official his char acter left without guard, his innocence without shield The constitution pro- vided IS contrary to the unbroken order of human events
 A HAMLINIZED GENERAL CONFERENCE
 The majority of the general conference of 1S44 was determined to accomplish an object Even their indirect method was without authority of law. Men with power may take law if one suited to their purpose can be found Times with. out number power has acted without even the color of law. Power blinds, and then hungry desire feeds on fallacy and is as satisfied with it as reason is with cogent logic and groundless assertion sufficiently persistent is greedily accept ed as fact more true than holy writ L. L. Hamline was brilliant speaker, and his audience was too intent on the accomplishment of it's purpose to be halt ed by law or fact. His phosphorescent light was to that majority as the un- clouded shining of the summer sun. Meth odist literature contains no equal to that speech in disregard of facts denial of unbrokenl history, and spacious fallacy,
 His reward was the episcopacy His au- ditors believed because they wished to believe. The word plan" in the third restrictive rule must have occupied the blind spot in his field of vision, for that crucial word is rAot once on his lips, yet
 it's presence in the law negates all he said
 An apology is offered for giving ex- cerpts from a speech known to every rnr 1A- Of HA411 L. tAyTs:-. ence adjunct fbut rarely) with the annual conference is supreme. It's supremacy
 is universal. It has legislative, judicial and executive supremacy. :. The re- strictions are few and simple They en1- brace our Articles of Religion, the ratio of representation, the perpetuity of eps- copacy, and the general superintendency, the general rules, trial by committee and appeal. and the avails of the Book Con- cern. Beyond thnse slender restrictions
 it's legislation is legitimate and concl,l- sive. But has it also executive functions. and are these supreme and all-controlling? SD I affirm. |. $. The general conference is the fountain of all official executive authority. It is the Croton River of that system of executive ministrations which flow in healthful streams throughout our Zion. l. % Will it be disclaimed that the conference is that fountain? Can you advise me where else than here executive authority takes its rise? Whence do you gather these hfe-preserving waters? It seems to me SIT, that, like God in Eden who planted but did not till the garden, resigning that delightful task to man. so our constitu- uon says to this general conference, Un- der such and such restrictions you are commissioned with full powers to make rules and regulations for" cultivating the fields of Methodism.' Full powers for what! For two things First. to make rules. That is legislation sir, as it stands related to other powers of the con. ference But is this all it can do? No. lt has full powers also to make regula- tons for the government of the church What is regulation? To appoint a preacher to field of labor is regula- ton. To remove him to another field IS regulation. To elect and empowes a bishop to do this is regulation To recall the bishop to his former station is regulation. All that this confer ence can confer it can withhold And whatever it can confer and withhold it can resume at will unless constitu- tional restriction forbids it. What IS there in the constitution to distinguish
 the three departments of our govern
 mental authority or to bestow one and withhold another? The grant to us is In mass. The streams of these ad- minlstrative acts took their rise here and, like running waters to the ocean. they return hither to their source How unlike those of the President to the American Congress- with which I have heard them compared, are the relations or the episcopacy to this conferences! The
 term, the duties, the privileges of the
 President are all fixed by constitutional provision The presidency is an office and the incumbency of it plainly desis-
 hated Our church constitution recog.
 nizes the episcopacy as an abstraction and leaves this body to work 1t into a concrete form in any hundred or more
 ways we may be able to invent.
 The general conference under certain re- strictions is the depository of all power legislative judicial, and executive
 the conference has power from the grant of the constitution (which is catholic grant, embracing all beyond a few enumerated restrictions). The general conference, like the orb of day, rises to shed light on the surrounding scene. It is first shaped fashioned and then. like Adam by his Maker, is en- dowed with dominion and made impe- rial in its relations. and, saving the slight reservations of the constitution, it is all- controlling in its influence. Let it never be lost sight of that the general confer ence is the sun of our system. 1"
 This constitution does not lose sight of Hamlines views. That speech is the negative of which this constitution is the printed photograph. What Hamline mis- tskenly claimed was already there is now with ella aboration written in constitution we are asked to adopt Some of our men are telling us they are amazed at the concession granted to our church, If to have our church Hamlinized be a con cesson. it has been given us in good measure, pressed down, and shaken to- gether. ard running over.
 Joshua Soule, who wrote the constitu- ton of the church, said in his address to the general conference delivered few days after Hamline spoke: 'I have heard for the first time, either on the floor of this conference, in an annual conference, or through the whole of the private mem hership of the church, this doctrine ad vanced. This is the first time l ever heard it"
 We have had since 1898 a fairly we'll balanced and most efficient, government We ire Sled fo est hiish a all-rnprron