Year: 1876




Nearly a decade has passed since the
Mothodists of the United States commemor-
ated their centennial anniversary Of the
founding Of Methodism on this continent,
and in the enthusiasm Of the occasion they
contributed for education, church extension,
missions and other connectional interests,
thirty millions of dollars. The rich Of their
wealth contributed literally and the poor
gave of their poverty, that they and their
posterity might be able TO say in the years
to come that they had done something if
not all that they could do, in honor of such
an event. But while l766 was the year when
Methodism took foothold on Northern
soil, and, like other isms of its time,
held on and prospered because of the
hard knocks it received. this was not actually
the beginning of efforts to establish the sect
on this new continent. In 1875 John Wesley
came TO Georgia and tried to plant Metho-
disln there. But Wesley was too ardent an
abolitionist, and by his outspoken uttcrances
on ''the sum of all villanies, as he styled
slavery, he neutralized his influence as q
preacher, and his following was scarcely
worth numbering. Three years later, in
1898, Whitefeld came hither, and like u
meteor he flashed up and down the land from
Georgia through the Carolinas and the Old
Dominion to Massachusetts. He made seven
visits to this country, and finally died and
was buried here. North Carolina was the only
State that with any degree of cordiality well
A..
sect, but rather because it was looked upon as
an erratic daughter of the venerable estab-
lishment of Great Britain. Her ministers
and members received aid and comfort from
Episcopal ministers in the States where she
tried to maintain foothold; and to-day in
the South as also in the North, it is the
largest and wealthiest denomination in the
land. Starting almost with the nations
birth it has kept pace with the national
growth and in everything that marks the
Advancement of the Republic the Methodist
Episcopal Church can show step for step in
its progress. The people of Raleigh, N. c.,
have something, therefore, to commemorate
to-day in the growth of Methodism which
one hundred years ago numbered its commu-
nicants at six hundred and eighty-three
in that State and Tennessee, where to-day it
has tens of thousands. The only man
who attended the first General Con-
ference of Methodists in the United
States and who remembered its growth
of nearly one hundred years-the venerable
Father Boehm-died few months ago near
this city, in the one hundredth year of his
age. There is one other venerable minister
now living in the South who has attained
nearly the years of Father Boehm, and who,
after him, knows more about Methodism's
infancy than any other living man-the Rev.
DIR. Lovick Pierce, father of the Bishop of
that name of the Church South. There is
also another minister residing in this city,
nearly at the close of his ninth decade, who
remembers when there were not as many
Methodists in the United States and Canada
as there are now in the city of New York
the venerable Father De Vlnne What hath
God wrought within the lifetime of those
men for this Church and by this Church |!
Three of the bishops of the South will to-
day trace its progress of GEN.
tury and speak of the sturdy character
of its founders and of the many methods
of its propagation, which for three-quarters
of century were peculiar to itself, but
which are now more or less in vogue in all
other denominations, their usefulness hav-
ing been fully tested. Among those methods
none, perhaps, have had such an influence
on Methodism, or been so successful in it's
promotion, as camp meetings, where at the
beginning of the present century, it was not
an uncommon thing to see fifteen or twenty
thousand persons present and at the close of
one such meeting to count three thousand
converts. The meetings are held still, but
tho converts cannot he counted