They were constituted a body corporate, and a general method of procedure was made binding upon them. The law knows no other Conference than the legal representatives and successors of these ministers and gentlemen.' But on their first meeting after Wesley's death a letter was read to them requesting them to consider their brethren as their equals in every respect. They wisely adopted the advice; and, while they allowed equal privileges to all, put themselves within the law by adopting, formally and explicitly, all the acts of the General Conference as their own acts and deeds. This body was heir to Wesley's spiritual despotism and irresponsible power. Immediately on his death a large section of his followers determined to throw off a yoke which respect and gratitude rendered tolerable while imposed by the hand of a benefactor, but which was intolerable when that benefactor was dead. In 1797, six years after Wesley's death, a secession took place, prompted by a desire to introduce a more liberal system of Church polity into Methodism, by associating laymen with ministers in its government and administration; and to supply its people with every ⚫ scriptural ordinance by the hands of their own ministers.' In a word, the Dissenting element in Methodism desired a democratic government, and the administration of the sacraments by Methodist preachers. The latter the Wesleyans granted under a plan of pacification;' but to the former they would not yield. For eighty years the demand for the admission of the laity into the governing Conference was reiterated in various forms, and each new secession made it a prominent part of their programme that they would admit the laity to equal rights; but Wesleyanism stood firm by its bolted doors. An attempt was once made to starve the Wesleyan Conference into submission, and 100,000 members withdrew from its communion. It did not yield—a fact greatly to its credit but gradually gave increasing powers to committees composed of ministers and laymen. In 1877 a new constitution was given to Wesleyanism, in which the ministers still retain their ecclesiastical privileges, but have offered the laity a larger share in the government of temporalities. The Legal Conference remains intact; but a Ministerial Conference meets which deals with spiritualities only, then a Mixed or Representative Conference assembles in which other subjects come ⚫ before it. During the Pastoral Session the Conference con'sists of the Legal Conference, and all the ministers who have ⚫ permission from their respective district committees to attend its sittings; and during the Representative Session, it consists of the Legal Conference, and the ministerial and lay repre

sentatives who have been elected, 240 of each order. The acts of this Conference in this wider sense, both during its Pastoral and Representative Sessions, are confirmed by the ' vote of the Legal Conference.' It will be seen that the keys are still in the hands of the ministers; like Thomas à Becket they will only permit clerics to try clerics, and to admit into the Church and expel from it.

The Wesleyan Conference meets annually in some large and generally antique chapel, the doors of which are jealously guarded. No layman, no representative of the public press, no unaccredited minister can enter; but the Conference will, through its official 'minutes' and through privileged ministers, furnish such accounts of its proceedings as it thinks fit to the public. The floor of the chapel is occupied by non-official members, the galleries are the haunt of very young ministers, and a platform supports the president, ex-presidents, secretaries, and a few officials. The atmosphere of the assembly is unique. The business is transacted with the precision of a merchant's office under the religious sanctions of a synod. Accounts of moneys paid and received are examined, while pastoral addresses to various foreign conferences are read, and priestly benedictions roll over the chinking of the coins on the money-changers' tables. A Church congress talks in hopes that some grains of wheat may be fanned from the chaff; the Wesleyan Conference talks that it may legislate. Convocation debates with a haunting and irritating remembrance of past power; the Wesleyan Conference argues and decides with an increasing confidence in the acclamations that will meet its decisions. Representatives find their way into the Methodist assembly from affiliated and derived communities in France, Canada, the United States, and Australia, and the preacher from an obscure country circuit, seeing them in the flesh, grows proud of a community on which the sun never sets. In the ordinary course of things, the subjects of debate are mere matters of routine, and only interest the Connexion; but occasionally matters of more general importance are discussedsuch as an eirenicon from a zealous Churchman, which is sure to awaken the old controversies; the attitude of the Wesleyan denomination towards education; or the imperilling of the unity of the ministry by the over-ardent action of some ecclesiastico-political preacher who contends that his absorption in the Wesleyan system does not militate against his taking part in some momentous question of a national character. The ablest speakers generally figure in such encounters, and the training of a lifetime in the art of impromptu debate bears its

fruit. The Representative Conference is younger, its numbers are fluctuating, and, though it moves very much on the lines of the older assembly, its speeches are less concise and more rhetorical than are usually delivered in the ministerial assembly.

It is extremely difficult to assign this Conference to its proper place in a catalogue of ecclesiastical organisations. All its preachers are of one order; but while on trial they are forbidden to marry, they may not administer either sacrament, except baptism privately in cases of emergency, nor may they vote in the Conference. The president is supposed by Wesleyans closely to resemble that primus inter pares, whose portrait has so often been drawn by theorists on the primitive government of the Church; but his primacy is ended with his year of office. The chairmen of districts' may be the modern descendants of the Chorepiscopi; but who can attach episcopal dignity to such work-a-day titles as these? Superintendent of a circuit' may be the Latinised equivalent for bishop of a diocese, and may in reality approach Ussher's idea of prelacy; but the title is too redolent of police supervision to contract prelatical associations. Lay representatives may be ruling elders;' but they are only elected pro hâc vice, and are discharged from duty and from office by the rising of Conference. Yet this nondescript Presbytery writes its priest very large. It does not attempt to attach itself to any ancient and apostolic seat, yet it asserts that it is composed of 'mi'nisters and pastors empowered not only to preach the Gospel, 'but to administer the sacraments of our holy religion, and charged with all the responsibilities of the Christian pastor'ate.' What is included in this the Conference showed, when it refused to receive any proposal which would go to transfer, altogether or in part, the responsibility of the sentence in disciplinary cases from the pastorate to the lay officers. To adopt such a course of procedure would be to give up a prin'ciple which, in the judgment of the Conference, is essentially inherent in the pastoral office.' It is not a century and a half old, and yet it scarcely allows a session to pass without administering a rebuke to the pretensions of sacerdotalism, and combating the hard materialism, the fleshly philosophy,

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the sensuous worship of our time.' Its younger members

are taught to notice the defects of all other communionsRoman, Lutheran, Anglican, Reformed, Friends, Brethren, minor Methodist bodies-and then their tutor utters this panegyric over Methodism proper, which is eminently at once high and free-Presbyterian as to the basis of its theory,"

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Episcopal after the earliest type; employs the laity in every diaconal function, and more carefully than any other religious 'community distinguishes the functions of the pastorate and of the laity; reserving for the final ministerial jurisdiction all questions that affect the power of the Keys as left by Christ in His Church. The Methodist doctrine is that our Lord left the Keys-the general government of His Church, and special binding and loosing of its members-to the Church itself, as represented, however, by the men whom the Spirit 'would raise up with the Church's concurrence to represent its authority.' Englishmen generally suppose that no man should be permitted to criminate himself, but the Wesleyan Conference knows no such scruple. Not content with all the means at their disposal for the discovery of lapses and offences against morality and the laws and usages of their societies, they say: Not the Conference only, but all its district committees possess the undoubted right of instituting any inquiry or investigation which they may deem expedient into the moral, Christian, or ministerial conduct of the preachers, even though no formal or regular accusation may have been previously commenced on the part of any individual.' This is termed friendly examination,' and has been used with effect when all other means of discovering supposed delinquents failed. The Free Church of Scotland in its struggles against the arbitrary power of patrons found few warmer friends than the Wesleyan Conference; yet it maintains its right to appoint any preacher to any circuit in spite of the protests of its recognised officials, and to take away any minister from his flock, however much they may desire to retain him, or even to suit their convenience to send him by a stroke of the pen from Cornwall to Caithness. Good Wesleyans are those, who, closing their eyes to these and many other anomalies, consider the Conference as the bright, consummate flower in the paradise of Christendom, and put down all attempts at reforming it in the same category as painting the lily. It is not to be wondered at, that the minister loves the Conference early and never ceases to praise it. If the French private soldier carries the marshal's bâton in his knapsack from the hour he joins the colours, the young Wesleyan minister reads the insignia of presidential honours in his ordination Bible. The Conference is to him what the House of Commons is to the rising member anxious for official employment. Every distinction, every employment, every honour is in the hands of this body, from the appointment as a deputation from the parent society' to the most responsible office. Every three years, at the longest,

every circuit is abandoned by its former minister, and Conference appoints his successor. If his early dreams are unfulfilled, Conference bears the burden of the unsuccessful man, and finds him a home every year of his itinerant life. He may be unable to afford any change in the autumn; but at Conference time it will go hard with him if he cannot cast all his troubles aside, and for three weeks share the ungrudging hospitality of a willing host, and be surprised for that brief space to find himself of some importance in the world. The Conference is to its members a refuge in trouble, a meetingplace for friends, a sanctified tribunal, a holy convocation, a solemn synod. The hand that would assail its privileges or its powers is sacrilegious in the sight of its members.

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It may interest clerical readers to know how Wesleyans vindicate the validity of their orders. The answer to this is found in their history. In the first place, Wesley early enunciated a principle which has been firmly held by his followers: Uninterrupted succession from the Apostles I know 'to be a fable.' He accepted with this Stillingfleet's conclusion in his Irenicon '-'neither Christ nor His Apostles prescribe any particular form of church government, and the 'plea of divine right for diocesan episcopacy was never heard of in the primitive church.' In accordance with this a late Wesleyan authority lays it down that the notion of a succession of bishops conveying by digital contact from age to age the whole volume of divine grace. is as contrary to the letter as to the spirit of the New Testament.' It will be seen that these principles, if granted, permit the formation of new religious societies and their organisation, provided sufficient cause is shown for their creation. Wesley believed that the state of the Church and the nation permitted him to create such societies. In 1741 he called out lay preachers to do nothing but preach and visit amongst such societies. He saw his difficult position, and puts his perplexities in a nutshell. 'Soul-damning clergymen lay me under more difficulties than 'soul-saving laymen.' Every step saw the new body rising into legal existence and into ecclesiastical importance. societies were repelled from the Church by individual clergymen. The law forced them to register their chapels as 'Pro⚫testant Dissenting' meeting-houses, or else to forego all the benefits of the Toleration Act. No one could hit upon a modus vivendi. The societies wanted religious services and sacraments; Wesley gave them all he could by the hands of ordained clergymen. More were required. Wesley had read Lord Chancellor King's work on the Primitive Church.

The