"The buying or selling the bodies and souls of men, women, or children, with an intention to enslave them."

The conference of 1784, which organized the Methodist Episcopal Church, deemed it a "bounden duty" to take effective measures to "extirpate this abomination from among us." It accordingly insisted that all those holding slaves should adopt a system of manumission, failing in which they should be excluded from the church, and that in future no slaveholder should be admitted to the church until he had ceased to hold slaves. In 1800 the discipline provided that any minister becoming a slaveholder must, if legally possible under the laws of the State in which he lived, emancipate his slaves or "forfeit his ministerial character." In 1816 the general conference declared slaveholders ineligible to any official station in the church, except in States where the laws did not "admit of emancipation and permit the liberated slave to enjoy freedom." These provisions could not be observed in some of the States in the South, and were not insisted on in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Tennessee. In 1808 the general conference directed that a number of disciplines, "with the section and rule on slavery left out," be printed for use in South Carolina.

About twenty-five years later the antislavery agitation in the North began to affect Methodism. The general conference of 1836 exhorted the members of the church "to abstain from all abolition movements and associations," and censured two of its members for taking part in an antislavery meeting. In the South the rule concerning the connection of ministers with slavery had not been enforced, except in six of the border conferences. The episcopacy, however, had been kept free from any conflict with slave

holding. While the Northern conferences would not have received a slaveholding bishop, the Southern conferences could not agree that slaveholders ought to be excluded from the episcopacy. A serious conflict arose, therefore, when Bishop Andrew, a Southern man who was elected bishop in 1832, became by marriage, in January, 1844, a slaveholder. At the general conference held in May of that year in New York City, after a long discussion, it was declared by a vote of III to 69 to be the sense of the conference that Bishop Andrew "desist from the exercise of his office so long as he is connected with slavery." The Southern delegates protested against this action, and insisted that under the circumstances the "continuance of the jurisdiction of this general conference" over the conferences in the slaveholding States was "inconsistent with the success of the ministry" in those States. The outcome was the adoption of a report of a committee of nine embodying a plan of separation to become operative, if the thirteen annual conferences in the slaveholding States should "find it necessary to unite in a distinct ecclesiastical connection, and if the various annual conferences by a three-fourths vote should so change the constitution as to allow of a division of the property of the Book Concern."

The action of the general conference was followed, in the South, by a convention in Louisville, Ky., in May, 1845, representing the thirteen annual conferences which had expressed their approval of the plan of separation. This convention declared the conferences represented a distinct body under the title, "The Methodist Episcopal Church, South." Two bishops, Andrew and Soule, cast their lot with the Southern church, the former in 1845, the latter at the first general conference in 1846. The Northern

annual conferences disapproved the plan of separation, and the general conference of 1848 declared it null and void. A suit for a division of the property according to the plan of separation was prosecuted, and the Supreme Court of the United States, in 1854, decided it in favor of the Southern church. A fraternal messenger sent by the latter to the Northern general conference of 1848 was not received officially by that body. It was not until after the Civil War (1876) that fraternity was established between the two churches.

The Southern church lost more heavily during the years of the war than the Northern. The latter had in 1864 about 68,000 fewer members than in 1860, the decrease occurring chiefly in the border conferences. The former lost between the years 1860 and 1866 113,000 white members, while its colored membership, aggregating 207,766, dwindled to 78,742. Most of the colored members went, at the close of the war, into the Methodist Episcopal Church (which extended its operations into the South), and into the African Methodist Episcopal and African Methodist Episcopal Zion churches. In 1870 nearly all the remaining colored members were organized into the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. There are now only about 500 colored members in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and these are scattered among 27 annual conferIn the Indian Mission Conference about 3500 of the 10,498 members are Indians. The Southern church reorganized its shattered forces at the close of the war, and in a few years was again in the full tide of prosperity. growth in the last decade has been rapid.

ences.

Its

The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, has the same articles of religion, the same system of conferences, annual

and general, and substantially the same discipline as the Methodist Episcopal Church. It differs from the latter in admitting lay delegates (four from each district) to the annual conferences; in making lay equal to ministerial representation in the general conference; in giving the bishops a modified veto over legislation which they may deem unconstitutional; and in abolishing the probationary term of six months for candidates for membership. The changes respecting lay delegation and the probationary system were adopted in 1866. The pastoral term was in the same year extended from two to four years.

There are 45 annual conferences, covering the entire country south of the 40th parallel of latitude, which nearly corresponds with Mason and Dixon's line, and also parts of Oregon, Montana, Idaho, and Washington; but the number of congregations in these States is not large. Nor are there many congregations in the southern portions of Indiana and Illinois. The church is strongest in Texas, where it has 139,347 members; in Georgia, where it has 134,600; and in Tennessee, where the number reaches 121,398. There are in all 1,209,976 members, with 15,017 organizations, and 12,688 edifices, which are valued at $18,775,362. Of the congregations, 1634 meet in halls, etc., which have a seating capacity of 190,777. The average seating capacity of the church edifices is 265, and the average value $1480.