METHODISM 193 land) and in the Channel Islands 136 itinerant preachers, 21,209 members (besides 690 on trial), and 36,335 Sunday scholars. In Canada the number of members was 6652, and in Australia and New Zealand 3671. l T/ie Wesleyan Reform, Union is an aggregate of local Methodist secession churches, loosely held together by a Conference, and is one of the results of the great Methodist disruption of 1851-52. The returns for 1831-82 showed 18 ministers and 7728 members. (Ecumenical Methodist Conference. This Conference was held in City Road Chapel, London, in September 1881. Representatives were present from all the Methodist bodies throughout the world, and it was estimated that these represented not less than 5,000,000 of members and 20,000,000 of population. Whilst in church organization these bodies differed, as has been shown above, in doctrine and in respect of their purely spiritual discipline and means of grace, they were all agreed in principal matters. The Conference was entirely practical in character. The object was to promote zeal and union among the constituent bodies as to all practical points of Christian sympathy and activity, at home and abroad, and especially as to home mission work, general philan thropy, Christian education, and a Christian use of the press. There were 400 representatives present from the Methodist bodies in all parts of the world. 2 Welsh Calvinistic Methodists. Between the Methodism of Wales and that of England there was never any other than incidental connexion. Indeed, although the name of the Welsh movement was borrowed from the English, not only was Welsh Methodism quite independent in its origin, but in reality its beginning, as an evangelical movement, was earlier than that of English Methodism. From Wesleyan Methodism, furthermore, Welsh Methodism was throughout distinguished by the fact that it was Calvinistic in its doctrine. For some years Whitefield s name was placed by the leaders of Welsh Methodism at the head of their movement, but the connexion was not at any time much more than nominal, Whitefield being, indeed, too often and too long together in America to exercise any real presidency over the Methodism of the Principality. Distinction, however, must be made between Welsh Methodism as an evangelistic movement and as an organization. In its later and distinctly organized form, its main elements date from 1811, while the actual unity and the final consolidation of the organization date from so recent a period as 1864. At that date we find the Calvinistic Methodism of North and of South Wales for the first time united in a common organization and government, and brought under the supreme control of one " General Assembly." The spiritual awakening from which Welsh Calvinistic Method ism derived its earliest inspiration and impulse began in 1735 and 1736, almost contemporaneously and quite independently, in three different counties of South Wales. Howell Harris, a gentleman of some position, born and bred at Trevecca in the parish of Talgarth, county of Brecon, is the most prominent name connected with early Welsh Methodism. His first strong religious convictions and im pulses date from 1735. He was sent to Oxford in the autumn of that year to " cure him of his fanaticism," but remained only one term. On his return to Wales he began to exhort and preach in private houses and in such buildings as he could obtain the use of, being then and throughout his life a simple layman. Of learning or theology he had but little; but he was an extemporary preacher of prodigious vehemence, and often of overwhelming power and pathos. While Harris was thus preaching in the county of Brecon, Daniel Row lands had been spiritually awakened at Llangeitho in Cardiganshire, the two men knowing nothing whatever of each other. Rowlands was an ordained clergyman, of some learning and of great eloquence. He was a pulpit orator, and carefully prepared his powerful discourses. In Pembrokeshire, again, in that same year 1735-36, Howell Davies began to preach the same doctrine in the same spirit as the other two preachers, and with effects scarcely, if at all, less remarkable. The work thus begun in three distinct centres within the space of one year was in strict connexion with the Established Church, and so continued to be throughout the last century. These single-minded preachers pursued their work in Wales knowing nothing of the parallel work which Whitefield had just begun in England. In 1738, however, Whitefield, in the west of England, heard of Howell Harris, and in that year the two revivalists met in Cardiff. In 1739 Howell Harris had begun to extend his preaching tours far and wide, visiting not only South but North Wales, and, wherever he went, founding religious societies in connexion with the Church of England, of a character resembling those called Dr Woodward s societies, which had long been in existence throughout England, the chief difference being that the Welsh societies were "evangelical," Calvinistic, and revivalist. It was in the same year that Wesley founded his society in England. In 1742 the clergymen connected with 1 See Bible Christian Memorial Volume, 18GG ; Minutes of Conference, 1881, Book-Room, 2C Paternoster U(.w. 2 See Proceedings of first ifethwUst (Ecumenical Conference, Wesleyan Rool:- PvOom, City Road. the Welsh movement were ten in number, and there were labour ing in concert with these forty lay " exhorters," as they were called. In that year the first "association" of Welsh Calvinistic Methodists was held at Waterford or Watford, in Glamorganshire. Whitefield consented to preside, and joined his preaching to that of the Welsh evangelists. The first Calvinistic Methodist Conference was held at Waterford, under Whitefield s presidency, on January 5, 1743, eighteen months earlier than Wesley s first Conference. For a short time the Calvinistic Methodism of Wales was linked to that of England. After 1748, however, Whitefield ceased to act as in any sense the official head of the Calvinistic Methodists of England, and their organization, always loose, was gradually dissolved. There was no Wesley in Welsh Methodism, and accordingly there was no organic unity among the societies of earlier Welsh Method ism. Each local society was under the care of an "exhorter," an unpaid layman. A number of these local societies were grouped together into a district, over which an "overseer" had charge. He also was usually an unpaid layman, although exercising many of the functions of a spiritual pastor. Sometimes, however, as in the case of Rowlands, he was a parish clergyman. The societies attended their parish churches and there received the sacraments. The meeting- or preaching-houses for the societies were vaguely called "houses for religious purposes." In 1751 Howell Harris ceased to itinerate and retired to Trevecca. From this time his leadership in the Methodist movement seems to have come to an end, and the movement languished for many years after. Not till 1762 is any " revival " chronicled. In 1763 Row lands was obliged to quit his curacy at Llangeitho and leave the Established Church. His people built him a chapel. He thus, after 1763, became a Dissenting minister ; and, retaining his fame and much of his power to the end of his course, he died in 1790. Fifty years had now passed since the first societies of Welsh Methodism had been established by Howell Harris, and the move ment, instead of having grown to strength and maturity, appeared to have spent its force, almost in all directions, at least so far as any outward signs could show. But the Rev. Thomas Charles of Bala was to be one of the chief means of reviving it. He, like the earlier Methodists, was a churchman; he had taken his degree at Oxford and served a curacy in Somersetshire. The doors of the Established Church having been closed against him because of his style of preaching, he joined the Welsh Methodists in 1785, and his first sphere of marked influence was in North Wales. In 1791 he took a leading part in a great revival of which Bala .was the centre. From this period may be dated the second spring of Welsh Calvinistic Methodism, from which its later successes were to grow. Charles zealously and successfully promoted the establishment of "circulating schools * and of Sabbath schools. He was, in fact, the soul of the great Christian educating movement in Wales which began in the last decade of the 18th century; and it was through his earnest zeal in seeking to provide Bibles for his Welsh schools, especially the Sunday schools, that the British and Foreign Bible Society was established. Though Methodism came then to be effectually rooted in the soil of the Principality, it was not till 1811 that the Welsh Calvinists took that step in the direction of ecclesiastical independence which the English Wesleyans had taken sixteen years before by calling their preachers to the official position of pastors and ordaining them to administer the sacraments. From 1790 till almost the present time the work of gradually moulding the constitution of Welsh Calvinistic Methodism has proceeded. The "rules regarding the proper mode of conducting the quarterly association " were drawn up by Charles and agreed upon in 1790. In 1801 the Order and Form of Church Government and Hides of Discipline were published. In 181], as has been shown, ministerial ordination was initiated. In 1823 the Con fession of Faith was promulgated. And in 1864, as has been already mentioned, the first "General Assembly " was held, and the two associations of North and South Wales respectively were united into one body. The constitution is now a modified Pres- byterianism, each church .managing its own affairs subject to successive appeal to the monthly meeting of the county and the quarterly association of the province, while the latter body may refer the decision to the annual General Assembly. The Welsh Methodists (or Welsh Presbyterians, as they are now often called) have two theological colleges, one at Bala and the other at Trevecca. They have also a foreign missionary society, with missions in Brittany, among their congeners of the Celtic race, and in Bengal. In recent years this church has made great progress. In 1850 the number of members was 58,678, in 1870 it was 92,735, and in 1880 the returns showed 1174 churches, 118,979 communicants, 185,635 Sunday scholars. The number of ministers is not officially given, but is estimated at 600. The North and South Wales associations are now also known as synods. 3 (J. H. RI.) See W. Williams, Welsh Calvinistic Methodism, a Historical Sketch; The Life and Times of Novell Harris ; Tyennan, Life of the Rei: George Whitefield; The Diary of the Calvinistic Methodists, 188-2.
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