Primitive
Methodists.

Annual Conference, and so to have a voice in the government of the Society and in the appropriation of its funds; they claimed also on behalf of the general body the right to vote in the reception and expulsion of members, in the choice of local officers, and in the calling out of candidates for the ministry.

A much more important community arising out of secession was that of the Primitive Methodists, which took its rise in 1807. Two earnest-minded men in Staffordshire, Hugh Bourne and William Clowes, joined the Methodists, and caught the spirit of revival. They had read of American Camp Meetings, and resolved to hold a similar gathering at Cop Mow, or Congleton Edge, an elevation of millstone grit dividing Staffordshire from Cheshire. The scene was memorable from the excitement produced other meetings followed, and the excitement spread. Methodist preachers disapproved of the proceedings, and Conference passed a minute to the effect that even supposing such scenes were allowed in America, in its judgment they were highly improper in England, likely to be productive of considerable mischief, and were to be discountenanced. Hugh Bourne took no notice of the inhibition thus pronounced, but went on holding camp meetings as before; consequently, in the following June he was expelled from the Society for violating Methodist law. Undeterred by this excommunication, Bourne and Clowes instituted a society of ten members, and met in class in 1808. In 1811, when their membership did not number more than 200, they built a chapel and determined to call themselves Primitive Methodists. With admirable self-devotion they went to work among the poorest and most degraded of the people in town and village. They had not a college-bred man among them; their preachers endured the sorest privations without a murmur; the world despised them, and as they heard them preach and sing called them Ranters: still they grew, sweeping over England and penetrating everywhere. Like the preaching friars of the Middle Ages, wherever they found an opening they set up a service, and anything was good enough for a pulpit-a wagon or a cart, a chair or a heap of stones. Driven from one place they escaped to another, singing as they went. The persecution they endured was disgraceful. The rabble knocked down the preachers and threatened with oaths to take their lives. This

persecution, however, only furthered the movement: congregations were gathered; class-meetings were held in which many who had lived abandoned lives told with tears how God had lifted them out of the horrible pit and the miry clay; and men who used to fight together sat down at the love-feasts of the Society, and one after another told the story of a lifetime. It was a memorable movement. The adherents were nearly all working people-fisher-folk, persons employed in mills, collieries, and mines, or as labourers on the land-and the Society grew in a wonderful way. The ten members of 1808 have grown to 200,000; they have 4,000 chapels and 16,000 local preachers, and the good accomplished among the poorest and the lowliest, among those to whom the consolations of religion are most welcome, is simply incalculable.

Society of

Other less numerous communities, such as the Society of The Friends, the Moravians, the Irvingites, the Plymouth Brethren, Friends. and the adherents of the New Jerusalem or Swedenborgian Church, can only be briefly touched upon in the space at our disposal. The Society of Friends has in the course of the period now under review steadily declined in numbers, and was further weakened by the Hicksite controversy, which began in America in 1825, and in 1829 was creating anxiety among the Quakers on this side of the Atlantic. Still, in the manifestation of all the social virtues, and in the advance of all philanthropic movements, they have exerted an influence out of all proportion to their numbers as a denomination. Honoured names have been among them-William Forster, the Gurneys of Earlham, Thomas Clarkson, the Sturges, Benjamin Seebohm, John Dalton and William Allen, Joseph Lancaster and Joseph Fox; these and many more have stood firmly for justice and righteousness, for the advancement of science and freedom, and for the promotion of education and Christian philanthropy.

Moravians.

The Moravians, or, as they describe themselves, the Unitas The Fratrum, the United Brethren, trace back for centuries to John Huss and the Bohemian Reformation; but were as a denomination first established in this country by Count Zinzendorf in 1732. In 1800 they had settlements in Bedford, Bristol, Dukinfield, Bath, and Devonport, these settlements being really small colonies, " the Brethren" living together in village life, with schools and industrial institutions, under the govern

ment of their own Church. Their ecclesiastical polity is somewhat peculiar; for while they have bishops, their government may be described as Presbyterian rather than Episcopal, inasmuch as Synods, provincial and general, are the ruling powers, the provincial synod directing provincial affairs and legislating in detail according to principles laid down by a General Synod. While their numbers have been small, and their churches not more than forty in this country, it is their great honour to have been the pioneers in missionary enterprise in Greenland, Labrador, the West Indies, South Africa, and among the aborigines of Australia. At the beginning of the century, out of 170 ministers 100 were missionaries, and, taking their whole community, one in every sixty members is a missionary as compared with one in 5,000 in the other Protestant Churches generally. They had also missions to the lepers before Père Damien was born, for in 1818 the Brethren undertook a settlement for these unfortunate sufferers in the African valley of Hemel en Aarde. They are not an increasing community; their old congregations and their old settlements continue to exist, but make but little progress.

The Catholic Apostolic Church, as the Irvingites designate their own community, took its rise out of the ministry of Edward Irving, originally of the Scottish Presbyterian Church. Described by De Quincey as by many degrees the greatest orator of his time, and by Carlyle as "the freest, brotherliest, bravest human soul mine ever came in contact with," he came to the conviction that the phenomena connected with the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost might, if men had faith, be repeated in our own time, and the miraculous gifts of the primitive Church renewed. A new church, necessitated by his great popularity, had been built for him and opened by Dr. Chalmers in 1829, and in 1831 strange scenes were witnessed and supernatural voices supposed to be heard. In 1833 he was excommunicated by the Presbyterian Church, of which he was a minister, and on his return to London he officiated as an angel in the congregation of the Catholic Apostolic Church. This Church, which was the outcome of Irving's peculiar views, laid great stress on the Ecumenical Creeds of Christendom, and held to the belief in our Lord's Second Coming before the Millennium. It was mainly distinguished by its fourfold ministry of apostle, prophet, evan

CONVENTION OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, BY BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON. (National Portrait Gallery.)

The

Plymouth
Brethren.

gelist, and pastor, the apostle taking precedence of the rest, claiming to confer the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands, to communicate to the Church mysteries revealed to himself, and to decide matters of discipline and order. There were also deacons to manage temporal affairs, while the payment of tithes or tenths of property was the source of church revenue. The system grew to be as churchly in its way as the churches of the East and West, and as æsthetic in its ritual. Seven congrega

At

tions were commenced in London made up of gathered converts, one of these taking high rank in later years within the walls of the ornate cathedral built in Gordon Square. The most distinguished of their adherents was Henry Drummond, M.P., a man of bold individuality, having the courage of his convictions. his seat of Albury Park, which was a gathering place for students of prophecy, he built in his grounds a place of worship for the new denomination, the decorations of which were extremely rich, and in which the chair of the angel, or bishop, occupied by Lord Sidmouth, stood on the north side of the chancel.

Between the years 1820 and 1830 a new form of religious conviction and profession rose against the formalism and ecclesiasticism of the time, which came to be known as Brethrenism, and from an early place of meeting, Plymouth Brethrenism. Mr. Groves, a young man of ardent piety preparing for the Episcopal ministry at Trinity College, Dublin, came to have doubts as to the course he was taking, and in consequence gave up the study of general literature, sacrificed his property, and cast himself on Providence. He and some others of like mind came to the conclusion that all existing ecclesiastical systems were wrong, that Christendom was in confusion, and that the day of the Lord was at hand. They also held that believers in Christ should frequently meet together to break bread inde