Church, that of the Hidden Seed, and that of the Ancient Church, to the ordination of Matthias of Kunwald in the year 1467.1

4. EARLIER AND LATER MORAVIAN EPISCOPAL FUNCTIONS. The Moravian episcopate, during the period of the Ancient Church, and more especially during Zinzendorf's time, was a strong administrative office. Since then its only peculiar function seems to have been that of ordaining to the ministry. Bishops, however, in virtue of their office, have special privileges of membership in the governing bodies.*

The home territory of the Church is divided at the present time into four Provinces-namely, the Continental Province, the British Province, the American Province, North, and the American Province, South.

There is a General Synod, which meets normally every ten years. Other governing bodies are the Provincial Synod, the District Synod, and a Mission Board to which is committed the supreme administration for missions among the heathen. The executive officers of the General Synod are the Unity's Elders' Conference; and of the Provincial Synod, the Provincial Elders' Conference. Bishops of Mission Provinces are elected by the General Synod; of the Home Provinces, by the Provincial Synods.

The ministry exists in the three orders of Bishops, Elders, and Deacons. The Deacons are authorized to administer both the sacraments; and they are promoted to the presbyterate when appointed to take charge of a congregation or of some particular department of church work. Brethren in

"The claim of the Unitas Fratrum to a valid episcopacy is important as a historic and not as an essential question. It is not based upon the idea that episcopal ordination is alone legitimate. The Church still occupies the catholic standpoint of the fathers, upholding fellowship with evangelical Christians of every name; the prayer which was fervently uttered, four and a quarter centuries ago, amidst the mountains or Reicheneau and in the hamlet of Lhota, is still repeated: 'Unite all the children of God in one spirit.'" (De Schweinitz, "History of the Unitas Fratrum," p. 152.)

"Their [the Moravian bishops'] office carries with it no ruling power in the Church. Their special function is ordination of ministers. Their office, moreover, is defined to be in a peculiar sense that of intercessors in the Church of God.' . . It [the Moravian polity] has allowed the Church to enjoy the advantages of a conferential form of government, giving marked preference to the Headship of Jesus Christ over the Church in all its proceedings; it has enabled it to recognize the validity of Presbyterian ordination." (Prof. W. N. Schwarze, "The Moravian Church and the Proposals of the Lambeth Conference," in the Church Quarterly Review (London), October, 1909.)

trusted with the direction of finances may also be ordained to their office as Deacons "after the Apostolic example."

In the forms of worship the golden mean between uniformity and spontaneity has been most excellently observed. The ritual is comparatively brief. Much liberty is given for extemporaneous prayer. Prayer meetings and love feasts are held. And this church has the distinction of being the first of all the Christian churches to put a hymn book into the hands of its congregations-its first hymnal, edited by Bishop Luke and composed of both original hymns and translations from the Latin, bearing date of the year 1505.1

'The Moravian Manual.

VI.

THE EPISCOPAL IDEA: SCRIPTURAL, EXPEDIENT -LATER FORMS.

WHEN, in the year 1739, a few persons in the city of London came to a presbyter of the Church of England and fellow of Oxford University for spiritual guidance, the man whose help they sought was not only an earnest Christian teacher but also a singularly gifted organizer. Not inappropriately did he, together with his comrades in the first little brotherhood of which he became the acknowledged leader-though he was not its originator-bear the nickname of Methodist. It was preeminently his gift from God to plan, to systemize, to organize, to rule, to take the lead in the administration of governmental affairs. Said his friend and colaborer, George Whitefield: "I should but weave a Penelope's web, if I formed societies." Not so Wesley: he was no less a former of societies than a preacher of the gospel. If ever a man was given to organizing Christianity, his own and others', it was this man. And his web has not yet been un

woven.

Accordingly, in the case of these humble religious inquirers in London, a result followed of which neither they nor their chosen spiritual guide could have had the slightest prevision. He made an arrangement to meet them regularly at a certain time and place for prayer and counsel; and this was the beginning of the various organizations of the Methodism of to-day.

Nor does there seem to be any good reason to believe that these Christian organizations, with their millions of members and their world-wide work, would ever have come into existence but for the life of this one man. Had the overlooked six-yearold boy perished in the flames of the Epworth rectory in 1709, there might well have been an Evangelical Revival of the eighteenth century, but that form of Christianity known as Methodism would not have been.

It is true that, under the directive and enabling hand of God, the progress of the world is chiefly through the spirit of an age. The advance is made through ideas, convictions, aspirations, and endeavors that are somehow shared by many men in many circumstances and positions. It is a slow, evolutionary though at the same time personal process. The creative forces come into ascendency through insensible increments from numberless sources and periods of time. The individuals in whom they appear most conspicuously are not so much their originators as their products and representatives. Therefore it is not difficult to imagine, for example, that Christianity would have become the religion of the Roman empire under some later emperor, if Constantine had not espoused its cause; that there would have been an evangelical reformation, if Martin Luther had never lived; that America would have been discovered, if Columbus had suffered shipwreck on his first voyage; that the American Colonies would have won their independence, if George Washington had fallen in the battle of the Monongahela; that the printing press and the telephone would have been invented, if Gutenberg's and both Bell's and Edison's experiments had proved failures. These men were indeed opulent and original forces in human affairs; but there are men who were more distinctly personal in their achievements-men without whom, so far as we can judge, the great movements for which their names stand would never have taken place. Such a man in the history of religion was Mahomet; such a one in political history was Charlemagne; and such a one in modern Christian organization was John Wesley.

I. ORIGIN OF INSTITUTES OF METHODISM.

Through the labors of Wesley and Whitefield, the itinerancy as a method of an evangelistic ministry received an unprecedented development.' For Methodism, we have to remember, was

'One hardly needs to be really new thing at this time.

reminded that an itinerant ministry was no Sundry more or less significant examples of it may be noted; such as, in the first years of Christianity, that of the

aggressive, and the itinerancy is distinctively a policy of aggression. English Christianity in the eighteenth century was on the defensive; and Wesley's plan of defense—so far as he had any-was that of a well-planned and untiring attack. Great was the success of it. Converts were won and societies gathered throughout the land. In the fellowship of these societies preaching gifts appeared: impulse of utterance took the form of exhortation and the pungent application of the gospel-in such men as John Nelson and various others. Wesley, after some hesitation, getting the better of early prejudices and rigid churchmanship, gave his sanction to the lay preachers and undertook the direction of their labors. Like him, they must be itinerants, going to and fro from congregation to congregation, from neighborhood to neighborhood, from circuit to circuit.

But after conquest comes culture. It has been said: "The sword may conquer lands, but it is the plow that retains them." In the metaphor of the apostle Paul, the Christian people are "God's tilled field." The evangelist, wielding the word of God as a sword, may win them; but it is only through continuous and careful spiritual husbandry that they can be held and made rich in "fruit unto holiness." How, then, could such a result as this be reached under the Wesleyan system of evangelism? Partly through what pastoral preaching and spiritual care the traveling evangelist was able to give; but chiefly through the development of a new class of caretakers. Men originally appointed in the local societies to collect the weekly dues were also made soon afterwards spiritual overseers. They became the real pastors of the people-each with a very little flock which he could watch over and care for individually.

Was it well that plain, unschooled men should be thus intrust

Apostles and their fellow-preachers, and of the "apostles," "prophets," and "teachers" of the sub-apostolic age; in the Middle Ages, that of the AngloSaxon monks who were sent out by the bishop from the monasteries in which they had their training and their home (Southey, "Life of Wesley." I. 262), and the Dominican and Franciscan brothers; in later times, Wyclif's "poor priests."

11 Cor. iii. 9, margin.