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 Methodist Book Concern 
 
 DEDICATION 
 
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 ublishing $ Mission Building 
 
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 y CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN 
 
 DEDICATION OF THE NEW 
 
 PUBLISHING AND MISSION BUILDING 
 
 METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 HUNT & EATON 
 
 150 FIFTH AVENUB 
 
 1890
 
 S. 
 
 PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 THE Centennial of the Methodist Book Concern having been 
 celebrated with appropriate exercises in connection with the 
 formal opening of the new Publishing and Mission Building, 
 February 11 and 13, 1890, it seems desirable to put in perma- 
 nent form a brief historical record of the various steps taken in 
 the new building enterprise, together with the addresses made 
 at the Dedication Services and at the Mass-meeting following 
 those services. We therefore issue this little volume to be 
 placed in the archives of the Book Concern and Missionary 
 Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and presented to 
 Methodist Historical Societies and Educational Institutions. 
 
 HUNT & EATON. 
 NEW YORK, Feb. 20, 1890.
 
 CENTENNIAL 
 
 OF THE 
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 
 
 I 
 AND 
 
 DEDICATION 
 
 OF THE 
 
 NEW PUBLISHING AND MISSION BUILDING. 
 
 Brief History of the New Building Enterprise. 
 
 AT a meeting of the Book Committee held in February, 
 1887, the Book Agents at New York asked authority to sell 
 the two properties then owned and to purchase a site and erect 
 thereon an edifice adapted to the demands of a Publishing 
 House and the wants of the Missionary Society. The Book 
 Committee unanimously approved the proposition, as did also 
 the Board of Managers of the Missionary Society shortly there- 
 after. A Commission was appointed to carry out the measures 
 proposed, consisting of W. II. Olin, D.D., of the Wyoming 
 ( 'onference ; Homer Eaton, D.D., of the Troy Conference ; T. N. 
 Boyle, D.D., of the Pittsburg Conference ; C. J. Clark, D.D., of 
 the Maine Conference ; Clem Studebaker, of Indiana, and Hie 
 I !< M ,k Agents and Local Committee at New York. Subsequently 
 (r. S. rhadboiirne, D.D., of the New England Conference. 
 L. C. <^neal, D.D., of the Central New York Conference, and 
 lion. P. C. Lounsbury, of New York, were appointed in place 
 of Drs. Olin, Clark, and Boyle, who had retired from the Book
 
 6 
 
 Committee. A Building Committee was also appointed, con- 
 sisting of the Book Agents and Local Committee, represent- 
 ing the Book Concern at New York, and J. M. Reid, D.D., 
 M. D'C. Crawford, D.D., and J. S. McLean, Esq., of New York, 
 representing the Missionary Society. Mr. J. M. Phillips was 
 made Chairman, and Dr. Reid Secretary, of the Building Com- 
 mittee. After the death of Mr. Phillips, Dr. Homer Eaton, 
 who had been elected Book Agent, became ex officio a member 
 and Mr. William Hoyt was appointed Chairman of the 
 Building Committee. 
 
 The new site on Fifth Avenue was purchased Oct. 31, 1887, 
 and during the General Conference in 1888, on May 23, the 
 corner-stone of the new structure was laid by Bishop Bowman, 
 the senior Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church. A very 
 large audience was present, including the Bishops, the members 
 of the General Conference, the Mayor of the city of 'New York, 
 and many other distinguished persons. Mr. J. M. Phillips, 
 Chairman of the Building Committee, presided, and addresses 
 were made by Colonel E. F. Ritter, of Indianapolis, Bishop Foss, 
 and General Clinton B. Fisk. A brief historic record of the 
 Book Concern, including a catalogue of its publications, was 
 deposited in the corner-stone. 
 
 Later the lot on Twentieth Street, adjacent to the new 
 structure, then in process of erection, was purchased for the 
 use of the Book Concern, and the building thereon will be re- 
 tained, the two upper stories to be used by the engraving depart- 
 ment and the two lower stories as a residence for the engineer. 
 
 The new edifice, though not fully completed at the time, was 
 occupied Nov. 1, 1889, by the various departments connected 
 with the Book Concern and Missionary Society, except the 
 manufacturing and printing departments, which were removed 
 thither in January, 1890.
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 
 
 The main building is 10-i feet 3|- inches on Fifth Avenue 
 and 170 feet on Twentieth Street, and, including the basement, 
 is 130 feet high, embracing, with the basement, nine stories. 
 The first three are of granite, the fourth, fifth, sixth, and 
 seventh are of Baltimore brick, and the eighth and ninth are 
 >f granite and brick. The whole structure is built of the best 
 material throughout and is fire-proof. 
 
 The Missionary Society owns one third of this new property, 
 and has been able to pay for it without using any of the con- 
 tributions made to the Society for its general and current work. 
 The sale of the old property at 805 Broadway and 200 Mul- 
 berry Street enabled the Agents to complete their two thirds 
 >f the new building without leaving any debt upon it.
 
 CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 THE DEDICATION OF THE PUBLISHING AND MISSION BUILDING, 
 
 11, 1800. 
 
 ALL day all through the building workmen and employes 
 were busy putting things to rights and giving the last touches 
 here and there. The preparation ended only after the spacious 
 chapel began to fill for the services at 7:30 P. M. It is a 
 charming room, two stories in height, with a gallery across the 
 end; tastefully carpeted, seated with upholstered opera-chairs. 
 The softly-tinted walls were decorated with fine portraits of 
 Wesley, Asbury, Hedding, Ezekiel Cooper, Durbin, Curry, 
 Wiley, and nearly a score more of the heroic dead. The gallerv- 
 f rout was festooned with the national colors, and a splendid flag, 
 which the day after floated above the building, a present from 
 Mrs. Kate Yan Dusen, graced the wall behind the platform. 
 
 William Hoyt, Esq., chairman of the Building Committee, 
 was introduced by General Fisk as president of the evening. 
 After singing, " Hasten, Lord, the glorious time," Professor W. 
 F. Whitlock, D.D., chairman of the Western Section of the 
 Book Committee, addressed the throne of grace. 
 
 Prayer by Rev. Dr. Whitlock. 
 
 O Father, amid all the many gracious blessings that thoii hast 
 bestowed upon us we come to-night especially to thank thee 
 for thy Church the Church that thou didst give the world 
 in the morning of time, in the infancy of the race ; that 
 thou hast preserved through the days of Abraham and Isaac 
 and Jacob and David and Daniel, through all the generations 
 and centuries that have come and gone, unto our day. We bless 
 thee, our heavenly Father, for all the institutions that have
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 
 
 grown up within thy Church and have served to elevate our 
 race and to bring glory and honor to thy great name. And we 
 come in this evening hour especially to thank thee for the in- 
 terest represented in this great structure arid upon this occasion. 
 We thank thee that many long years ago thou didst put it into 
 the thought and purpose of the fathers to found this organiza- 
 tion ; and we bless thee that they sought not only the salvation 
 of the people whom they immediately served, but the salvation 
 of all men ; and we bless thee that they sought not only the con- 
 version of the world, but the instruction of the mind, knowing 
 that all its powers might be employed in the great work that 
 thou hast raised up to thy Church. And we bless thee for that 
 faith and that persistence manifested by the fathers in the stand- 
 ing to this age of these institutions, and in the meeting all these 
 discouragements and disasters. We bless thee for the great 
 growth of these organizations, for the great service they have 
 rendered the Church ; we bless thee that in these organizations 
 very much of the best thought and feeling, of the most positive 
 and strong convictions, have been voiced and have gone out 
 into the households and hearts of thy people. And we bless 
 thee that, when thy Church at home has been made acquainted 
 with the conditions of the nations that have been sitting in 
 darkness, they have undertaken the great business of evangeliz- 
 ing these nations. 
 
 We bless thee that thou hast heard the prayers of thy people 
 and brought prosperity and great power to these organizations. 
 We thank thee, Father, for the work that they are now accom- 
 plishing ; that in tins center of thought and Christian activity 
 there are going out influences and agencies that are blessing 
 millions of homes. We thank thee that they are blessing not 
 only the Church at home, but the Church abroad. We thank 
 thee that here tliv Church finds defense and instruction and
 
 Id CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 encouragement. We thank thee that here is interpreted thy 
 word, and that these interpretations are carried to very many 
 of those who are teaching and studying thy truth. For all 
 these things we praise thy name. 
 
 Wi> bless thee, our heavenly Father, that thou didst put it 
 into the hearts of those in more immediate authority to select 
 this site and to build this structure ; that thou hast been, as 
 we believe, at the head of this enterprise from its beginning 
 until this evening hour ; that thou wast here when the founda- 
 tion-stones were laid ; and that thou art here when the cap-stone 
 is brought to its place with rejoicing. Now, bless this organi- 
 zation, these great influences. Bless those who are now in 
 charge ; may thy special blessing be with these Agents, these 
 Secretaries, these Boards of Control, these Committees, so that 
 in the great purposes they may undertake there may be found 
 the progressive thought and all the persistence that shall lead 
 thy Church out into still greater enterprises and make it a 
 great instrumentality in thy hands to lead the nations from 
 darkness into light; and, O Lord, we earnestly beseech that 
 from this place evermore in the future there may go out that 
 pure and inspiring and spiritualized thought that shall serve 
 to instruct and build up thy Church every-where. Bless the 
 Church here represented in all its great enterprises and all its 
 interests. 
 
 We thank thee for the prosperity in the years that are gone, 
 for its present success and power in the earth, and we pray that 
 its power may be increasingly prospered by thee, and that in 
 the immediate future we may realize that thou art coming in 
 wondrous power into the Church and blessing it in all its 
 agencies. Bring us into the closest and liveliest sympathy with 
 thy will ; and may we individually so live that when we come 
 to the hour of death we may then know because thy grace has
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 11 
 
 been imparted to us, because we have been privileged to be led 
 by thy Spirit, that therefore we have no foe, but have f ought a 
 good fight and have laid up treasure in heaven ; and unto thee 
 we give all the praise, world without end. Amen. 
 
 Homer Eaton, D.D., led in the responsive reading of the 
 122d Psalm. Following this General Fisk made a brief ver- 
 bal report for the Building Committee. The grounds cost 
 $450,000, the building $550,000, and the total amount is pro- 
 vided for. In excavating for the foundation the bed of an old 
 river was struck, entailing an extra cost of $17,000 to go down 
 to bed-rock. He referred feelingly to the committee that 
 bought on Broadway and Eleventh Street twenty years ago, 
 only two of whom Judge Fancher and George I. Seney are 
 now living, and to John M. Phillips, who was until his death 
 chairman of this committee. 
 
 Bishop E. G. Andrews, LL.D., was the first speaker on the 
 programme for the evening. 
 
 Address by Bishop Andrews. 
 
 Mu. CHAIRMAN, I am sure that the Church will receive from 
 the Building Committee this structure with profound satisfac- 
 tion and great thankfulness. We are reminded of that great 
 architect who was buried beneath the pavement of the mag- 
 nificent temple which he had erected, and over whose grave 
 were put the words, " If you seek his monument, look around." 
 So think we, sir, of this Building Committee and of their great 
 work. You will pardon me though I say this in your presence, 
 and in the presence of these other brethren who with you have 
 for these two years past wrought so faithfully to the end now 
 reached. Neither you nor they have given to the Church this 
 service in order to secure its grateful recognition. But we who 
 have been witnesses of the constant and anxious labors you have
 
 12 CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 undergone, of the burden thus assumed and patiently borne 
 by men already overburdened, must be permitted to acknowl- 
 edge with sincere and profound thankfulness the debt which the 
 Church owes to you for the work thus achieved. We rejoice 
 in the unbroben harmony which has ruled, as we are informed, 
 in your councils ; and we congratulate you that now at length 
 the Building Committee, having nobly accomplished its aim, 
 may be dissolved. 
 
 Sir, we are all gratified with the result. We find no room 
 for criticism. We take note of the convenient and conspicuous 
 location of this edifice ; of its massiveness, stateliness, and the chas- 
 tened beauty of its exterior ; of its interior, so spacious, cheerful, 
 convenient, and perfectly supplied with all modern appliances for 
 comfort and the easy transaction of business ; of this central hall, 
 the Board-room, so admirably proportioned, so finely finished, so 
 well adapted to the great missionary and ecclesiastical uses for 
 which it is set apart ; and of the fact that, large as are our pres- 
 ent publishing and missionary transactions, there is ample pro- 
 vision for their future growth in the rooms of the building now 
 leased for other purposes. And with great satisfaction also do 
 we learn from the report of the Building Committee that the 
 great cost of this noble edifice is provided for by the sale of 
 the properties on Broadway and Mulberry Street, and by other 
 funds already accumulated. 
 
 This evening, sir, the whole Church, which is here represented, 
 accepts from the Book Committee and from the Missionary 
 Board, through the Building Committee appointed by them, 
 this fruit of a hundred years of our church life, and consecrates 
 it to the Lord of the Church for yet larger and nobler results. 
 With thanks to all who have wrought in this present enterprise, 
 with grateful remembrance of the honored and beloved men 
 who in past years wrought w r ell upon the foundations and walls
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 13 
 
 of our large publishing and missionary organizations, but who 
 have now gone to " the majority," above all, with gratitude to 
 Almighty God, who has so signally prospered the designs of his 
 people, and with high purpose of a better and more effective 
 service, the Methodist Church now enters fully upon the use of 
 this noble structure. 
 
 Would that there were associated with us on this happy evening 
 xniie whom the occasion naturally calls to our remembrance! 
 Perhaps the wish is unnecessary. Perhaps, sir, in the mansions 
 where they now dwell they share our joy and also remember 
 with thankfulness the part they were permitted to take in the 
 long preparation for this hour. Two of them, the calm and 
 judicious Phillips, and the princely J. B. Cornell, both mem- 
 bers of the Building Committee, but falling before its work was 
 complete, have already been named. And we tenderly recall 
 others connected with the purchase of the Broadway property, 
 as Durbin, McClintock, .11 arris, Carlton, Curry, Oliver Hoyt, 
 and W. "W. Cornell. And yet others of that and of an earlier 
 generation rise before us whose life-history was intimately con- 
 nected with the beginning of our publishing and missionary 
 work ; but time does not permit special reference to them. Their 
 record is on high. 
 
 Naturally to-night we take happy notice of the fact that great 
 progress has been made during the century which now closes in 
 the history of the Book Concern and during the seventy years 
 of our Missionary Society organization. 
 
 The enterprise of establishing a publishing house required 
 in the then weak and struggling Methodist Church no ordinary 
 faith and courage. No wonder that they called it a Book Con- 
 rt'rn. Possibly some have not seen the appropriateness of this 
 title. But, sir, you are a business man, and I beg to submit this 
 proposition to you: Given a new and wholly untried business,
 
 CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 given a total borrowed capital of $600, given the expenditure of 
 the entire capital upon the printing and binding of books by sun- 
 dry job-offices in Philadelphia ; given the distribution, on credit, 
 of all these books in the saddle-bags of itinerants from Massachu- 
 setts to Georgia; given a new enterprise thus conditioned, and 
 could any one devise a better name for it than Book Concern f 
 They must have been under great concern of mind in those 
 days, and especially when, after ten years, John Dickins certified 
 that the indebtedness had risen to $4,500, the assets being still 
 altogether in the good faith and ability of the two hundred or 
 more scantily-paid traveling preachers. Book Concern, indeed ! 
 We do not have that sort of Concern to-day. Trusting to the 
 combined wisdom of Book Agents, of local committees, of the 
 Book Committee and of the Missionary Board, all entering on 
 the use and sustentation of this structure, with large accumulated 
 capital and unquestioned credit, we are under no apprehension 
 of financial embarrassment. John Dickins occupied with his 
 little Book Concern four different homes during the ten years 
 of its stay in Philadelphia. The Concern has now occupied ten 
 places of business in New York. But even as our itinerancy 
 is getting a little extended, so it may be hoped that this new 
 structure altogether suitable in dimensions, in solidity, in no- 
 bility of character, and in adaptation to the work for which it 
 is designed, will be the home of our publising and missionary 
 enterprises for at least a hundred j'ears to come. 
 
 No, sir, we have no concern about the stability of this Book 
 Concern. Bnt there are some things about which we are con- 
 cerned. Not about dividends to Conference claimants, sir, for 
 we doubt whether in the long run it will be found that these 
 are a reliable substitute for, or even an aid to, due appeal to the 
 consciences and hearts of our people in behalf of superannuate 
 and needy preachers. We much prefer that the results of our
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 15 
 
 great publishing work shall be turned back again into the chan- 
 nels from which they came, and thus produce larger and better 
 results. We are concerned that the profits of this great estab- 
 lishment shall provide Methodism with a literature the very best 
 that Methodism with money can furnish. We are concerned 
 that our Sunday-school literature shall be, not feebly-good, but 
 strong, surpassing any thing of the kind which the world now 
 knows instructive, attractive, inspiring, and ennobling to our 
 youth. We are concerned that our periodical literature shall 
 be delivered from the localisms and personalisms and general 
 narrowness which, out of the conditions and relations of our 
 church papers have heretofore seemed almost inevitable. These 
 are some of our concerns. May we not hope that these also, 
 like the former financial concern, may soon be allayed ? And 
 then if we can drop, even now as we enter this new edifice, the 
 old and unattractive title, and substitute for it the simple title 
 Book House, or, if any prefer, Publishing House, this also 
 would not a little increase with some of us the pleasure with 
 which we hail this hour. 
 
 I have spoken only of the Book House ; let me now recall the 
 fact that our Missionary Society began its work in like narrow 
 quarters. Dr. Reid, in his admirable history of our Society, 
 gives all the statements needed on this point ; tells of the little 
 band of heroic and hopeful men who formed the Missionary 
 Society in 1819, tells of the opposition which they encountered 
 within the Church and of the discouragement of some who 
 withdrew, one after another, from the management ; tells us also 
 ho\v r with a sublime faith such an one as Joshua Soule said with 
 prophetic insight : "The time will come when every man who 
 assisted in the organization of this Society, and persevered in 
 the undertaking^ will consider it one of the most honorable 
 periods of his life." So said a wise man, and his proplu-tic
 
 16 CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 words have been fulfilled. We rejoice this evening as we 
 gather here that from the first annual collections of the Society, 
 amounting in all to $823 04, the Church has so nearly reached 
 the $1,200,000 which the General Committee was able last fall 
 to distribute. So thank we God and take courage. 
 
 The past has been spoken of. This building is a record, but 
 it is also a prophecy. Its immovable foundations, its massive 
 walls have in them, we firmly trust, the symbolism of a Church 
 destined to endure through tempest and change to bless far dis- 
 tant generations. Its ample spaces, much of them now occu- 
 pied under lease by other parties for other business, await 
 resumption for our own purposes, as the enlarging Church shall 
 require. There is here no contentment with past achievements. 
 Such contentment would be the precursor of retreat and decay. 
 On the contrary, this structure foretells not only a stable Church, 
 but a Church which, rising more and more to a comprehension 
 of the times and of God's great purpose in them, shall meet 
 with an increasing intelligence and with fuller missionary con- 
 secration the call of a needy world. 
 
 There will gather here many years hence, as we devoutly 
 pray, Christian men and women, our successors in Methodism, 
 who will be able to rejoice over a Christian literature, furnished 
 here in part, so pure, so virile, so attractive, so broad, that it 
 shall have in some large degree abated and destroyed the doubt- 
 ful and pernicious literature that in books and periodicals now 
 floods the land ; and they will also, we firmly trust, in that 
 day rejoice over missionary operations and successes compared 
 to which all that we now share in will seem scanty and insig- 
 nificant. 
 
 This building, so please it God, will be the scene of Christian 
 labor and the center of Christian influences that shall not sim- 
 ply touch the margin of distant heathen lands, but penetrate
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 17 
 
 them throughout with the transforming and saving power of 
 the Gospel. 
 
 May w r e and our successors have the wisdom, courage, and 
 faith requisite for such high results. 
 
 Address by Earl Cranston, D.D. 
 
 Three curiously-related facts may be predicated of this 
 service: It is without precedent in Methodism, yet its prelim- 
 inaries were arranged more than one hundred years ago, and it 
 is distinctively Wesleyan in type. If our great Jove, from 
 whose brain sprang this modern Minerva the patroness of 
 learning and armor-bearer to the heroes of our later Iliad- 
 could by any earthly conclave be enticed from celestial delights, 
 surely near this spot would rise his new Olympus. 
 
 And who would tremble when he thundered? First, those 
 nearest the summit. Would not the man who made bishops 
 for American Methodism commune with these successors of 
 Coke and Asbury? And should he find one, w-ho had ever 
 knowingly laid hands on a young minister, who had scorned to 
 sell books and Advocates would there not be a sound terrible 
 indeed to that un-AVesleyan Bishop, but very comforting to 
 the poor editors and agents by him compelled aforetime to 
 crowd a half hour's eloquence into a seven minutes' speech ? 
 And from this solemn moment would not that Bishop and 
 all the Bishops vie with the publishers in echoing the original 
 Jovian proclamation, "Be diligent in selling the books," 
 " Spread the magazine ; it will do good ! " 
 
 Such rumblings as might reach our bold Boston seer who, 
 rivaling the Thunderer himself, laughs at years and antedates 
 his eternal youth by undertaking eleven octavo volumes at three- 
 score and ten would doubtless be serenely toned. That inter- 
 conference recreation would remind Mr. Wesley of himself and 
 2
 
 18 CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 elicit his instant approval, re-enforced by the admonitions, " Fos- 
 ter the literature," " Spread the books ! " 
 
 How that first American Conference must have touched 
 the old leader's heart by its loyalty to his methods! From 
 that early beginning our Methodism directly and distinctly 
 declared, defined, and defended itself through its own organic 
 press, the fathers esteeming its doctrines, experiences, and polity 
 too precious to be intrusted to any medium not its own ; and 
 this hour finds no proposition from any source to abandon or 
 modify the system which has been the guarantee of our doc- 
 trinal integrity and is the only sufficient explanation of our 
 matchless connectionalism. 
 
 They who have the chief responsibility for its welfare are 
 sometimes alarmed by aggressive individual and local enter- 
 prises, just as our devoted secretaries are concerned when 
 unaffiliated movements threaten their respective treasuries 
 and an officer who is not watchful of his trust is not to be 
 trusted as an officer ; yet, if John "Wesley were to inspect his 
 parish at this moment, he would doubtless find the Book Con- 
 cern held in greater esteem than ever before by our people, and 
 discover in the heart of our ministry, as a body, the conviction, 
 positive and unalterable, that no one man, however true, can 
 better adjust the service of the press to the needs of the Church 
 than the Church herself, through her General Conference. Then 
 he would wonder, with us, how a Methodist preacher, having 
 submitted to the Church the most vital and sacred questions 
 growing out of his own call to the holy ministry, could ever 
 assume to decide for the Church matters by her committed only 
 to her highest council. 
 
 He would declare, and we would agree, that while one of our 
 number may advocate new projects he cannot consistently 
 project new Advocates. He would declare, and we agree,
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 10 
 
 that as no man amongst us can upon his vows justify 
 another in using a Methodist pulpit to discredit a cardinal 
 point in Methodist doctrine, so upon his vows no man 
 a-noiigst us can justify another in using Methodist patronage 
 to discredit a cardinal point in Methodist polity ; that onr 
 organic press is a cardinal point in our polity, original and 
 essential ; and that on this spot and in this hour, especially, 
 it were more than undutiful to justify any selfish or ambitious 
 invasion of the publishing functions of the Church. 
 
 But Mr. Wesley was compelled to recognize a law of emer- 
 gencies, and so must we. Some ministers have projected new 
 A (/vacates, and other periodicals, in the spirit of intensest 
 loyalty. In several centers of population and influence on our 
 western frontier there are journals edited by presiding elders 
 or pastors who, without salary, add this labor to their regular 
 duties. This is no sign of revolution or revolt against the 
 official press. Commanding influences crystallize so rapidly 
 under the conditions prevailing in these new centers that prompt 
 and concerted action in the development of church interests 
 becomes imperative. Every lifting and propelling force must 
 be seized upon and our people move promptly to meet oppor- 
 tunities that come once, but never again. In this state of things 
 a local paper appears to enterprising workers an indispensable- 
 adjunct ; but through every venture runs a hope, as loyal to the- 
 Church, as to the new metropolis, that ultimately the sprightly 
 print may become a great connectional paper. Even these un- 
 dertakings, however, are not without their perils, and it is well 
 that they seldom survive the official tenure of their founders, 
 lest local interests should presently gain permanent ascendency 
 over our connectional movements, and the latter thus lose the 
 compactness and momentum which alone have made them 
 resistless.
 
 20 CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 Our great founder would doubtless frankly speak upon another 
 question which is now under discussion in some quarters. If the 
 fathers were right in the policy of placing a profit upon their 
 publications when the " societies " as well as the preachers were 
 poor, they would not call upon us to change that policy now 
 that the Church is comparatively rich and the preachers still 
 poor. 
 
 There is an unsympathetic if not an unregenerate cadence in 
 the cry for a literature at cost. The minister who by patri- 
 mony or matrimony is delivered from fear of want should 
 never echo it. The people who have not paid cost for the 
 Gospel preached to them much less a profit to the itinerant, 
 on his investment of brain, and heart, and education, and life, 
 and home, and family comforts will not grudge for his benefit 
 in after years the profit they allow to an ordinary vender of 
 books and periodicals. 
 
 I admit that their direct obligation to care for their aged and 
 infirm ministers is not to be thus fully discharged, and that profit 
 is not the sole object of the Book Concern. But the people have 
 never by direct means respectably maintained their disabled 
 pastors in retirement; and the "produce of the Book Concern,'' 
 while not the single object, was yet of sufficient moment in 
 the plans of its founders to receive constitutional protection. 
 And at this point it is pertinent to inquire, What right have the 
 executors of a trust to consider for an instant any proposition 
 that implies even remotely the practical alienation of property 
 interests committed to their management ? For a hundred years 
 the preachers and people of our connection have paid out of 
 their poverty reasonable profits on purchases from the Concern, 
 adding steadily to the capital until now it aggregates more than 
 two and three-quarter millions of dollars, all accumulated under 
 the sacred guarantee above referred to : that their deposits
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 21 
 
 should inure to the benefit of needy ministers, their widows 
 and orphans. Let this trust be justly administered. And while 
 we all agree that our literature may well be offered at prices 
 lower than the average charged by secular houses for similar 
 grades, let no one demand in the interest of this well-to-do gen- 
 eration such concessions from the Book Concern as will leave 
 its lawful beneficiaries without at least a modest interest on 
 their capital. We have paid no large dividends as yet not even 
 four per cent. and there is a fearful amount of back in- 
 terest from tlie Concern, as well as back pay from the Church, 
 due to these worthy claimants. Encouraged by the abounding 
 prosperity vouchsafed to the business, from the year of her 
 return to the only lawful use of the '" produce of the Concern " 
 until this hour, may the Church put far away the day when the 
 civil courts shall be more attentive to the prayer of the humblest 
 claimant on this sacred fund than she herself. 
 
 Still communing with the founders of our institutions, let 
 us dutifully accept another word of warning. It is more than 
 a coincidence that, as the links which bind us to our heroic 
 ancestry are broken one by one, the social and religious ties that 
 bind us together are also yielding. The class-meeting was the 
 unit of organization and the school of sympathetic fellowship. 
 It is going from us as the shades of the fathers dissolve into the 
 t urgotten past; and presently the sons who forget the fathers 
 will in like manner be forgotten. Ominous indeed are the 
 facts already confronting us touching the pastoral relation. Its 
 once sacred and scriptural character is being sadly marred by 
 the exactions of convenience, taste, and commercialism attend- 
 ing both its initiation and dissolution. Annual Conferences are 
 -riou.-ly debating the problem of entertainment at hotels. 
 Their recurring sessions are no longer to mean more prayers in 
 -the homes, more life in the Church, more souls at the altars
 
 22 CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 where they gather. Alas ! for these indications that preachers 
 and people are willing to break the blessed intimacy that Christ 
 established between them. If ever the ministry needed, for 
 its own welfare, to be lovingly interested in the people, it is 
 now. If ever our people needed to cultivate affectionate recol- 
 lections of the men who first led them to God, or have at any 
 time ministered to them in holy things, it is now. And here 
 we have an agency admirable and still unimpaired. 
 
 Through the beneficent energies of the Book Concern, 
 founded and maintained by their consecrated efforts, Methodist 
 preachers prolong theii^ministry, and send their benedictions on 
 to the children's children of those they have served. 
 
 Our thoughtful people, on the other hand, find in every book 
 and church periodical a fresh medium of gracious currents 
 between their old-time pastors and themselves, as well as oppor- 
 tunity for deferred payments of gratitude or obligation to those 
 faithful ministers whose poverty in retirement is the heritage 
 of that fidelity in service which won men to God. 
 
 "Would that no middle-man had ever come between the 
 Concern and the people. Unless initiated through the same 
 baptism into a sympathetic rnediatorship, he is a non-conductor 
 of such sentiments as should bind this institution to its friends, 
 and we pay him for putting asunder what God and our fathers 
 joined together. 
 
 The apostolic leadership of a Wesley, the wholesome guar- 
 antees of the Sixth Restrictive Rule, and the unswerving loy- 
 alty of three generations of preachers have, under God, brought 
 us to this scene absolutely unique in history. With increasing 
 admiration for the wisdom that founded our Book Concern I 
 am still for the old rale that protected and strengthened it, and 
 for the rights of the fathers in it, and for such an enlargement 
 of faith and activity through these vastly improved facilities as
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 23 
 
 shall cause a shout of exultant hope on both sides of the swell- 
 ing flood that yet for a little while rolls between our Israel mil- 
 itant and the host triumphant. 
 
 Address by M. D'C. Crawford, D.D. 
 
 MR. CHAIRMAN, A few evenings ago I sat reading Dr. 
 Hunt's " Centennial of the Book Concern," and fell asleep and 
 had a dream. I was in that room [pointing to the office 
 of the Missionary Secretaries], sitting conversing with Chap- 
 lain McCabe. There was a sharp rap at the door, and the 
 chaplain said, " Come in," and in walked a man of small 
 stature, with a broad brimmed hat, a shad-bellied coat, knee- 
 breeches, a very high w r hite choker and a big cane, with 
 which he marked time as he walked in. As soon as the chap- 
 lain saw him, he turned to me, and in an undertone said, " That 
 is John Dickins." He arose and put out his hand and took the 
 visitor's hand and said, " How are you, Brother Dickins ? I 
 am very glad to see you." And he introduced him to me, and 
 I told him how glad I was to see him ; that I had been reading 
 about him and thinking about him. And he said, "Well, I 
 thought I must come and see this new building ; it is making a 
 great noise among us up there." And the chaplain said, 
 " What do you think of it ? " " What do I think of it ? I do 
 not know what to think of it. Never in the loftiest flights of 
 my imagination did I dream that it was possible that the 
 business I founded one hundred years ago should have ex- 
 panded to any thing like this." Just then my door-bell rang, 
 and I woke up to find the vision vanished. I was very sorry, 
 for I wanted to say to John Dickins that, although he lived in a 
 day of small things, what he did had made possible what those 
 who lived after him had done. He built for Ezekiel Cooper, 
 and Ezekiel Cooper for those who came after him, and those
 
 24 CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 again for their successors, and so for one hundred years this 
 institution has been in course of construction. And it is dif- 
 ficult to say who of the builders deserves the most credit or 
 whose work has been of most consequence. There has been 
 rolled up a magnificent inheritance. What Henry George 
 would call the " unearned increment " has come to the Book 
 Agents of this day : Hunt & Eaton and Cranston & Stowe. 
 Other men labored and they have entered into their labors. I 
 do not agree with Mr. George, that we have no right to an 
 unearned increment, and I do not dispute the right of these 
 Agents to enjoy the wonderful opportunity that is open to 
 them, or the privilege of faithfully discharging the wonderful 
 responsibility that comes upon them. I honor the fathers, but 
 the fathers are never honored by doing right over again what 
 they did. If the fathers lived to-day they would not repeat 
 themselves. They worked in their day and did what was ap- 
 propriate to their circumstances ; those who live now, with other 
 surroundings, must do other work. 
 
 And now it seems to me that those who have in charge this 
 great trust, I repeat it, have a wonderful opportunity and 
 a weighty responsibility. I must say I quite agree with Bishop 
 Andrews. I think that we need and may have a better litera- 
 ture. Why, here is this magnificent structure, out of debt, with 
 a large working capital, and what a market : a Methodist 
 population of twelve millions of people ! 
 
 And now, God forbid that I should seem to reflect upon the 
 past at all ; I do not, sir. I say, all honor to those who lived 
 and worked in the past ; but not a man among them had the 
 opportunity of the men that live and work now. No longer 
 embarrassed with debt ; no longer obliged to consider the mere 
 question of money-making who can predict the possibilities 
 of the situation ! And I believe these brethren, sir, are equal
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 25 
 
 to the emergency! My Brother Cranston will forgive me if I 
 differ from him as to the value of " Book Concern Dividends." 
 Conceding fully the claim of the beneficiaries, I doubt the 
 wisdom of meeting it by a tariff on our literature. ^The more 
 fully these needy veterans are thrown for support on the people 
 whom they have served the more generous will be the re- 
 sponses. In this section of the Church I am sure that during 
 the years in which the Book Concern has done least for the 
 cause in question the largest increase has been made in the 
 "collection for necessitous cases." 
 
 But what is the true business of our publishing house ? Is it 
 not to make our literature the best possible, and give it to our 
 whole Methodist population at the lowest market rates? Nay, 
 if possible, undersell the market ! I would then take the profits 
 of the Book Concern and buy more brains to put in our period- 
 icals and in our books. I would make them better and at the 
 same time cheapen them. I am not criticising the men who 
 make our periodicals. They are doing noble work. But there 
 are not enough of them. It takes several men to make a mod- 
 ern metropolitan religious weekly, or a first-class review, or a 
 popular Sunday-school journal. We need more editorial force. 
 So, too, I think there should be a larger outlay for authorship, 
 in order to increase the list of books which will commend them- 
 selves to the literary public and make the imprint of the house 
 a guarantee of excellence. 
 
 Never before in the history of the Church hns there been a 
 'In.iiKr for a satisfactory retail Methodist book-store in this 
 <-ity. Now we have an elegant room, and I trust it will be 
 fitted up and so conducted as to compare favorably with any 
 book-store in the land. Our people desire it and are entitled 
 to it. It is their duty to come here and buy books. So I 
 preach and so I practice. But why not make the attraction
 
 26 CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 irresistible; so that customers will flock here because they are 
 so well served ? 
 
 Mr. Chairman, this is something more than a commercial 
 house ; it is more than a mission house. Here are represented 
 many societies of the Church ; here are offices of agents and 
 editors and secretaries. Here the preachers meet, enough of 
 them to make an Annual Conference, every Monday morning. 
 They are the picked men of several conferences. There are 
 here many things which are representative of the Church. 
 I wish there were more of them. Every Church society in 
 this section of the country ought to have an office in this build- 
 ing. It ought to be a great denominational rendezvous. I had 
 the honor of being a member of the Building Committee. 
 My associates know that I urged, in season and out of season, 
 the arrangement for a grand historical room. I would take 
 the " Library," as it is called, and make it the nucleus of a 
 great Methodist library, into which I would try to bring every 
 book ever published by a Methodist press, and I would invite 
 our missionaries from all over the world to send curiosities. I 
 would invite historical documents and every thing of every kind 
 relating to Methodism ; and O, dear sir that the other speakers 
 should have left it to me to say ! look around here ; my heart 
 is touched as I look at these faces, and then when I think of the 
 many more that ought to be here ! I want room to put 
 one hundred of them the men who have made Methodism 
 famous and who have done honor to our name ! Then we 
 might have a reading-room, where every Methodist newspaper 
 in the world could be found, so that visitors, when they come 
 to this city, will not feel that they have seen New York until 
 they have seen this building. Now, I appreciate the reasons 
 why what I thought desirable could not be granted. Sir, I 
 make no reflection upon the Building Committee ; I presume
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 27 
 
 they were wise and right. But the Book Committee hear this ; 
 and there are men here who will go to the next General Con- 
 ference : I hope they will carry the request there. This is a 
 fire-proof building, and is the first suitable place we have ever had 
 for denominational archives. Whatever is done here will only 
 be a beginning. I look to the time when there will be a great 
 historical building for Methodism in this city. Now, sir, 
 all these words, and all the words I have ever spoken in 
 public or in private of this Book Concern, are not only 
 loyal words, but they are tenderly loyal words. I have 
 never been out of harmony with it. Indeed, there now 
 crowd to my lips reminiscences that fill me with emotion. 
 The first wages I ever earned I earned in the folding-room of 
 the old Book Concern in Crosby Street. I was eleven years 
 old. I was obliged to leave school to go to work. I remember 
 the feelings with which I went that first day to that old building, 
 and I remember the first pay-day. That princely Christian gen- 
 tleman, Beverly "Waugli whose portrait hangs here was senior 
 Book Agent, and he was paymaster. The business was small 
 in those days, and the Agents paid off the hands. I stood in line 
 with other boys, and when my name was called I went up. I 
 signed my name, and he put in my hands a new Mexican silver 
 dollar. I thought it was the brightest I ever saw, and I have 
 no recollection of any amount of money I ever received making 
 me feel so rich as I felt that day. And then, what surprised 
 me, he seemed to know me. I had recently made a profession 
 of religion and joined the Church on probation. He called me 
 by name ; lie laid his hand on my head ; he prayed that the 
 Messing of (4 o<l might corne upon me. I believe it came ; it 
 lias never been withdrawn. And now, as I look back through 
 the years, O what a blessed memory that is ! It seems as though 
 all the mercies of inv life I trace back to it.
 
 CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 During all my public career of nearly fifty years . it lias 
 been my privilege to mingle with the good men who have 
 been in one way or another connected w T ith the Book Concern 
 and Mission Rooms. And when I consider the influence they 
 have exerted upon me, how much of the joy of my life, how 
 much of what I am has arisen from my association with 
 them, I feel that I have reason to thank and praise God that I 
 ever knew this institution and that I have held friendly rela- 
 tions with it. I say these things from my love of it, and my 
 brethren in the ministry will bear me witness every-where that 
 this has been my tone on all occasions. 
 
 And now I do bespeak for this institution, for its publications, 
 for its interests in every way, their sympathy and their prayers, 
 praying with them, that God will make this great institution a 
 blessing to all the world in all the centuries to come ; that this 
 century may be so glorious and so grand, that so much may be 
 done for God and for humanity, that whoever lives to its close 
 may look back and see a work as great as that which we see as 
 we look back upon the past. 
 
 Address by George S. Chadbourne, D.D. 
 
 Ten minutes is a small space of time in which to make an 
 address on such an occasion as this. I shall, however, as re- 
 quested, attempt the difficult task, and if I should transgress 
 the prescribed limits I trust the offense will be condoned on the 
 ground of the largeness of my theme and of the force of habit. 
 
 We come here to rejoice together over the completion of this 
 magnificent building, and to dedicate it to its intended uses. I 
 confess to a gi^at interest and gratification in this structure, but 
 they do not arise so much from a view of it as a successful busi- 
 ness and financial enterprise, though I find much there that 
 ministers to my pleasure. I am glad that I belong to a Church
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 29 
 
 that owns and manages, with such eminent success, the largest 
 denominational publishing and mission house on the continent, 
 if not also in the world. In the past history and in the present 
 enviable condition of this enterprise I see much which gives to 
 me, as a loyal Methodist, sincere and devout gratitude and joy. 
 Still, these are not the things that have foremost place in my 
 thought to-night, or which, in contemplation, afford me the 
 largest satisfaction. This stately pile, with all the appliances for 
 its work with which it is crowded, has a voice for me, and my 
 brief address will endeavor to interpret that voice as it sounds 
 in my ears. It speaks to me of the mission, the function of the 
 true Christian Church, which I conceive to be twofold. It is, 
 first, to evangelize men, to convert them to the Christian faith 
 and doctrine ; and, secondly, to educate, to culture them therein. 
 It is clear that the Lord Christ intended his Church to be an 
 evangelizing force in the world. His great commission to it, 
 issued just before his ascension to his triumphant glory, clothed 
 it with that perpetual authority and duty : " Go ye into all the 
 world, and preach the Gospel to every creature." ]N"ot to lim- 
 ited places and to select circles, but to all the world and to every 
 creature. Teach the Gospel in every place you can reach and to 
 every man who will hear. What is the Church, any part or 
 branch of it, without this evangelizing element ? It is a loco- 
 motive without steam ; it can make no progress. It is a human 
 body without the power of assimilation ; it can have no growth. 
 The true Church must be on the move; it must be aggressive ; 
 it must go to men, and it must assimilate them ; it must build 
 them into itself. I am glad to-night that we can make our con- 
 fident appeal to the history of Methodism in support of its 
 claim that it has this evidence of being a true Christian Church. 
 u The world is my parish," said its founder, and no true son of 
 Wesley lias ever been content with any less field than the world.
 
 30 CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 From its origin Methodism Las been going; it has been on the 
 move to find and preach to men. On this continent it started 
 on horseback, and followed men every-where, East, West, North, 
 and South, as they pushed out in search of home and fortune. 
 
 It was scarcely more than firmly planted here when, impelled 
 by its native spirit of evangelism, it organized its Missionary 
 Society and began its larger work of covering the globe with 
 its operations. And I think I am not assuming too much when 
 I say that no other branch of the Christian Church is doing so 
 much to-day to evangelize the world ; no other is carrying and 
 preaching the Gospel to so many of the millions of the earth as 
 our own branch of it. And I cannot conceal my pleasure at 
 the fact that this part of our work the work of the true Chris- 
 tian Church demands, needs, such facilities for its prosecution 
 as are furnished by this noble building. We have a right to be 
 glad and rejoice as we come here to dedicate it to such an ex- 
 alted and worthy use. To my own thought it will be here as a 
 great fountain of living, healing waters, fed by the innumerable 
 streams of the beneficence of the Church, and sending forth in 
 time innumerable streams to water and refresh and save the 
 world. 
 
 The second function or mission of the Christian Church, as I 
 conceive it, is to educate, to culture men in the Christian faith 
 and doctrine. And here again I do profoundly rejoice that my 
 own Church is second to none. No branch of the Church is 
 doing so much to promote in the world an intelligent, well- 
 grounded, and, therefore, rational religious faith. Methodism 
 has never held to the idea that ignorance is the parent of devo- 
 tion. On the contrary, it has from its origin utterly repudiated 
 that false and mischievous assumption. Its whole history, from 
 its birth in Oxford down to this hour, is the emphatic denial of 
 that charge or insinuation, sometimes heard, that Methodism
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 31 
 
 was rather in sympathy with an uneducated ministry and an 
 uncultured membership. It has been the glory and boast of 
 Methodism that it has been in hearty sympathy with the people 
 with all the people. It has proclaimed its mission to be, to 
 preach the Gospel to the poor as well as to all others who would 
 hear it. But it has never counted ignorance, illiteracy, as a 
 virtue, but has done more than any other religious body to do 
 away with them, and to raise up a membership whose piety 
 should rest on knowledge and intelligence. To-day, in this 
 place, amid the surroundings of this hour, I can again make my 
 confident appeal to its history, and rest the case there. Two 
 men were sent from God, and the name of each was John. 
 Each came for a witness, to bear witness to the truth as to the 
 mission of the Church. The first was John Wesley, the well- 
 equipped collegian, the profound scholar, the indefatigable 
 student, the facile, ever busy writer. We have a right to make 
 our boast that Methodism was born in a university in proud 
 and venerable Oxford born out of the heaven-illuminated soul 
 and the heaven -baptized heart of one of the intellectually 
 largest men of his own or almost any age. Rarely does En- 
 gland send blazing across the firmament of this world brighter, 
 clearer intellect than that of John Wesley. He has justly been 
 the wonder arid the admiratian of the foremost men of his own 
 and of later times. We turn to this first John, our founder ; 
 and while we find him burning with a quenchless zeal to evangel- 
 ize men, to lead them into Christian life and experience, scarcely 
 less was his zeal to have them well-informed as to the great 
 essential truths on which that life and experience were founded. 
 Wesley was an immense publishing house in himself, furnishing 
 out of the masterful resources of his own wonderfully-endowed 
 nature, author, editor, publisher, and distributor. His pen, no 
 less than his life, emitted light upon the pathway of all who be-
 
 32 CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 came his followers. His aim was first to flood the souls of men 
 with the regenerating light of the Holy Spirit, and thus set 
 them in the road heavenward ; and then, that they might walk 
 intelligently, successfully therein, flood that road with the clear 
 electric light of knowledge. And that aim has been steadily 
 kept in view by Methodism ever since ; never has it been lost 
 sight of. This it was that brought forth our second John, he 
 whose name was Dickins. 
 
 Well may we recall and speak of him here to-day ; well may 
 we seek to estimate the debt which Methodism owes to him. 
 Methodism saw its need of books, of a literature with which to 
 culture its followers, to instruct and train them in Christian 
 truth, as interpreted by itself. "Whence should they come ( 
 Methodism was small and poor ; but in this hour of its need 
 came the second John. How has that handful of corn in the 
 top of the mountains that little six hundred dollars loaned to 
 Methodism by John Dickins how has it come to shake like 
 Lebanon, and the fruit thereof to fill the earth ! Behold these 
 stately buildings, these millions of capital, these crowded rooms 
 and shelves, these ceaselessly active presses pouring out their 
 tons of Christian literature, and sending them on apocalyptic 
 wings over the world ! In all this let us behold what God hath 
 wrought. But all this is only familiar history, household words, 
 to world-wide Methodism. Thus, led by the hand of God, 
 Methodism has risen from the small beginnings of John Dickins. 
 and his little room in Philadelphia, up to this grand structure, 
 and these abundant and perfect appointments for this part of 
 its great work. It is surely well for us, in this day of such 
 large things, to remember that of the small things, and to 
 cherish gratefully the memory of the men, sent of God, through 
 whose faith, self-denial, and heroism we have reached this grand 
 estate.
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 33 
 
 But I must stop, for my time has expired. But the theme is 
 a grateful one, and I have it in my brain and heart to say more. 
 Standing here to-night, after this lapse of a hundred years of 
 Methodism as an educating, culturing force in this land, an illu- 
 minator of the pathway of men in Christian truth and life, 
 there comes to me a vision of what may be, of what we may 
 expect will be, at the close of another hundred years. I cannot 
 delay you to portray that vision, nor indeeJ is it necessary that 
 I should do so. For, if what we now behold and celebrate be 
 the fruitage which a century has brought from so small a plant- 
 ing, what may we believe our children shall behold as they come 
 together to celebrate the second centennial of Methodism as an 
 evangelizing and educating force in the world ! If the little one 
 of 1789 has become a thousand in 1889 what will the thousand 
 of 1889 have become in 1989? May those who shall be then 
 alive to behold it be even more loyal and devoted to our Meth- 
 odism than are we, and may that Methodism then be even more 
 mighty as an agency to win men to God and train them for 
 his service. 
 
 At the conclusion of Dr. Chadbourne's address the chairman 
 placed the magnificent property in the hands of Hon. Amos 
 Shinkle, chairman of the Book Committee, and, in the absence 
 of Judge Fancher, of Dr. Sandford Hunt, treasurer of the Mis- 
 sionary Society, who, in turn, presented it to Bishop Andrews 
 for dedication. In doing this Mr. Shinkle said : 
 
 P>ISHOP, On behalf of the Book Committee of the Meth- 
 odist Episcopal Church, the happy duty devolves upon me to 
 liv>ent to you our part of this building to be dedicated to the 
 service of Almighty God, through the publishing interests of 
 the Church, and may God grant that Scriptural holiness may be 
 extended more and more over all lands through the instrumen- 
 tality of the Book Concern !
 
 34 CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 Dr. Hunt said : 
 
 On behalf of the Missionary Society of the Methodist 
 Episcopal Church it gives me great pleasure to present to you 
 that portion of this building owned by the Missionary Society, 
 to be dedicated to the service of God and the spread of Christ's 
 kingdom throughout the earth. 
 
 Receiving the building at their hands the Bishop led the con- 
 gregation in a most comprehensive and devout prayer of dedi- 
 cation. After the doxology the venerable and beloved Dr. 
 William Nast pronounced the benediction and the audience 
 slowly dispersed, with old-time Methodist greetings and admiring 
 loiterings through such portions of the magnificent structure as 
 remained open for inspection.
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 
 
 METROPOLITAN OPERA-HOUSE MEETING, 
 
 THE Metropolitan Opera-house was crowded with enthusi- 
 astic Methodists on the occasion of the mass meeting, Thursday 
 night, February 13. Bishop Andrews presided. Dr. A. E. 
 P. Albert, of New Orleans, read the Scriptures. Chaplain 
 McCabe, Senior Missionary Secretary, led the singing. Dr. 
 John M. Reid offered the following prayer : 
 
 Prayer by J. M. Reid, D.D. 
 
 O Lord God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Israel, God of our 
 fathers, our God, blessed be thy name forever ! Both riches 
 and honor come of thee, and thou reignest over all, and in thine 
 hand it is to make great, and to give strength. All things 
 come of thee, and of thine own have we given thee. We, who 
 in time past were not a people, are now the people of God, a 
 chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a peculiar people, that 
 we should show forth the praises of him who called us out of 
 darkness into his marvelous light. Thou hast quickened us 
 together with Christ, hath raised us up together, and made us 
 to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. O God, we 
 have assembled to-night to be glad in thy name, to render thee 
 thanksgiving and praises for what thou didst for our fathers and 
 for what thou hast done for us. Thou didst give them to see, 
 as with the light of noonday, that it was no part of thy divine 
 purpose that any human being should perish, but rather that 
 all should turn unto thee and live. It was a distinct and burn- 
 ing revelation to them of divine goodness in all its Christly 
 richness, and of saving grace in all its unspeakable freeness and
 
 CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 fullness. Glory be to God ! Thou didst give them also tongues 
 of fire with which to proclaim, the world wide over, " whosoever 
 will, let him come and partake of the waters of life freely." 
 O how we thank thee that thou didst reveal to them, through 
 thy word, that the Spirit of God itself would bear witness to 
 the believing soul that it was born of God, and that we might 
 know our sins forgiven and feel the joys of sonship. Yes, ever 
 blessed God, thou didst put this experience into their hearts, 
 in fact sent forth the Spirit of thy Son into their hearts, crying, 
 Abba, Father ! They sang it, they shouted it, they preached 
 it until now millions in all lands are testifying that they are 
 pardoned and saved, that they have passed from death unto life. 
 We thank thee, O Father, that thou didst lead us at a very 
 early day to put this Gospel on fire upon printed pages, and to 
 send them out as leaves of the tree of life for the healing of the 
 nations. We thank thee for a hundred years of subsequent 
 prosperity. We look around our great building and we cry 
 out with overflowing gratitude, "What, hath God wrought!" 
 Help us, O Lord, to be glad as we ought, and rejoice to-night. 
 O for a baptism of the old fire, that we may shout aloud thy 
 praise ! So unfold, we entreat thee, the history of thy dealings 
 with us to the minds of those who are to address us on this oc- 
 casion that they shall vividly conceive and powerfully express 
 the truth. Let a mighty volume of song so well up from these 
 thousands of hearts that, as in the days of old, all can see 
 
 How happy are they, 
 
 Who the Saviour obey, 
 
 And have laid up their treasure above ! 
 
 Above all we beseech thee, O thou God of our fathers, abide 
 with us, and let it be forever ; continue to impart efficiency and 
 success to the Church in all its departments. Let this great 
 press that we are driving by steam become a yet mightier voice
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 37 
 
 to preach thy word. Keep it on the side of truth, of righteous- 
 ness, of temperance, of freedom, of holiness. Endow it, in all its 
 departments, with the spirit of holy consecration. From all false 
 doctrines, heresies, and schism, from all contempt of thy word 
 and commandments, from all indorsement of ungodly words or 
 deeds, good Lord, deliver us. Continue to lead on this mission- 
 ary host into the darkness still overshadowing our world, till 
 there shall be a band for Jesus on every isle that gems the sea 
 and in every land on which the sun shines. Preserve us as a 
 people pure in doctrine, fervent in spirit, burning in zeal, con- 
 secrated in property, united in love, truly humble in spirit, and 
 simple-minded, wise in all our methods, adding daily to us such 
 as are saved. Keep us from growing proud as we become 
 great, or from becoming self-important as we become intellectual. 
 Send down upon our Bishops to-night, all of them, wherever 
 they are, a fresh anointing that will inspire them anew to lead the 
 hosts of God's elect. Give to all the pastors of the flock the Spirit 
 of the great Shepherd, that each may take those of his own 
 fold into green pastures and to the living springs. 
 
 Come now, O Lord, we beseech thee, into that house that we 
 have bnilded for thee ! Come thou and the ark of thy strength. 
 Take up thine abode there. Preside over all the great boards 
 that may find a lodgment beneath that roof. Restrain them 
 from all wrong-doing and show them the way to most enlarged 
 and glorious enterprises for thee and for our redeemed race. 
 
 All that thou hast given us, that great building, those temples 
 over the land filled with their hundreds of thousands, those 
 institutions of learning where sages sit to train our youth, those 
 millions of dollars that are in our coffers, the honors that gar- 
 land our brows, are all from thee, but would be nothing with- 
 out thee. Great God, give us thyself! May the Shekinah that 
 beams upon our holy places never grow dim, but as the centu-
 
 38 CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 ries roll round let us become more and more able to glorify thy 
 name, more and more fully equipped for all the great duties of 
 the future, and then in thy presence, when earth has passed 
 away, take our full share in crying, with the triumphant host 
 before the throne, " Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanks- 
 giving, and honor, and power, and might, be unto our God for 
 ever and ever." Amen. 
 
 The first address was by Bishop Foss, on " Tongue and Type 
 Joint Agencies in Evangelization." He spoke as follows : 
 
 Address by Bishop Cyrus D. Foss, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 The tongue and the pen are the two greatest forces in the 
 world. Thought underlies all action and propagates itself and 
 multiplies its power by words. Words, spoken or written, have 
 sharpened all swords, loaded all cannon, kindled the fires of all 
 revolutions, built and destroyed nations, turned the world on its 
 hinges. "Words, immortal w r ords, forged into the thunderbolt 
 of our Declaration of Independence, and made good by seven 
 years' war, broke the galling chains of thirteen feeble colonies 
 and made them free and independent States. And other words 
 in that Constitution which Mr. Gladstone declares " the most 
 wonderful words ever struck off at a given time by the brain 
 and purpose of man," welded those discordant colonies into a 
 nation and sounded far out among the nations, and far down 
 the ages, the glad evangel of " government of the people, by 
 the people, for the people." 
 
 By these stepping-stones let us ascend the highest interests 
 of mankind. Christianity began its career as a tongue of fire, 
 but at once linked itself with the pen. On the day of Pente- 
 cost assembled thousands were startled by the mighty outburst 
 of its power, and its character as a burning proclamation was 
 suggested by tongues of flame on the bro.vs of its chosen mes-
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 39 
 
 sengers; but then their cliief spokesman immediately linked 
 this scene with the writings of the prophet Joel. The Saviour 
 himself used both tongue and pen. He did not, indeed, with 
 his own hand write a single word which has come down to us, 
 but he set his seal on the ancient writings by saying : " Search 
 the Scriptures ; " and, " If they hear not Moses and the prophets 
 neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead." 
 He also guided hands which held pens inspired by himself. 
 St. Luke, in his second treatise, describes his gospel as a record 
 of what Jesus " began to do and teach." It was only the begin- 
 ning. Several books of the New Testament might be more fitly 
 named. It would teach a deeper truth if the fifth of these books 
 were styled the "Acts of the Lord Jesus Christ by the Apostles ; " 
 and the sixth, " The Epistle of the Lord Jesus Christ to the 
 Romans by the Pen of Paul ; " and the last," The Revelation of 
 the Lord Jesus Christ to the World Through the Soul of John." 
 
 In every great forward movement Christianity has wielded 
 both tongue and pen. Luther used both. Before the Diet of 
 Worms he said : " Here I stand ; I can do no other ; God help 
 me, Amen." But before that time he had put himself on rec- 
 ord by the ninety-four theses which he wrote and nailed to 
 the door of the church at Wittenberg. Afterward, when out- 
 lawed and not permitted to speak, and imprisoned in the castle 
 of the Wartburg, he rendered one of his greatest services to the 
 Reformation, with the pen, by translating the Bible into the 
 common language of the German people. He also put his pro- 
 foundest beliefs into permanent form in commentaries; one of 
 these found out John Wesley in the very crisis of his religious 
 life, and brought him to the joyful knowledge of salvation thus 
 making Martin Luther the lineal grandfather of Methodism. 
 
 Wesley spoke and wrote incessantly. What he did in either 
 of these lines would have been enough for three men of average
 
 40 CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 industry. All the world knows him as the most tireless of 
 itinerant evangelists and is coming to know him as one of the 
 most prolific of authors. 
 
 In this respect Methodism has always been animated by the 
 spirit of its founder. It has gone every- where, blowing trumpets 
 and setting types. Primarily it has always been, in every land 
 to which it has gone, a glorious proclamation of gospel grace. 
 It has felt the great commission as a hurricane at its back and 
 a fire in its heart. " Go ye ! " has been its watchword. But 
 wherever it has gone, and got a foothold, and stopped long 
 enough to get its breath and look around, it has at once sent for 
 a printing-press. So it is most fit that these missionary secre- 
 taries and Book Agents should sit together on the same platform 
 and be housed within the same magnificent walls ; nay, that the 
 senior publisher and the missionary treasurer should actually be 
 condensed into one person. 
 
 In the monumental edifice which, in the first decade of the 
 second century since its formal organization, the Methodist 
 Episcopal Church has erected, posterity will see, enshrined in 
 massive and graceful architecture, very much of the spirit and 
 purpose of the Methodism of to-day. If there are " sermons in 
 stones and books in running brooks " surely some voices must 
 be pouring forth from that magnificent pile. Shades of Asbury 
 and Dickins and Soule and Bangs and Waugh and Durbin and 
 your co-laborers, ye who with eloquent voice and printed page 
 laid so broadly and grandly the massive foundations on which it 
 is our exalted privilege to build, speak to us from the celestial 
 battlements over which ye look down upon us at this hour ! 
 Methinks they answer in adoring wonder, "What hath God 
 wrought ! " Let us take up the strain, " What hath God 
 wrought " through these two institutions which they founded 
 and conserved and loved !
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 
 
 Through our beloved Missionary Society " what hath God 
 wrought ! " At its first anniversary, just seventy years ago, its 
 aggregate collections for the first year were found to be $823 64 ; 
 and a speaker who ventured in his impassioned oratory to pre- 
 dict that the time would come when the churches within the 
 limits of the Baltimore Conference alone would raise a like 
 amount in a single year was thought to be a Utopian dreamer. 
 Last year the income of the Society was $1,130,000. In our 
 country this Society (together with its twin sister, the Board of 
 Church Extension,) has done more than any other agency to lay 
 the moral and religious foundations of twenty of our newer 
 States and Territories and to speed the flight of the twin angels 
 of moral and legal temperance, with radiant faces and drawn 
 swords, over the vast prairies of Iowa, Kansas, and the two 
 Dakotas. Into many foreign lands it has also gone, and gone 
 to stay until the rosy light of the millennium shall flood the 
 whole earth. It has gone to them to plant churches and schools 
 and orphanages and hospitals and presses, to use its siege-guns 
 and flying artillery and infantry and cavalry, and every possible 
 new arm of effective service, until the militant Church shall be- 
 come the Church triumphant. In India and China already three 
 hundred dusky Orientals, led by us into the ministry of the word, 
 are sounding the call of gospel grace through the ranks of the 
 heathenism they have lately abandoned ; and twelve thousand 
 more, whose hearts God has " strangely warmed," kneel with 
 our missionaries around the holy sacrament of the Saviour's 
 death. Our latest reports from India bring tidings of pente- 
 costal blessing. At a camp-meeting on the Rohilkund District 
 last December two hundred and thirty persons were forward 
 for prayer in a single day, and nearly all were joyfully con- 
 verted. Our veteran missionary, the Rev. Dr. E. W. Parker, 
 presiding elder of the district, says : " Our baptisms last year
 
 2 CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 were 1,457, this year 2,966, and if the brethren during 1890 
 only baptize the present inquirers they will report quite 4,000." 
 
 Toward these grand results on both sides the great Pacific 
 here and yonder our printing-presses have wrought mightily. 
 Who can tell how much they have had to do at once with the 
 essential spirit of Methodism and with its actual progress, 
 with the training of its workers and the spread of its work ? 
 What scales can weigh the sacred aroma of the hymns of 
 Charles Wesley ? And what mathematics can estimate the sum 
 total of the healing influence which they have poured forth 
 into the miasma of the world's sin ? Well was it for the world 
 that Methodism was born and reared in a renowned university, 
 and that, in the very first generation of its history, it produced 
 such authors as Wesley and Clarke and Watson and Fletcher 
 men whose amplitude of learning, theological insight and 
 soundness and polemic power have commanded respect wher- 
 ever the English language is read. So high a Calvinistic theo- 
 logical authority as Dr. James W. Alexander paid the follow- 
 ing tribute to Watson : " Turretine is in theology instar 
 omnium. Making all due allowance for the difference of age, 
 Watson, the Methodist, is the only systematizer, within my 
 knowledge, who approaches the same eminence; of whom I 
 use Addison's words : ' He reasons like Paley and descants 
 like Hall.' " John Fletcher was the very model of a master 
 in religious controversy. His satire was as keen as his logic, 
 as merciless as his character was saintly. His "Checks" can 
 never become obsolete so long as the errors he combated need 
 to be checked. Evangelical Arminianism, which in our time has 
 so nearly snowed under the old type of Calvinism, owes to these 
 authors and their successors, and to the preaching inspired 
 by their writings, a debt not yet fully acknowledged. 
 
 Two incidents may suffice to illustrate this quiet working of
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 43 
 
 Methodism beyond its own ecclesiastical pale in contributing 
 toward a movement scarcely less than a revolution. When my 
 father was a young circuit preacher on the east end of Long 
 Island he was moved by the criticisms rife in those times to 
 announce one Sunday that the next time he came around the 
 circuit he would read from the Westminster Confession and 
 show how its doctrines differed from those of Methodism. This 
 aiiiiouncenient filled the little church, and brought out espe- 
 cially the Presbyterian elders, one of whom on his way home 
 complained that a Methodist preacher should read anything 
 publicly from the Westminster Confession, and added, " And 
 then he read the very worst things in it." 
 
 Sixty years have passed, and now our Presbyterian friends 
 are struggling in an agony over that Confession to cast out 
 those " very worst things." We most candidly wish them suc- 
 cess in so laudable an effort ; but some of them are not ready 
 for it yet. President Patton, of Princeton, says : " It must 
 amuse the theologians of the Methodist Church to notice that 
 Presbyterian office-holders are trying to persuade the Church 
 which honors Charles Hodge and Henry I>. Smith as its great 
 loii'inatic theologians to -go over bodily to the platform of the 
 Remonstrants." But the editor of our chief weekly tells us 
 that Henry B. Smith, many years ago, published an article de- 
 signed to show that " there is no insuperable difficulty in the 
 way of a union of Presbyterians and Methodists." Well, they 
 -cm now actually to be coming "to the platform of the 
 Remonstrants." Let them come singing: 
 
 " For the love of God is broader 
 
 Than the measure of man's mind, 
 And the heart of the Eternal 
 Is most wonderfully kind." 
 
 We who have tried no other platform will welcome them,
 
 44 CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 and " He who tasted death for every man" will bless the banns. 
 Go on, tongue and pen, Missionary Society and Book Concern, 
 in the great work to which your Lord has called you in main- 
 lands! Be quick to answer his summons: "Go teach all na- 
 tions." Hold your place in the front ranks of his ever-advanc- 
 ing host. Cherish the spirit of the world-ranging missionary 
 of early Methodism Bishop Coke. It is said of him that in 
 his middle life, when once very sick, he had this striking ex- 
 perience : he felt himself borne by an angel out of this life 
 and upward, through surging waves of glory, toward the eternal 
 city. He asked to be borne at once into the presence of John 
 Wesley, but was told his work was not finished, and he could 
 not enter heaven then. Filled with unutterable regret he said : 
 " Must I return ? " " So God wills," said the angel ; and Coke 
 answered, "If I must go back, let me go and Haze until Idle" 
 He at once returned to consciousness, rapidly recovered, and 
 blazed until he died. Until his death he represented in his own 
 person the whole of the missionary operations of Methodism ; 
 he lavished on them a large fortune, gave more money for re- 
 ligious work than any other Methodist, if not any other Protest- 
 ant of his own time, and at last, on his way to plant missions 
 in the Orient, gave his body to be buried in the Indian Ocean. 
 
 God grant that the multiplying myriads of the tongue and 
 types of Methodism may be vitalized with the same evangeliz- 
 ing spirit ; that the} 7 may " blaze," not, indeed, until they die, 
 but until, in the holy influence they shall have exerted, they 
 shall live forever amid the splendors of the eternal world ! 
 
 At the conclusion of Bishop Foss's address Bishop Andrews 
 arose and said : 
 
 Very many of our saints of Methodism, who have departed 
 for a little while, always have turned with a loving heart toward 
 the Church again when they have reached the heights of pros-
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 45 
 
 perity in their usefulness. One such is here with us to-night, 
 and I am very happy to be able to introduce to you this even- 
 ing a man very well known in New York, the Rev. Dr. Thomas 
 Armitage, of the Baptist Church. 
 
 In his reply Dr. Armitage spoke as follows : 
 
 Remarks by the Rev. Dr. Armitage. 
 
 I hope to be pardoned for this intrusion. I hold in my hand 
 two or three manuscripts of Methodism. They have been locked 
 up in my desk possibly for a score of years, and I have felt that 
 the occasion to-night would be a fitting one to hand them to the 
 people who should own them. First, there are two manuscripts 
 of as distinguished men as the Methodist Church ever produced 
 either in this or any other country. The first is a sketch, I take 
 it, of a lecture by Dr. Wilbur Fisk on " The Death of Christ." 
 It comes to me directly from his study through the hand of his 
 wife and a mutual friend. It is merely a collection of watch- 
 words evidently intended to guide him in his address, but you 
 get a very comprehensive idea of the whole sweep of his mind 
 on that thought the death of Christ. It is in his own hand- 
 writing. The other is a series of notes upon certain portions of 
 the Epistle of Paul to the Romans, covering eight finely -written 
 pages, in the handwriting of John Summerfield. His biographer 
 says that he was an enthusiast in his study of the Pauline litera- 
 ture as it is contained in that book ; and here we have some of 
 the results of close application. These pages were presented to 
 me by his sister, Mrs. Blackstock, many years ago. She said 
 she would present them to no other person on earth but myself. 
 They were the last manuscripts of the sort that were left in her 
 hands. She had the kindness to say that in many things I re- 
 minded her so much of her brother that she believed they would 
 l>e well taken care of if she left them with me. I said to her,
 
 46 CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 " Have you any thing else that is particularly from your brother?" 
 She said, " Yes, I have the most precious thing that he left on 
 earth ; namely, an ivory pocket memorandum-tablet which he 
 carried in his pocket for years. I found it in his pocket after 
 his death, and it is covered with memoranda from his own hand ; 
 I will give you it if you will faithfully promise me that it shall 
 be kept as a sacred trust." I promised always to care for it, and 
 I have kept my promise, and now after nearly a quarter of a 
 century I think these two productions of these princes of Meth- 
 odism should belong to the Methodist Episcopal Church, and I 
 would like to present them to Bishop Andrews to-night, desiring 
 that he will put them in a glass case, or in some other convenient 
 and safe repository, to be kept in your beautiful new building 
 w T ith all the other relics of the dead and the productions of the 
 living that there find a home. 
 
 Bishop Andrews accepted these valuable gifts with thanks, 
 assuring the generous donor that they should be preserved with 
 greatest care. 
 
 Many letters of regret were received. Dr. Howard Crosby's 
 letter was read by General Fisk. 
 
 Dr. Sandford Hunt was the next speaker. His subject was 
 " The Book Concern," of which he said : 
 
 Address by Dr. Hunt. 
 
 We are assembled to-night, according to the programme in 
 your hands, to celebrate the completion of one hundred years in 
 the history of the Methodist Book Concern and the seventieth 
 year in the history of the Missionary Society of the Methodist 
 Episcopal Church. One hundred years in the inarch of centu- 
 ries in the history of the world is but a small fraction in the ever- 
 moving procession ; but in the history of individuals or institutions 
 it may bound the time of their origin, record, close, and burial.
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 
 
 Every organization, like every child, must pass through a 
 period of growth to reach the maturity and strength of man- 
 hood. One hundred years ago, at the time of the establishment 
 of the Book Concern, the Methodist Episcopal Church was but 
 five years of age, and numbered only fifty-eight thousand mem- 
 bers. The United States had but two years before adopted a 
 federal Constitution, and only three and a half short months 
 before the opening of the first book store in Philadelphia, Wash- 
 ington, the first President elected under the Constitution, had 
 been inaugurated in this city of New York. 
 
 There was not at that time, nor for twenty-five years there- 
 after, a religious newspaper in the United States. Of the forty- 
 three papers, political and local, published in 1789, the combined 
 circulation did not equal in amount of matter the New York 
 Christian Advocate of to-day. The itinerant ministers, upon 
 whom depended the success of the new enterprise, traveled on 
 horseback, fording rivers long yet to remain innocent of bridges, 
 and penetrating forests which wild beasts had held Math undis- 
 puted claim. 
 
 It was in the midst of such surroundings that the fathers of 
 the Church laid the foundations of our Book Concern, which 
 has attained a magnitude so honorable to the Church to-day. 
 They had no experience to guide them and no models to copy 
 or warn them. They were stimulated, however, by the record 
 of the founder of the Church, who yet lived to give his bene- 
 dictions to our men and their work. Mr. Wesley had traversed 
 Great Britain and other parts of the world for fifty years, trav- 
 eling 250,000 miles ten times the distance around our world 
 chiefly on horseback, lie had preached on the way 42,000 ser- 
 mons, and yet he found time to write and publish thirty solid 
 volumes and translate and publish one hundred and twenty 
 more.
 
 CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 He required the preachers whom he sent out to severe fields 
 of labor to be students. If they were unwilling or unable to 
 form studious habits Mr. Wesley dismissed them from his ranks. 
 The first preachers of the Methodist Episcopal Church felt the 
 need of books quite as strongly as Mr. "Wesley. Some were 
 imported from England. The regular trade would not run the 
 risk of remunerative sales. Hence, five years after the organi- 
 zation of the Methodist Episcopal Church, John Dickins, pastor 
 of a church in New York city, was sent to Philadelphia to 
 found a bookstore and publishing house. With his borrowed 
 capital of $600 he flung his banner to the breeze and began his 
 work. In addition to his agency as Book Steward he was pastor 
 of a church. Debts and embarrassments were inevitable. To 
 crown the burdens, Mr. Dickins died of the yellow fever in 
 1798, leaving a debt of $4,500, which at that time was a formi- 
 dable one. When Ezekiel Cooper, his successor, grappled with 
 the difficulties of the situation, he was requested by the Phila- 
 delphia Conference, in 1802, to pack up the whole Concern stock 
 books, accounts, and all in his trunk, and leave for Balti- 
 more. This he declined to do ; but two years afterward he re- 
 moved the business to i\ ew York. 
 
 If Philadelphia dismissed the Book Concern without tears of 
 regret we do not learn that any jubilee of welcome greeted its 
 advent in New York. Within twenty years the business was 
 removed from one street to another seven times. In 1833 lots 
 were purchased on Mulberry Street, where our manufacturing 
 has been carried on until last month. In 1836 the whole struct- 
 ure was devoured by fire. By this time the whole Church had 
 felt the importance of her publishing house, and contributions 
 were furnished amounting to $89,994 98, New York city now 
 taking the lead. In that unpretentious building products have 
 been sent out which, in connection with the Western house,
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 49 
 
 amount to $50,000,000, and, what is more remarkable, one half 
 of this amount has been printed and sold within the last sixteen 
 years. 
 
 In 1820 a branch house was established in Cincinnati. In 
 twenty years it became a separate corporation, and its history 
 is quite as successful as our own. In the summaries which I 
 present, both of capital and products, I include the business of 
 that house, as the general term, " The Methodist Book Concern," 
 includes both. 
 
 That little capital of $600 borrowed one hundred years ago 
 has now become $2,500,000 ; and while this has been accumu- 
 lating the Book Concern has paid out, for various purposes out- 
 side of its own business, more than the $2,500,000 now retained 
 as working capital. Of this sum over $700,000 has been given 
 for the support of superannuated preachers, widows, and or- 
 phans ; and last year, and this, we are giving $100,000, and the 
 shadow of this sum will never be less ! 
 
 We would naturally expect a rapid increase in business be- 
 cause of the marvelous increase of our membership. In 1790 the 
 number of inhabitants in the United States was about 4,000,000 ; 
 the number of members in the Methodist Episcopal Church 
 was ;>s,(>00. The increase in the nation has been fifteen-fold ; 
 the increase in the membership of the different branches of 
 Methodism has been at least sixty-fold, or four times that of the 
 population. 
 
 As rapidly as the Church has increased, both actually and rela- 
 tively, in membership, it has increased in its patronage of the 
 Book Concern more rapidly than in numbers. In 1848 our 
 membership was C.H-,220. The sales of the Book Concern dur- 
 ing the quadrennium closing with 1848 were $612,625 19, or 
 a little less than one dollar a member. During the last quad- 
 rennium, closing with 1888, our membership was 2,093,395. 
 4
 
 50 CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 The sales of the Book Concern, East and West, during the 
 period were $6,920,743 17 over three dollars a member. 
 
 Fifty years ago we had one copy of our church papers for 
 adults for fifteen of our members. If we include semi-official 
 papers, most of which are published under the sanction of 
 Annual Conferences, we now have one for eight. 
 
 In our Sunday-school department the increase has been even 
 more remarkable. In 1850 we had 514,429 connected with our 
 Sunday-schools. The entire number of papers published for 
 these schools was 77,363, or about one for every seven scholars. 
 In 1889 we had in round numbers 2,000,000 in our schools ; 
 but we published in all over 3,000,000 of papers, or one and a 
 half for each scholar and teacher. The increase in our Sunday- 
 schools was four-fold ; the increase in our papers was forty-fold. 
 Our famous statistician, Dr. Dorchester, in his History of 
 Christianity in the United States, estimates the entire value of 
 religious literature published in the United States by the differ- 
 ent religious denominations up to this time at $144,000,000. 
 Of this the Methodist Episcopal Church has issued $50,000,000, 
 over one third of the whole, and over one half of this amount 
 during the past sixteen years. 
 
 And now what is the result ? The largest Protestant Church 
 in the United States consolidated into unity ! The two great 
 factors which have brought about this unity are the unity of 
 our episcopacy and the centralization of our publishing interests 
 under the direct sanction and control of the Church. We have 
 had no conventions to bring about a revision of our creeds ; and 
 yet the Methodist Episcopal Church favors no looseness or un- 
 certainty on questions of Christian doctrine or morals. Every 
 person is publicly asked, before admission to the fellowship 
 of the Church, the same disciplinary questions, chief among 
 which is this: "Do you believe the doctrines of the Holy
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 51 
 
 Scriptures as set forth in the Articles of Religion of the 
 Methodist Episcopal Church ?" Every minister pledges his sol- 
 emn faith to preach and maintain them. The same books are 
 placed in the Course of Study for every one of the nine hundred 
 ministers who are admitted to the ranks of the itinerancy each 
 year. The Bishops of the Church are a unit in administration, 
 and the little mighty Book of Discipline is their omnipotent 
 guide. One of our Bishops presides in a Conference in Montana 
 to-day, and next week in Georgia, and the next in New En- 
 gland. The next Bishop who presides in the New York Confer- 
 ence lives in Texas. The one who presides in the New York 
 East resides in San Francisco. Our own resident Bishop of New 
 York returned only last week from an episcopal visit to Japan 
 and China, and from the time he left New York until his return 
 he was not necessarily out of the bounds of an Annual Confer- 
 ence or mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church except when 
 he was on the ocean. 
 
 It is under such superintendency that the Church has been 
 consolidated and solidified into unity during the one hundred 
 years. The ministry is one body, whatever subdivisions may 
 be convenient for Annual Conferences. The centralization of 
 our publishing business is the logical outcome of a connectional 
 Church. The Book Concern is not only a mighty bond of 
 union, but the unity of our ministry renders its maintenance an 
 absolute necessity. At our General Conferences, where the 
 whole Church is assembled through its representatives, men are 
 chosen as editors of books and papers who are believed to be 
 worthy of trust as expounders of our doctrines and polity. The 
 Book Concern sends out to the world products only which these 
 trusted officers provide. The three million Sunday-school 
 helps sent out from New York and Cincinnati, for use in our 
 Sunday-schools every Sunday, have all passed the scrutiny of the
 
 ;>> CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 editor chosen by the General Conference. They bear his in- 
 dorsement that they are healthful and saving. The children in 
 the Sunday-school are taught the same doctrines that are 
 enforced in the pulpits. Our young ministers purchase the lit- 
 erature we publish, and they are in fact our only authorized 
 agents for its dissemination. 
 
 The Methodist Book Concern is the great center to which 
 the Methodist Episcopal Church looks for its supply of Chris- 
 tian literature, as the pulpit is the center of each congregation 
 for religious instruction. Is it a matter of surprise, then, that 
 there has never been a secession from the Church on doctrinal 
 grounds? In fifty years not fifty ministers have left our 
 pulpits on account of disagreement with the doctrinal standards 
 of our Church, and from present indications the whole Prot- 
 estant Church will soon officially indorse them. 
 
 It is conceded to-day that we have an educated ministry ; and 
 yet, as much as we value a classical course, not exceeding 
 twenty per cent, of those who enter our ministry are graduates 
 of college. Every one of these men, however, must graduate 
 in the Conference course of study. Every young man, as he 
 presents himself at the door of the Conference, is handed a 
 schedule of eleven solid volumes for his first year and notified 
 that he must master these books before he can take one step in 
 advance. You may examine the catalogues of our colleges, and 
 you will find that the studies required in the whole course nec- 
 essary for graduation in any one of them are not as extensive 
 or severe as those in the four years' course required of every 
 Methodist preacher. Whether these courses have for their 
 chief end the attainment of knowledge or mental discipline, 
 ours will not suffer by the comparison. The Methodist Book 
 Concern is the magazine from which they draw their supplies. 
 It is the educator of our ministry as well as its agent. Thus it
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 53 
 
 has been for a hundred years, and thus it must be for a hundred 
 years to come. 
 
 As the financial outcome of the century the Agents and the 
 Book Committee, under whose supervision they act, had the 
 high honor on Tuesday evening last of presenting to the Church 
 the grand fire-proof structure on Fifth Avenue, with its presses 
 driven with steam and its apartments illuminated with light- 
 ning, and all free from debt ! 
 
 "With snch a consummation for this century what prophet 
 will arise to tell us what shall crown the work of the new 
 century upon which we have entered? Standing upon our 
 mount of vision and gazing over the past we say, All honor 
 to the noble men who laid the foundation, deep and strong, upon 
 which we have been able to build such a structure ! Their record 
 is the broad Church which now covers every nation on earth. 
 
 The long, weary road of the itinerant, whose saddle-bags 
 were our bookstores, whose sermons aroused into holy enthu- 
 siasm the expanding nation, has been changed for golden 
 streets and heaven's royal welcome. But, turning away from 
 the ashes of the heroes of the past, we hear the trumpet-blast of 
 the incoming century demanding a new generation of heroes as 
 valiant as those that honored the one now closed. We shall 
 best prove our appreciation of the work of the fathers of the 
 Church by pushing forward to greater success the work they 
 have committed to our hands. 
 
 In an age of skepticism we must have a ministry and people 
 standing in the first ranks of learning and intelligence. With 
 the Bible in one hand and the products of a sanctified press in 
 the other, with the old-time fire of enthusiasm in the heart, the 
 world will be brought to the feet of its Creator and King. 
 
 " The recollection of the honored dead should inspire us to 
 complete what they so nobly began. That will be a degene-
 
 54 CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 rate age when we must go to the cemetery to find our greatest 
 men. The lives of the fathers are not presented to us to dwarf 
 our stature by contrast, but to show to what giants we should 
 grow with better opportunities. 
 
 " The dead but opened the door through which the living may 
 pass to victory. If we ourselves would prove worthy of our 
 ancestry we shall haste forward with their memories to speed 
 us on, so that when we have borne our age yet nearer paradise 
 our children may strew violets on our sepulchers and evoke 
 from us, as all from our fathers, the inspiration of the immortal 
 dead." The opening century beckons us onward and upward 
 until our work is crowned immortal and victorious. 
 
 One hundred years from this new generations will gather 
 together as we do to-night, to celebrate the achievements 
 of the second century in the history of the Book Concern. 
 The records, instead of coming from New York and Cincin- 
 nati alone, will come from China, Japan, India, Europe, and 
 Africa, in each of which will have arisen establishments, far 
 surpassing our own, which shall send forth their streams of 
 light and knowledge for the elevation and salvation of our 
 race. 
 
 When that grand celebration shall come, though we may not 
 mingle with the throng, I am sure our King of heaven will 
 allow us to gather on some mountain height and look down 
 with rapture upon the scene, and heaven will be the sweeter 
 when sower and reaper shall rejoice together. 
 
 Dr. Leonard followed, his topic being " The Missionary 
 Society." 
 
 Address of Rev. A. B. Leonard, D.D. 
 
 MR. CHAIRMAN AND CHRISTIAN FRIENDS, The Missionary So- 
 ciety, which was organized April 5, 1819, and which celebrates
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 55 
 
 to-night its seventieth anniversary, measures as does no other 
 organization the growth, benevolence, courage, and conquering 
 power of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The founders of 
 this Society, among whom were ministers and laymen, deserve 
 the honorable place they now occupy on the roll of Methodist 
 history. The first officers of the Society were Bishop William 
 McKendree, President; Bishop Enoch George, First Vice- 
 President ; Bishop Robert R. Roberts, Second Vice-President ; 
 Rev. Nathan Bangs, Third Vice-President ; Mr. Francis Hall, 
 Clerk ; Mr. Daniel Ayres, Recording Secretary ; Rev. Thomas 
 Mason, Corresponding Secretary, and Rev. Joshua Soule, 
 Treasurer. ^ 
 
 The Corresponding Secretaries who have served this Society, 
 exclusive of those now in office, are Thomas Mason, Nathan 
 Bangs, William Capers, E. R. Ames, Charles Pitman, John P. 
 Durbin, R. L. Dashiell, T. M. Eddy, J. M. Reid, and Charles 
 II. Fowler. In 1860 William L. Harris was elected Assistant 
 Corresponding Secretary, and in 1864 J. M. Trimble was 
 elected to the same office. All these have gone to their reward 
 except J. M. Reid, the historian of Methodist missions, Charles 
 H. Fowler, an honored Bishop of the Church, and J. M. Trim- 
 ble, a member of every General Conference since 1844. 
 
 This Society, like many other things connected with Meth- 
 odism, was a development or an evolution necessitated by the 
 inherent forces of the organization from which it sprang. 
 From the first Methodism was an evangelistic force, or, if you 
 please, a Missionary movement. This was the secret of its 
 marvelous growth in the early years of her history. As the de- 
 nomination enlarged it was found that the entire body could 
 not be wielded in a satisfactory manner for aggressive move- 
 ments in destitute regions at home and in foreign fields, and a 
 IH re compact organization, that would conccjntrate and render
 
 56 CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 available the resources of the entire system, was the need of the 
 hour. The circumstances which seemed to have given direc- 
 tion to the forces that produced the Missionary Society were 
 peculiar, and illustrate the saying of the sometimes melancholy 
 
 Cowper : 
 
 " God moves in a mysterious way 
 
 His Avonders to perform." 
 
 The conversion of John Stewart, a poor, intemperate colored 
 man at Marietta, Ohio, in 1816, was followed by a journey 
 through a trackless forest, in obedience to what he believed to 
 be the call of God, to Upper Sandusky, and the opening of a 
 mission among the Wyandot Indians. The revival that pre- 
 vailed among these Indians sent a thrill of missionary fervor 
 through the whole Church, and led to the organization of the 
 Missionary Society three years later. This Society from that 
 time to the present has had much to do with the rapid move- 
 ments of the Methodist itinerancy, growth of the Church, and 
 the founding of kindred benevolent institutions. 
 
 Eight years after the organization of the Missionary Society, 
 and inspired by it, came the Sunday School Union and Tract 
 Societies. These societies represented a new form of mis- 
 sionary activity which has grown to wonderful proportions. 
 The Sunday-School Union and Tract Societies have been, and 
 now are, mighty missionary forces in the South, on the Western 
 frontier, and in foreign lands. 
 
 The Church now moved on until in 1864, when another be- 
 nevolent form of work was organized, known as the Church 
 Extension Society. This Society came at the opportune period 
 in our national history. The war was drawing to a close, and 
 soon the whole South, which had been closed against us since 
 
 7 O 
 
 1844, was to be thrown open. Out of the Old South the ]S r evv 
 South was to be evolved. The millions of colored people made
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 57 
 
 free by the exigencies of the war were to be lifted up to a use- 
 ful citizenship, and the sentiments of the white population 
 toward both freedmen and the conquering ]S"orth were to un- 
 dergo an important transformation. In the accomplishment of 
 this task the Methodist Episcopal Church was to take an im- 
 portant part. Then, with the close of the war, there was to be 
 an unparalleled migration westward from the Eastern States. 
 Railroad trains were to take the place of horse, ox, and mule 
 trains, and the people were to go in hundreds where they had 
 gone in tens before. During the closing period of the war 
 money accumulated in the treasury of the Missionary Society 
 amounting to almost a half-million dollars. The treasury was 
 burdened with the surplus, you see, and the authorities were 
 troubled as to the disposition to be made of it. "When the war 
 was over the authorities of the Missionary Society compre- 
 hended the reason for the surplus of funds in its hands. 
 It now had the means with which to send itinerants into the 
 South and to the frontier more numerously than ever before, 
 and the golden opportunity was not allowed to go unimproved. 
 The funds of the Missionary treasury were just what was needed 
 to oil the wheels of the itinerancy. These two agencies have 
 given Methodism its supremacy in the South and West. 
 
 As to our occupancy of the South, that is a settled question. 
 "We are there, and the recent outrages committed against some 
 of our missionaries will not cause us to call a retreat. The 
 Joiner outrage, so recently committed, only increases our de- 
 termination to remain in the South and continue to preach a 
 gospel of equality for all men. The cruelties inflicted upon 
 the colored people of the South must cease ; they are citizens; 
 they are there to stay ; no scheme of Southern white men for 
 their deportation to a foreign land will succeed. Their deporta- 
 tion is a physical impossibility. If the whole fleet of ships now
 
 58 CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 sailing under the United States flag were to be employed solely 
 for their deportation they could not carry away even the annual 
 increase. Besides, they are needed in the South. But for their 
 presence vast regions would be without inhabitants and without 
 laborers, and the result would be the return of the wolf, the 
 bear, and the buffalo. The deportation of the whites of the 
 South would be less damaging in many localities than that of 
 the blacks, as there would be removed a more blood-thirsty and 
 less industrious element. The South must become as safe a 
 place of residence for both colored and white as is the North, 
 and the Methodist Episcopal Church must do its part in bring- 
 ing about this desirable end. 
 
 To-day Methodism leads all other denominations in the great 
 Central "West and in the regions beyond. In journeying west- 
 ward when you pass the line that divides Pennsylvania 
 and Ohio you are on Methodist territory. In Ohio, Indiana, 
 Illinois, Iowa, and Kansas, Methodism is the foremost of all 
 denominations ; indeed, it is claimed that there are more Meth- 
 odists in the two States last named than of all other denomina- 
 tions combined. I suppose this is one reason why they have 
 prohibition in those States. Methodists in those States live up 
 to the standard erected by our Church in regard to the traffic in 
 strong drink better than we do in the Eastern States. 
 
 "Well, through the agency of the Missionary Society Meth- 
 odist Episcopal Churches were organized rapidly in the West 
 immediately succeeding the close of the war. But they were 
 societies without houses of worship, and the people were not 
 able to build. Here was a demand for a new form of mission- 
 ary work, and the Church extension Society was called into ex- 
 istence. Since 1864 this Society has aided in erecting more than 
 7,000 houses of worship, while the whole Church has erected 
 about 14,000, and still moves on, building " two a day."
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 59 
 
 Two years later another missionary agency came into exist- 
 ence the Freedmen's Aid Society. Through the work accom- 
 plished in the South, largely by the Missionary Society, a mul- 
 titude of people of all colors were gathered into the Methodist 
 Episcopal Church. The South previous to the war made no 
 provision for education at the public expense for either white 
 or colored. Here was a field for educational effort. The col- 
 ored people were the most needy, and so received the first assist- 
 ance. Later our work has been enlarged, and now includes 
 botli white and colored. What was at first " the Freedmen's 
 Aid Society" is now "the Freedmen's Aid and Southern Edu- 
 cation Society." This Society has erected about forty institu- 
 tions of learning, and during the last year gave instruction to 
 about 8,000 students. 
 
 In 1872, seeing the need of educational facilities for young 
 people who might desire to enter the ministry, and particularly 
 the mission field, and who were not able to secure a thorough 
 education at their own expense, there was organized the Board 
 of Education an institution that has been instrumental in send- 
 ing not a few heroic spirits to recruit the ranks of our mission- 
 ary army. 
 
 In 1833 the Missionary Society commenced work in the for- 
 eign field by founding a Mission in Liberia on the West coast 
 of Africa. The foreign work has expanded until at this time 
 we have twelve Annual Conferences and nine organized Missions. 
 In these foreign missions there are 148 missionaries, besides other 
 workers numbering 3,012, making a working force of 3,160, 
 with a lay membership, including probationers, of about 65,000. 
 
 To render our work in foreign lands more effective in reach- 
 ing the female populations, the Woman's Foreign Missionary 
 Society was organized in 1869. This Society has sent out 150 
 missionaries, 100 of whom are now in the foreign field.
 
 60 CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 In 1881 the women of Methodism, seeing the need of work 
 among neglected home populations in our great cities, in the 
 South, on the frontier, and among the Indians, where the Mis- 
 sionary Society had opened the way, and where re-enforcements 
 were greatly needed, organized the Woman's Home Missionary 
 Society. Thus one after another these different forms of mis- 
 sionary work have come into existence, as the Missionary Soci- 
 ety lias prepared the way. 
 
 This Society measures the benevolent spirit of the Church. 
 The ordinary forms of church work do not deserve to be classi- 
 fied as benevolent. It is not properly a benevolence to aid in 
 erecting a church in which the donor expects to worship, or 
 contribute to the current expenses of a church with which he 
 is identified. We cannot, therefore, measure the benevolent 
 spirit of a Church by the number of elegant houses of worship 
 it erects or the liberality with which current expenses are sup- 
 ported. Nor can we measure the benevolence of a Church by 
 the large gifts of a few wealthy men made for special purposes. 
 Thank God for a Daniel Drew, who founds a theological sem- 
 inary, and for a Jacob Sleeper, who founds a university, and for 
 a George I. Seney, who founds a hospital ! But these gifts do 
 not measure the benevolence of the Church as a whole. The 
 Missionary Society and the other societies, for which it has pre- 
 pared the way, are the thermometer which marks the rising 
 benevolence of the entire body, for the reason that their sup- 
 port comes from the multitude rather than from the few. 
 
 This Society gives expression to the courageous spirit of Meth- 
 odism. This spirit is not manifested by laymen who occupy 
 cushioned pews in elegant houses of worship or by ministers 
 who preach to highly-cultivated and wealthy congregations. 
 The courage of the Church is seen in those laymen and minis- 
 ters who go into the haunts of wickedness in our great cities,
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 
 
 and to the frontier to live in dug-outs, planting Christian 
 Churches and ministering to the neglected and vicious ; who go 
 to foreign countries and hold the red-hot battle-line that divides 
 Christianity and heathenism. Bishop Taylor journeying on 
 foot through the jungles of Africa, sleeping on the ground with 
 the open sky for shelter, fighting malaria, and preaching the 
 Gospel to the naked heathen, is the type of heroism which the 
 Church needs to bring this sin-stricken world to Christ. If all 
 cannot heroically go to these hard and dangerous fields, all can 
 heroically work and give and sacrifice to support such as do go. 
 This Society measures also the conquering power of the 
 Church. The Church is an army of invasion and conquest. It 
 is under orders from its great Captain to conquer the world 
 and bring it into subjection to his sway. The Missionary Soci- 
 ety brings every soldier into line and gives him a chance to 
 light for his crown. There is no form of superstition or hea- 
 thenism, however deeply seated or hoary with age, that this So- 
 ciety needs to fear, backed, as it is, by a courageous Church. 
 Thank God, we have no occasion to spend our time in devising 
 a second probation, revising our creed, or establishing our claim 
 to apostolic succession ! We believe in one fair probation 
 for all, that Jesus Christ died for all, and that all are in the 
 only succession worth talking about who fight and win. Our 
 song is : 
 
 " Sure I must fight, if I would reign, 
 Increase ray courage, Lord ; 
 
 I'll bear the toil, endure the pain, 
 Supported by thy word. 
 
 " Thy saints in. all this glorious war 
 
 Shall conquer, though they die ; 
 They see the triumph from afar, 
 
 By faith they bring it nigh."
 
 62 CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 General Clinton B. Fisk spoke on " The Founders of the 
 Methodist Book Concern " as follows : 
 
 General Fisk's Address. 
 
 BISHOP ANDREWS, DEAR FATHERS, AND BRETHREN, "What 
 mean ye by this service ?" Moses, the great deliverer, prophet, 
 and leader, in his last discourse nnto all the congregation of 
 Israel prior to their hasty departure out of the land of Egypt, 
 and on the eve of that dreadful night when the shadow of death 
 fell across the threshold of every Egyptian abode and the de- 
 stroying angel passed over the homes of the children of Israel, 
 bade them observe this thing for an ordinance to them and their 
 sons forever ; that when their children should in the after gen- 
 erations say unto them " What mean ye by this service ?" then 
 the story of the sacrifice and the redemption should be told 
 them. Running along the centuries we hear the Psalmist's out- 
 burst of song, " The sayings which we have heard and known, 
 and our fathers have told us, we will not hide them from their 
 children, showing to the generation to come the praises of the 
 Lord, and his strength and his wonderful works that he hath 
 done." 
 
 If our children make the inquiry of us to-night, " What 
 mean ye by this service ?" our answer will be : " That the say- 
 ings which we have heard and known respecting the genesis of 
 the Methodist Book Concern we will not hide them from our 
 children, but will show to the generations to come the wonder- 
 ful work of the Lord through the publishing and missionary 
 enterprises of the Methodist Episcopal Church." 
 
 Our theme for brief utterance is " The Founders of the 
 Methodist Book Concern." The founders who were they ? 
 First of all was its foundress : that remarkable woman, the 
 matron of Epworth Rectory, the mother of John and Charles
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 63 
 
 "Wesley, who in the early years of the eighteenth cent nry, while 
 rocking the cradle in which slept the'animal contribution to the 
 family circle, reached her hand across the gulf of half a century 
 and rocked the cradle of Methodism. In all galleries of noble 
 and illustrious men and women Susannah Wesley deserves a 
 foremost place. She was exemplary in the discharge of every 
 social and parental duty. The completeness of her character shone 
 forth in all the sweet sanctities of her home. The night would 
 be far spent before we could speak of a tithe of the excellencies 
 of that queenly, sagacious, common-sense mother, and pattern of 
 all womanly virtues. The mother of the Wesleys impressed her 
 sons John and Charles with the value of good books, good study, 
 and good use of printer's ink. Her daily, and specially Thurs- 
 day, hours with her darling " Jacky," as she was wont to call 
 John Wesley, were the beginnings of Wesley's Book Concern. 
 
 At thirty years of age Mr. Wesley had written his first vol- 
 ume, and he kept on writing until hundreds of volumes in prose 
 written by himself, and the Christian lyrics, which fairly 
 streamed from the inspired pen of Charles Wesley, crowded 
 the shelves of English libraries. Wesley's first publication wa s 
 that of a book of devotions, issued at a very low price, for the 
 poor. His edition of the Imitation of Christ followed, and 
 from that time forward his busy pen at home and on his long 
 and swift journeys as an itinerant on his national circuit and 
 every-where, and his busy types at the Old Foundry, scattered 
 cheap tracts and books by the ten thousand, as instrumentalities 
 for spreading religious knowledge through Great Britain and 
 among the Methodist societies springing up on this continent. 
 
 At the first Conference held in this country, that of 1773, in 
 the city of Philadelphia, the publication and sale of Mr. Wes- 
 ley's books by proper authority received careful consideration 
 and Conference direction.
 
 CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 The pioneer of the Methodist Book Concern on American 
 soil was Robert Williams ; a fiery, earnest expounder of the 
 faith of the Wesleys. In 1769, learning of the progress of 
 Methodism in the New World, Robert Williams sought per- 
 mission of John Wesley to leave England and preach the Gos- 
 pel in America. He received authority to emigrate to this 
 country and preach if he would subordinate himself to the mis- 
 sionaries Boardman and Pillmoor. The young ciicuit-rider 
 sold his horse to pay his English debts and hastened to the 
 nearest seaport, carrying his saddle-bags on his arm, and set off 
 for the ship with a loaf of bread and a bottle of milk, but not 
 a penny of money for his passage. Ash ton, an ardent young 
 Irish friend, paid his fare to New York, where he landed in 
 advance of the missionaries, and immediately began to preach 
 in John Street. Robert Williams was a slight, agile, restless 
 little man. His friends wondered that so large a soul could 
 find room in so small a body. His rich voice rolled like music 
 upon his charmed listeners, as if he were a harper playing upon 
 all harps at his pleasure. He first printed books for American 
 Methodists. He established the first Methodist circuit in Vir- 
 ginia. He was the first Methodist minister that married, the 
 first that located, the first that died in this country. His beau- 
 tiful, active life and work for six years in spreading scriptural 
 holiness in this new land was an epic. He it Avas in the hand 
 of God who brought from darkness to light Jesse Lee. What 
 honor to the spiritual father of that heroic itinerant, the founder 
 of Methodism in New England ! Francis Asbury laid Robert 
 Williams to rest, and by his now unknown grave in Virginia 
 said that probably no man in America had been equally suc- 
 cessful in awakening souls. 
 
 At repeated Conferences after the death of Robert Williams 
 the necessity for a Book Concern established by the Church was
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 65 
 
 discussed. At the Christmas Conference in 1784, among the 
 rules of ministerial life we find, sandwiched between that pro- 
 testing against late suppers and wine-drinking and an exhorta- 
 tion to go on to perfection, this injunction : ''Be active in dis- 
 persing Mr. AVesley's books. Every assistant may beg money 
 of the rich to buy books for the poor." Not until 1789, at a 
 Conference held in New York, was definite action taken, and a 
 Book Agent or Book Steward, as he was then termed 
 appointed. 
 
 One hundred years ago last May there convened twenty men 
 in a Methodist Conference in the old preaching-house in John 
 Street, New York. Let us look in upon them as they enter 
 upon their great work by singing : 
 
 " And are we yet alive 
 And see each other's face ? 
 
 " What troubles have we seen, 
 
 What conflicts have we passed, 
 Fightings without and fears within, 
 
 Since we assembled last ! 
 But out of all the Lord 
 
 Hath brought us by his love, 
 And still he does his help afford, 
 And hides our life above." 
 
 Chief est among that score of God's chosen ministers of rec- 
 onciliation and peace sat Francis Asbury, pioneer Bishop of the 
 Methodist Episcopal Church, then forty-four years of age, in 
 the beginning of his prime, in the broad daylight of one of the 
 most useful lives ever known among men. He had been laying- 
 broad and deep the foundations of the Methodist Episcopal 
 Church in the valleys and on the mountains of the Atlantic 
 roa.-r. He had been Hying, like the apocalyptic angel having 
 the even-lasting Gospel to preach, over all the settled regions
 
 lili CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 from New York to North Carolina. With what emphasis he 
 declared to that handful of believers in John Street : " The 
 Lord is ray witness, that if my whole body, yea, every hair of 
 my head, conld labor and suffer, they should freely be given 
 up for God and souls." He who, when the wicked mob pur- 
 sued him, had mounted his trusty horse, and, as he rode on 
 through forest and swamp and peril, made the woods ring 
 with the song : 
 
 " The rougher the way, the shorter our stay ; 
 
 The tempests that rise 
 
 Shall gloriously hurry our souls to the skies." 
 
 A mighty man was Francis Asbury ! By his side sat one of 
 his juniors in years, the strong-souled, scholarly, consecrated 
 missionary, Bishop Thomas Coke. He who, as the foreign 
 minister of Methodism, had been commissioned by John 
 Wesley who was led to do so by a wisdom riot his own to 
 visit America and to assist in the organization of our Method- 
 ism as a Church distinct and separate from the Church of our 
 fathers over the sea. Sitting in that goodly company was 
 Richard Whatcoat, the humble, holy, and self-devoted man, 
 a member of the Coke embassy from England to the infant 
 Church in America, and who had once been a fellow class-leader 
 with Asbury at Wednesbury. And there, too, was Jesse Lee, 
 thirty-one years of age ; that man of deep spirituality, yet of 
 "infinite jest and most excellent fancy," whose rare rich humor, 
 blended with his fearless, honest dignity, and all-abounding 
 grace, made him an easy victor in every field of conflict, whether 
 it was with the warm-hearted Virginians or the cool, intel- 
 lectual New Englanders. God give to our modern Methodism 
 a legion of Jesse Lees, men of firm but gentle natures, which, 
 like sunbeams, shine without an effort and leave us genial, like
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 67 
 
 themselves ! By the side of Jesse Lee in the Conference of 
 1789 sat John, his brother ; dignified, zealous and untiring in his 
 calling as a Methodist preacher. Not far away from the plat- 
 form sat one in the thirty-seventh year of his life, in the very 
 syllables of whose name there was music ; a man strong and 
 tender, distressingly self-diffident, yet full of fiery heroism, 
 whose labors, abundant for more than half a century, are a 
 complete record of our contemporaneous church history. Free- 
 born Garrettson's name was and is a household word through- 
 out this land. Near by sat one who had been among the 
 bravest soldiers in the army of the Revolution. He had been 
 a special favorite of Washington. He had abandoned his col- 
 lege life to draw a sword for liberty. He had fallen seriously 
 wounded in leading the advance up the heights of Flatbush at 
 the battle of Long Island. He had become a soldier of the 
 crosf, a standard-bearer in the army of the Lord, a faithful 
 Methodist preacher, the builder of and the first to preach in 
 our Forsyth Street Church that man of blessed memory, 
 Thomas Morrell. 
 
 At the table of the secretary sat one whose name and fame 
 will go ringing down the ages so long as the history of the 
 Methodist Book Concern shall be read. lie had been the honor 
 man in his class at Eton College, and from his entrance upon 
 his work as a Methodist preacher in this country had stood in 
 the front rank of that brave and brotherly host. He was among 
 those who sat in the Christmas Conference, where he was a 
 leader in every debate. He made the motion that gave to our 
 ( 'Inirch the name of Methodist Episcopal. Asbury said of him : 
 "He is a man of great piety, great skill in learning, drinks in 
 Greek and Latin swiftly, yet prays much, and walks close witli 
 God." The Minutes said of him when he died : "He was one 
 of the greatest characters that ever graced the pulpit or adorned
 
 68 CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 the society of the Methodists." Such was John Dickins, then 
 at the age of forty-three. "Time would fail me to tell" of 
 Phoebus and Cloud, of Durham and Willis and McClaskey and 
 others of that memorable Conference of one hundred years ago. 
 O rare and sacred fellowship ! Like the disciples in the 
 Jerusalem chamber, they were of one accord. They were the 
 immediate founders of the Methodist Book Concern. Three 
 great events distinguished the proceedings of that Conference. 
 
 1. It was the first religious body to extend congratulations 
 to George Washington, who had then just been inaugurated 
 the first President of the United States. 
 
 2. It commissioned Jesse Lee as the apostle of Methodism to 
 New England. 
 
 3. It established the Methodist Book Concern. Thomas 
 Coke, in writing of that remarkable Conference, said : " It was 
 all peace and concord. Glory ! glory be to God ! We have 
 now settled our printing business." It was an easy thing to 
 resolve unanimously, as they did, that the Book Concern of the 
 Methodist Episcopal Church should be established on a secure 
 basis and on a large scale ; that the profits of the books should 
 be applied " partly to finish and pay off the debt on Cokesbury 
 College and partly to establish missions and schools among the 
 Indians ; " but where was the capital to come from with which 
 to initiate the great undertaking 'I 
 
 The Conference, as a committee of the whole, were almost in 
 despair as they considered the deep poverty of themselves and 
 the societies scattered through the country. Up rose John 
 Dickins and said: " Brethren, be of good courage and go for- 
 ward ; I have one hundred and twenty pounds sterling (600), 
 the savings from my life's labors. I will lend every shilling 
 of it to the Methodist Book Concern until such time as it can 
 be returned to me." The Conference joyfully and gratefully
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 69 
 
 accepted the loan, and by unanimous vote elected John Dickins 
 as Book Steward. On August 17, 1789, at Ko. 43 Fourth 
 Street, Philadelphia, John Dickins with his own hand made 
 entry of the first transactions of the Methodist Book Concern. 
 The first book issued was Wesley's abridged translation of 
 Thomas a Kempis's immortal Imitation of Christ a good 
 corner-stone on which to build the ever-increasing business and 
 world-wide influence of our publishing house whose centenary 
 we this night celebrate. John Dickins, by the blessing of God 
 upon his pioneer labors, started a series of influences whose 
 vibrations reacli to the uttermost parts of the earth and to the 
 latest time. All honor to the heroic founders of the Methodist 
 Book Concern ! By the memories of their lives and deeds, 
 by all the impulse and inspiration of the present hour, by the 
 noblest instincts of our own souls, in the spirit of rejoicing con- 
 secration let us, who are honored to be their sons and daughters, 
 be faithful to our magnificent inheritance, and to Him whose 
 sovereign spirit touches our souls and makes our hearts glad as we 
 stand upon the threshold of a new century, with its grander work, 
 with its nobler heroism, and its assured conquests; and may 
 our great conquering Church, iu all its revolving cycles of his- 
 tory, in its every agency, increasingly have for its inspiration 
 that blessed assurance which gave the dying Wesley such con- 
 solation when the everlasting sunrise burst in upon failing 
 heart and flesh, " The best of all is, God is with us." 
 
 J. M. Buckley, D.D., LL.D., was the last speaker. His sub- 
 ject was " Methodist Literature." 
 
 Dr. Buckley's Address. 
 
 When Methodism arose it needed a literature for explana- 
 tion, for defense, for propagation, and for instruction. For 
 explanation, because it was misunderstood ; for defense, be-
 
 70 CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 cause it was assaulted and traduced ; for propagation, because 
 its ministers were itinerant and the supply inadequate to the 
 need ; for instruction, because its converts were generally un- 
 educated, especially in the principles of religion. JSTor did the 
 need diminish as the denomination grew in numbers, activity, 
 and social position. An illustration from a later period may 
 suffice. At first it affiliated with the American Tract Society 
 and the American Sunday-School Union ; but their publications 
 were exclusively Calvinistic, and became germs of doctrinal 
 discord. This gave rise to the formation of our own Tract 
 Society and Sunday-School Union. The more discussion, the 
 more inquiry ; hence the demand for publications to remove 
 misunderstandings, satisfy curiosity, and unify opinion. 
 
 The system of government and administration is complex, 
 its appointments for transient periods, its Conferences of fre- 
 quent occurrence. Times and seasons depending upon personal 
 arrangement are liable to frequent revision and change, the 
 usages of the denomination numerous and peculiar, all of which 
 required communications constant, full, and authoritative to 
 both pastors aud people. Besides, the type of religious ex- 
 perience being devotional and emotional to an unusual degree 
 demanded for its perpetuation and cultivation an unusual 
 amount of easily-assimilated religious reading, of all things the 
 most difficult to produce and consequently to procure. Method- 
 ism was compelled to create from its indigenous resources the 
 greater part of its essential nutriment for the spiritual life, and 
 to edit what it reprinted from other denominations. Such 
 supplies were all the more important because of the great use 
 made of local preachers, the ignorance of many of the travel- 
 ing preachers, and the necessity of class-leaders, all of whom 
 were required to give instruction in spiritual things. 
 
 Another function subserved by Methodist literature was to
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 71 
 
 develop a class of competent writers and to afford them a mar- 
 ket for their literary products. This was of much greater im- 
 portance in the beginning than it is now ; for Methodists, ex- 
 cept in the case of men of transcendent intellect and conspicu- 
 ous position, were ostracized, or, at best, satirized. Also print- 
 ing and publication establishments were comparatively few 7 , 
 and access to the people was correspondingly difficult. To-day 
 Methodist writers of ability can reach the best minds in the de- 
 nomination and the public at large through magazines, books, 
 and the press generally. Nor when they write upon general 
 subjects do they suffer in the popular estimate materially be- 
 cause of their denominational views ; gaining sometimes as much 
 consideration from publishers and editors because of the great 
 constituency supposed to be interested in them as they lose in 
 some directions because of the monopoly of literary culture 
 which certain circles still affect, it being, however, rather a 
 reminiscence than an actual possession. 
 
 Methodist literature, therefore, naturally classifies itself. 
 Its most conspicuous function is to furnish regular denomina- 
 tional supplies ; and, if we construct the pyramid philosoph- 
 ically, at the base are the doctrinal works. It has published 
 and kept continually on hand the works of John Wesley ; the 
 American edition consisting of seven volumes, two of which 
 comprise the sermons, and the rest miscellanies ; these miscel- 
 laneous works are paralleled in interest only by Boswell's Life 
 of Johnson, between which there is vastly more similarity than 
 any who have not critically read both would imagine. Wat- 
 son's Institutes and sermons, the former, subject to proper 
 deduction for the errors of his time, illustrating in a high de- 
 gree Emerson's idea of good writing, which is, " to see clearly 
 and state lucidly." Fletcher's Checks and Miscellaneous 
 II ritings, useful to a past generation of Methodists, are by no
 
 CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 means obsolete yet ; and Pope's great, though peculiar, work 
 upon Theology. 
 
 Of commentaries it has produced a host. Benson, once 
 widely used. Adam Clarke, unabridged, in six sturdy vol- 
 umes ; abridged, and with a new personality introduced by 
 Daniel Curry. Whedon's Commentary, containing as its pre- 
 siding genius the best thought of the acute and vigorous intel- 
 lect of its editor; the painstaking work of a Hunter; the last. 
 great work of a Newhall ; the scholarly annotations of Pro- 
 fessor Terry ; besides excellent work by Drs. Daniel Steele, 
 J. K. Burr, A. B. Hyde, Henry Bannister, F. D. Hememvay, 
 and F. G. Hibbard. Nor must I forget the work to which 
 thousands of ministers and laymen in the prime of life ewe so 
 much for instruction received in -the formative period, Long- 
 king's Notes on the Gospels, which had a definiteness and 
 grasp not, always found in more modern publications. 
 
 Speaking generally, we may say that the Book Concern has 
 published a large majority of the works included in the Con- 
 ference Studies ordered by the Bishops, under the instruction 
 of the General Conference, to be used by the local and travel- 
 ing ministers in preparation for the examinations on which 
 their promotion and ordination depend. Akin to these works 
 are the great histories by which it is possible for succeeding 
 generations to say reverently, " We have heard with our ears, 
 O Lord ; our fathers have told us what works thon didst in 
 their days, in the times of old." Of these, that of Nathan 
 Bangs is forcible because he was so great a part of what he de- 
 scribes; while the more elaborate, artistic, and jubilant vol- 
 umes of Abel Stevens remain as a priceless possession, having 
 the power of instruction, and at the same time stimulating to a 
 holy imitation and emulation the hearts of those who read 
 them. Besides these there are many local histories and abridge-
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 73 
 
 merits which have done for the denomination what similar 
 works do for the country. 
 
 In the domain of biography the productions of Methodism 
 have been numerous, and the sales immense in the aggregate. 
 I^or is it possible to overestimate the beneficent influence of 
 properly written religious biographies. Of course, discrimi- 
 nating persons know that absolutely truthful biographies are 
 not written, because of the limitations of human nature as to 
 knowledge, space, and the effects of personal bias. But they 
 perpetuate ideals and furnish inspiring models ; and in relig- 
 ious biographies, if the type of excellence sometimes discour- 
 ages, it may tend to the natural working out of what is 
 possible to the reader, even though he loses all hope of be- 
 coming exactly what he admires in the portraiture before him. 
 AVhen the biography is that of a person with whom we have 
 been contemporaneous, its intellectual effect is not to be 
 despised, for the mind continually compares its own impres- 
 sions with the lineaments depicted upon the page. 
 
 Meanwhile stupendous masses of Sabbath-school literature of 
 the most varying degrees of ability, from the highest to such 
 as on another occasion it would be proper to criticise adversely," 
 have been poured forth, teaching the young idea how to shoot, 
 sometimes at a mark, sometimes without a mark, but upon the 
 whole much better adapted to the purpose than would result 
 from promiscuous selections. 
 
 The periodical literature of the Church deserves separate 
 treatment. The Methodist Magazine is not known to the 
 present generation, and, when taken from the shelves where it 
 has reposed by the grandchildren of those who read it, its con- 
 tents seem singularly dry, and remote from the spirit of this 
 age. This impression, however, passes away when the time- 
 that it appeared and its purpose are taken into the account. It
 
 74: CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 gave place to the Quarterly Review, which, after various mu- 
 tations, under the universally accomplished McClintock, the 
 subtle, tenacious, witty, and versatile Whedon, and the intel- 
 lectually athletic yet agile Curry, is at the present time, as a 
 bimonthly, under the editorship of Dr. Mendenhall, enjoying a 
 larger circulation than it ever had, and, being in the midst of 
 an unfinished polemical conflict upon recondite principles of 
 criticism, is attracting more attention than has been given to it 
 for many years. The Ladies' Repository, begun before the 
 great development of magazine literature, for a number of 
 years filled an important place ; but restricted in competition 
 with outside enterprise, and modified by the changed relation 
 of women to society and to public discussion, gradually de- 
 clined. Prior to this period the attempt had been made to 
 publish a general magazine, under the name of the National 
 Magazine. As might have been foreseen, this periodical 
 failed, not for want of ability in its editor, nor, speaking 
 generally, in its contributors, but for want of adaptability. 
 The demand for it, as it w r as, was not sufficient, and it was not 
 available as a supply for a different demand. The transform- 
 ing of the Ladies' depository into the National Repository 
 was another attempt of a denominational publishing house to 
 furnish a popular magazine regardless of past experiences, 
 handicapped with fatal defects and incompetences, in compe- 
 tition with the most extraordinary development of modern 
 times, sustained by lavish outlays, catering to every taste, and 
 managed with consummate ability, paid for on a scale that 
 would be destructive to the necessary simplicity of a religious 
 management. 
 
 The weekly periodicals of the Church are in their circulation 
 the admiration of the religious world, and as they are so fre- 
 quently seen must be left to speak for themselves. It is suffi-
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 75 
 
 cient to affirm that without them it would be impossible to 
 carry forward the work of the Church efficiently, and if left ex- 
 clusively to undenominational or private supplies a plentiful 
 sowing of dragon's teeth would be likely. The existence of 
 unofficial and undenominational publications, and the freedom 
 of speech exercised, and consequent diversity of opinions held 
 by the management of the official press upon all subjects ex- 
 cept the fundamentals of Methodism, make it certain that 
 every thing that should be will be heard. 
 
 The limitations of a denominational literature are that the 
 general public will invariably consider the institution a part 
 of Methodist machinery, and infer, therefore, that what it pub- 
 lishes is primarily for the use of Methodists, and its imprint 
 will constantly confirm that impression. So that, from a com- 
 mercial point of view, what is its chief strength is of necessity 
 an element of restriction. Of course, all works of fiction of a 
 purely sentimental character, especially those that are sensa- 
 tional, and whose sales run up into the hundreds of thousands, 
 are excluded from the list ; arid the notoriety, not to say fame, 
 which the house would obtain by their publication, and which 
 is of immense business value to many other houses, is not 
 within the reach of the Book Concern. No intelligent person, 
 however, regards what is essential to the accomplishment of 
 the end he has in view in the light of an undesirable limita- 
 tion. 
 
 Naturally the demands of its customers would lead it to a 
 considerable extent into the general book trade; and it has 
 published, in the aggregate, an immense number of works of 
 travel, harmless fiction, general biography, history, science, and 
 has done a large amount of business of which the Chautauqua 
 publications may serve as an illustration. The number of 
 works in its General Catalogue is several thousand, many
 
 76 CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 of which are of the highest grade intellectually. The travels 
 of Dr. Durbin and the works of Stephen Olin in their time at- 
 tracted great attention, as did Thomson's Essays: Educa- 
 tnmal, floral, and Religious, and his Evidences of RcJ'nj !<>/>. 
 
 Whedon On the Will, by the comparatively few who wen- 
 competent to comprehend it, and patient enough to read it, has 
 been placed upon the shelf by the side of that most potential 
 work, On the Will, by Jonathan Edwards, as representing a 
 battle of two schools and two intellectual giants. 
 
 Among the more recent works which have attained a high 
 place are Hurst's History of Rationalism, and Bibliotheca 
 Theologica, notably Harmon's Introduction to the Study of 
 the Scriptures, Terry's Hermtneutics, and Professor Bennett's 
 great work on Christian Archceulogy. Professor Bowne first 
 commanded attention by his Philosophy of Herbert Spencer 
 and Studies in Theism. Mrs. Amelia E. Barr, continually 
 increasing in reputation as a writer in pure fiction, reached a 
 large constituency of readers through three of her stories pub- 
 lished by this house. Many other entertaining and elevating 
 romances for the young have been brought out, of which 
 A Damsel of the Nineteenth Century, by Miss Norris is a type 
 of the best. Nor should the great work of Dr. Dorchester, 
 Christianity in the United States from the First Settlement 
 Down to the Present Time, and that smaller but very impor- 
 tant publication by the same author, The Problem of Religious 
 Progress, be omitted. The house is at the present time en- 
 gaged in publishing the life work of Bishop Foster in a series of 
 volumes upon Theology, which, if completed according to the 
 plan, will constitute a library in themselves. Not in the whole 
 course of its history has it published works of a higher grade 
 intellectually and critically than within the past few years. 
 
 Heady to adapt itself to modern methods, it established a
 
 METHODIST BOOK CONCERN. 
 
 Subscription-Book Department, through which an immense 
 number of most useful books have been sold. The Peoples 
 Cyclopedia, which is being constantly revised, and has received 
 the highest commendation and very little adverse criticism, of 
 which so far as true its editors availed themselves at once, cor 
 recting the errors and supplying the defects pointed out, has 
 already reached the enormous sale of one hundred and two 
 thousand copies, which at the ordinary retail price would 
 amount to $1,550,000. 
 
 Since the purchase of the plates of Ridpath's History of tlie 
 f'nited States one hundred and fifty thousand copies have 
 been sold, while his History of the World, more recently pub- 
 lished, has reached a sale of sixty-five thousand, which, in the 
 absence of more elaborate works, is useful to the people. Dr 
 Dorchester's book on the Liquor Problem has had a wide sale 
 through the fame department, and at the present time the 
 Peopled Cyclopedia, Ulster y of the World, and of the United 
 Miitt's, each average a sale of nearly one thousand copies per 
 month. 
 
 For a hundred years Methodism has kept its presses at work. 
 Y'ou have already heard from the senior Agent something of 
 the extent of the business. In ail these years nothing irre- 
 ligious has been punted; nothing immoral; every thing 
 i.d.ipted to promote the interests of the country and of the 
 individual citizen. Successive generations of Methodist writers 
 have been raised up under the influence of the spirit of Meth- 
 odist literature. Many of them are still in the denomination; 
 and men of brilliant qualities and attainments, who fill im- 
 portant .spheres connected with other denominations, or of 
 a purely literary character, are sons and grandsons of those 
 who were educated chiefly through the influence of Meth- 
 odist literature, without which, and the moral effects of its
 
 78 CENTENNIAL OF THE 
 
 religions services, they might have been in ignorance and 
 obscurity. 
 
 It is this literature which fills seminaries and colleges with 
 students. Without it those who direct the education of the 
 young would either have no interest in intellectual culture, 
 or divert those whom they influenced to other sources of 
 instruction. 
 
 But perhaps the greatest work accomplished by Methodist 
 literature has been to counteract the natural tendencies of 
 strong religious emotion to fanaticism. Without it the holy 
 fervor inspired by the first preachers would have run into 
 excesses pernicious to the mind and heart and the body, and 
 instead of being to-day coherent, progressive, and stable, 
 Methodism would be dead or dying.
 
 
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 JAN 21 
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