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8. A marriage contracted between a Catholic and Protestant is a crime.

This law, which has called forth so much opposition within ten or twelve years in different parts of Europe, where the Roman Catholic priesthood have endeavored to enforce it, is found Caus. xxviii, qu. c. non oportet. It is there written: "The marriage contract must not be entered into with heretics, except they previously obligate themselves to become Christians and Catholics." Up to the middle of the last century the principle here laid down was strictly enforced by the popes and their subordinates. Benedict XIV., in a bull of date November 4, 1741, designated the mixed marriages as "a God-robbing tie, the worst of crimes, (gravissimum scelus,) which can only then be forgiven a Catholic when he or she converts the heretical partner to the Catholic faith." And in a bull of June 29, 1748, the same pope decides concerning mixed marriages in Poland, that "before the marriage ceremony be pronounced the heretical partner must renounce his or her heresies." The arbitrary interference in family concerns, the tyrannous control endeavored to be exercised over the holiest rights and feelings of the private citizen by means of this law, are apparent at first view. That the law is, to a certain extent, enforced in our midst already, is an indisputable fact. For the Catholic priest aims to exercise so complete a control over the consciences of his parishioners, that in this matter he can rule them without difficulty.

We have now completed our survey of a portion of those obnoxious canons and laws which have never been stricken from the sacred code of the Church of Rome, but which the force of circumstances has brought her to ignore here while she enforces them elsewhere. "The thunders of the Church only slumber," pertinently says an old theologian. The Romish priesthood in these United States lose no opportunity to proclaim aloud their love of liberty and liberal institutions. Ever attached to the political party that professes most democracy and practices the most lawless license, ever prepared to submit their vote to priestly dictation, ever wheedling the popular sentiment, so long as they possess not despotic power, they lose no opportunity to inculcate the belief in unsuspicious minds that they and their Church are persecuted, maligned, and innocent. Here Rome is liberal enough. But look at Rome itself. Here no one cries louder for freedom of the press than your Romish priest. But nowhere, not even in CatholicImperial France, is the censorship of the press so absolutely crushing as in Rome, the center of his holiness's dominions, where alone he has independent power. Here no one more zealously decries

religious persecution of all kinds than the Romish priesthood. In Rome they steal the poor Jew Mortara's child to force it into their Church; they keep up the dread, because secretly exercised, powers and penalties of the Inquisition; they imprison innocent men and women for daring to read the Bible. Here they pretend to honesty and candor; there they proclaim the invalidity of oaths, the innocence of mental reservations, the justification of all villany to heretics and Jews. What trust can be placed in the adherents and propagandists of a Church holding such tenets? Which are we to believe: professions here or facts there? Shall we indeed be aught else than criminally heedless, if we cease to watch jealously the insidious approaches of a body so grasping, so restless, so unscrupulous? Tolerance is one thing, carelessness is another. Let us not forget that "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."

ART. IX.-METHODISM: SUGGESTIONS APPROPRIATE TO ITS

PRESENT CONDITION.

METHODISM has always possessed a notable spirit of self-encouragement, and, until within a few years, there has been some danger that its tendency to self-gratulation might become boastful, perhaps characteristic.

This disposition has not been altogether reprehensible, especially in our early history. For many years the real historical importance of the denomination was ignored by the religious world. John Wesley could not possibly be unrecognized in history, but Francis Asbury, the most important character in American ecclesiastical annals, is yet unmentioned by any historian of the New World. Treated not only with indifference, but with scarcely disguised contempt-without an educated ministry, and with few literary institutions-having, like original Christianity, its social position among the "lower classes," where it was most needed, and where, to devout observers, it deserved especial honor,-the new denomination was keenly self-conscious under its undeserved disparagement; but meanwhile it was equally conscious of its grand mission, of the invincible energy of its theology and practical system, its demonstrative usefulness among the neglected masses, and its prospective triumph. Scorned, if not persecuted, it was excusable and even admirable that its suffering but successful people stood closely together around their contemned but victorious standard. They opened their "Annual Minutes," and read their advancements with undisguised

thankfulness. They gave their sons by hundreds to the ministry. They built their humble chapels almost everywhere, filled them with their reclaimed neighbors, and had hardly got well into them before they began to rear new walls, ostensibly, face to face, with the churches of the older denominations. They put up seminaries and colleges; projected missions, foreign and domestic; and by their tireless zeal and the pittances of their poverty, soon presented before the world a great Church, devout, energetic, rich, national, and promising to become universal. If, meanwhile, they seemed too boastfully to "thank God for Methodism," it must now be admitted that both their sacrifices and their successes were not incompatible with the grateful boast.

The time has come, however, for a change in this respect. Their social position is revolutionized, and in a quarter of a century more can hardly fail to equal if not surpass that of most of their sister denominations, throughout the New World at least; they are rapidly raising up an educated ministry; they have a large, perhaps too large a supply of literary institutions. Their prosperity now takes an aspect of grave, if not of fearful responsibility, and we open the "Annual Minutes," both English and American, with joyful but with anxious gratitude. Every allusion to their success should now be made with the admonitory lesson of their responsibility; for is it too much to say, that of all English and American Protestant bodies, Methodism, considered in its manifold relations, foreign and domestic, stands chief in responsibility for the fate of the apostolic faith in the world? Can any observer doubt that it has at least a vantage ground-in its prestige, its popular masses, its theology, its disciplinary system, its educational provisions, its missions dotting the outlines of the world-which can be made more available than that of any other Protestant community? We hesitate not to assume the solemn fact in respect not only to England and America, but to the entire Protestant world. So far as the New World is concerned, no intelligent observer can hesitate to concede it; the numerical, not to say moral, precedence of the denomination being here unquestioned. In the mother country it has the same precedence among Dissenting bodies; and if, as Mackintosh and Buckle have predicted, the Anglican Establishment cannot survive the present century, Wesleyan Methodism, having the national liturgy and theology, and an incomparably superior practical system, can hardly have a doubtful destiny. In respect to the heathen world, the great mission field, it is sufficient to allude to the admitted statistical fact, that Methodism comprises more converts from paganism than all other Protestant missions combined.

Such has been its success that, in stating the facts which are the necessary data for our present purpose, we shall be liable to the charge of self-gratulation which we have wished to avoid; but we must trust that liability to the candor of the reader.

The statistics of Methodism are rendered annually with more precision than is usual with large religious bodies, as its ecclesiastical system affords peculiar facilities for the collection and classification of such facts. A comprehensive view of its numerical force would be valuable for many purposes, and would especially aid us in our present estimate of its responsibility. The following are the latest and most accurate estimates of its communicants :

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The Methodism of Europe (excepting the British and American Colonies and the American and European Missions, included above) exhibits similar though not equal vigor. The latest accessible returns show:

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Church Methodists in Ireland (called Primitive Methodists) ...

9,158

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Besides these divisions, there are minor ones whose statistics cannot be exactly ascertained; an authority gives them an aggregate of 10,000 members, and 200 preachers. Summarily, then, Methodism throughout the world comprises 2,548,190 lay members, and 14,883 traveling preachers-an aggregate of 2,563,091 communicants. If we add three non-communicant members of its congregations for Its last Min., corrected in Nash. Chris. Ad. So. Meth. Almanac gives 699,170.

each communicant, (a safe estimate for Methodist congregations generally,) we have a population of more than ten and a quarter millions attending its ministrations. It extends densely over North America and England; it has "Conferences" in France, Germany, Africa, and Australia; its missions are in Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Spain, Turkey, South America; they dot the coasts of Africa, India, China, and the isles of the Southern Ocean. It has seen but a century in America, and not a century and a quarter in England, yet nothing can be more literally said of it than that to-day it is more rife with energy and financial liberality, and more sanguine of future success, than it has been at any other period of its singular history. And its capacity for usefulness, and its consequent responsibility for our common faith, largely as they can be inferred from its popular force and geographical outspread, can be still more justly asserted from that peculiar system of theology, as well as of ecclesiastical polity, by which it has already achieved this success; and from those more recent auxiliary means which it is now so potently wielding-its great missionary organizations, including more than 3,000 laborers; its educational institutions, comprising more than 130 colleges, theological schools, and boarding academies, and (in England) nearly 500 day schools; its more than 2,000,000 Sunday scholars, and 300,000 teachers; its 35,000 local preachers making with its "Itinerants," a ministerial force of nearly 50,000 men; its publishing houses, the largest of the religious world; its unsurpassed psalmody, and its manifold financial system.*

Again let it be said that these estimates are given, not for an occasion of congratulation, but as data for a more serious inferencethe obligation that devolves upon us for the conservation and extension, through all the world, of this mighty and providential system of Christian propagandism. Methodism is not an historical accident; God enacts no casualties of this kind with our fallen humanity; it is a movement of Providence in the earth, and they who have providential responsibility for it, stand before the world, perhaps, chief in accountability for the kingdom of God among men. Let them rejoice, then, with trembling; let them look well to the future, both for themselves and their race, for they bear upon their hands the bread of life for uncounted millions, and upon their souls a responsibility whose retributions will signalize them in the “great and terrible day."

One of the first lessons which such facts suggest is the importance of maintaining the conservative spirit of the denomination, for a sys"Our figures have been collected from the most reliable authorities. If erroneous at all they are deficient.

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