statements; and, if it were possible, the numbers obtained would convey only an indefinite idea of what the Methodist press in this country has produced. Still less can we estimate the value of the press to Methodism by numbers or the monetary value of the publications it has issued.

The product of our presses has been largely composed of periodicals. But this, which you may consider the more interesting and profitable employment of the press, will be the theme of the next speaker, who will do it ample justice. The development of the denominational press as represented in our history has scarcely a parallel. The wisdom that gave the supervision of the press into the hands of the Church, and made it subserve its highest interests, was of that superior, yet simple, order that never fails to attain great results. The prosperity of the undertaking was greatly promoted by the fact that we were compelled to produce our own religious literature, since our theology, ecclesiastical polity, and evangelical methods were constantly the subject of adverse criticism by all the other Churches; then by the further fact that our books, being the product of our own press, induced the preachers to enter heartily into the work of their distribution. The itinerant could hardly be found, until a few years ago, that did not carry our books in his saddle-bags, and offer them at every preaching appointment and in his pastoral visitation.

When the Sunday-school entered on the line of development immediately preceding that of to-day, our publishing houses found a wide field before them, and began to provide the schools with books. To John P. Durbin, it is said, belongs the honor of having prepared the first Sundayschool library book. Under Drs. Kidder, Wise, Summers, Vincent, and Cunnyngham, the publishing department of the Sunday-school has grown into amazing proportions.

But the quality of the volumes that we have produced constitutes the real value of our press. We have hardly issued a single volume that does not contain some word addressed to the heart and the conscience which, under the quickening influences of the Holy Spirit, may become the seed of the new life begotten of faith in Christ Jesus. From the stately royal octavo to the vest-pocket tract, they have had a single purpose-to aid the ministry in bringing men and women to Christ, and to build them up in righteousness and holy living. An account of the spiritual awakenings produced by reading some of these volumes would fill a volume quite as large as that whose effects would be recorded. Hardly any other Church has preserved so well the memory and influence of its spiritual leaders. The excellence of the greater portion of our denominational literature, and its moral and spiritual influence, have been generally acknowledged, but nearly always underrated. The constant aim has been to produce practical results in righteous living, rather than to exhibit scholarship or dialectic skill. Yet it has not been deficient in these qualities when it was thought necessary to enlist them in its service. The commentators on the Scriptures that we have produced, and our general product of the higher theological and ecclesiastical literature, has all along been equal to the best of its time, and our later work in this line has been its best. But, no doubt, the various histories of the rise and development of our common American Methodism as a system of evangelization producing extraordinary results, its wonderful growth and beneficent work, as it has kept pace with the growth of the nation, has had a healthful influence on our people. Nor

can we ever lose sight of the company of saints, the purity and devotion of whose lives must always give a golden glow to our early Methodism. John and Mary Fletcher, Hester Ann Rogers, Lady Maxwell, Bramwell, and Carvosso belong to the common Christian inheritance, and will ever remain our ideals of spiritual attainments.

But no small part of the literature of American Methodism has a marked militant character, and teems with the sturdy activity and adventure of pioneer life. The American frontier preacher has been the true itinerant; bold, hopeful, true as steel to the Church and his brethren in the ministry. The volumes in which have been garnered the history, incidents, and the spirit of those days, composed of autobiography, biography, local and State, and conference histories of the rise and progress of Methodism, and the lives of the men who were the leaders in this grand work, have had a wide influence, and will do much to perpetuate the old Methodist spirit. Still later volumes, relating to our missionary work, have contributed to the same result. And in this work our periodical literature has done its full share. Our people have bought many books, and have read them to good purpose. Everywhere in the Church, in our early days, were to be found men and women whose thirst for knowledge had been satisfied at these fountains opened by the Methodist press, whose vigor of thinking and faculty of expression excited the admiration of scholars. There has never been a more unfounded charge against Methodism than that of ignorance. They whose ignorance and theological bias have prompted the accusation have long since withdrawn it. No Churches have fostered the press more than the Methodist Episcopal, and none has realized better returns. It has been our ever-ready servant, the itinerant's most efficient co-laborer.

But the questions remain: Are we making the best possible use of the press? Can it be made to yield a more acceptable service? We are compelled to confess, I think, that here, as in some other things, we have lost something of the ardent enthusiasm, and have fallen behind the conscientious labors, of the fathers. The dissemination of our literature has all along depended almost entirely on the pastors; and we have not been able to devise other methods at all comparable to it, where the disposition of the pastors has suffered change in this respect. While they have grown lukewarm in this service, the facilities for buying other publications have increased; the colporteurs of other religious societies and the subscription book agents have pushed into the field partly evacuated by us, and our people are suffering on account of our neglect. It is the duty of those to whom the care of our publications has been committed to make the most thorough investigation of this condition of our affairs, and afford to our people, if possible, the opportunity of knowing how desirable our literature is, with the not unreasonable hope of securing its wider and more abundant distribution.

The quality of our publications that we have produced in these later years, we are sure, can not have contributed to this result. The Methodist authors of this generation are hardly in any respect inferior to their predecessors. By common consent, Mr. Wesley and Mr. Fletcher stand alone, and we acknowledge the great merits of Clarke and Watson. But in the same field we have Whedon and his adjutors, Summers, Bledsoe, and Raymond. In doctrinal discussion, Bishops Clark, Foster, Peck,

Merrill, Marvin, and McTyeire, Curry, and Miley are masters of whom we are justly proud. In a species of light literature, who are superior to Bishop Andrew, Bishop Thomson, James V. Watson, and Milburn, Mrs. Olin, and Mrs. Gardner? Biography and local history have lost nothing of attractiveness in Wise and Redford, in Bishop Paine and Ridgaway. And in the broad field of Methodist history, Abel Stevens will remain without a rival. It is not that we have failed to produce a literature worthy of patronage; we must seek the explanation elsewhere.

Let us, then, look in a different direction. We rightly call this a generation of readers. The production of books almost passes belief, for one can hardly understand it, unless he has been in a position to see with his own eyes the dimensions into which book publishing has grown. The demands of the people in this era of general intelligence and rapidly advancing literary culture have created a hitherto unknown impulse to authorship, and have made the production of attractive and useful books a profitable profession. Within a year a popular author of works of fiction has told us, in his charming autobiography, how his fortune grew into the hundreds of thousands of dollars in satisfying the call for entertaining books. His novels are all of the better class. Look into the catalogues of our American publishers for the last ten years, and one is bewildered by the number and variety of the publications of the secular press. It is true that a large proportion of these successful volumes are works of fiction, many of them of moderate literary value and entirely destitute of religious and moral purpose. They have no higher aim, for the most part, than to create a fleeting interest and pleasurable emotion. Some of these productions are evil and only evil. They adroitly awaken and strengthen all the passions of the lower nature, descending to depths where we may not follow. So base has this traffic become that we have been compelled to oppose it by systematic organization and ever-watchful agents.

The great facilities afforded by the power-press, and the means of distribution provided by the mails, have made it possible to produce what we call cheap literature. But the secret of cheap books is a multitude of readers. The publishers have found it more profitable to sell ten thousand volumes of an author at twenty-five cents each than two thousand at one dollar each, and a greater benefit accrues to society if the work is one of actual merit. But much of this cheap literature is as pernicious as it is cheap; and there is probably no more perplexing question, nor one more frequently discussed than "How shall we counteract cheap, pernicious literature?" There is but one answer to this question. We must furnish good, cheap literature. And in doing this we must strive to be as wise as the "children of this world." This bad literature, especially that prepared for the young, appeals to the imagination and the spirit of adventure and heroic achievement. We must produce books that take account of these qualities if we hope to gain the good-will of our boys and girls. The task before us, however, is something more than this. We need to develop a habit for reading and create a taste for good books, as well as to provide for its satisfaction. One man of this conference, it seems to me, has made a discovery that is beginning to be appreciated, and ought to give direction to our efforts. Dr. John H. Vincent has been building wiser than he knew. He has had great success in awakening a large number of our young people to the possibilities of literary culture, and has shown great wisdom in

providing them good, cheap books. This was Wesley's idea exactly. And I count it among the most hopeful signs of the time that this question is impressing itself on the mind and conscience of many of our best men. The Methodist press must keep pace with every new development of the intellectual and literary world.

Since the service that good books render in the pastorate has been universally acknowledged, it seems strange that men whose one duty it is to "save as many souls as possible" should be slow to lay hold on such facile instruments. We need to let this generation of Methodists know on what meat their honored ancestors were nourished; and what leadership they had in their happy and victorious service. We have a great host who depend upon us for this instruction, and if we fail them their lives will remain impoverished, and the Church suffer corresponding loss. And we must not forget that this busy yet reading age has become intolerant of ponderous volumes. The demand of the working people, and they constitute the bulk of our membership, is for small good books in which a single subject, a single period of history, one department of natural history, of science, of art, one of the world's great and worthy men and women, is presented and discussed. They ask for books that can be carried on the person, so that spare moments on the street-cars and at the noon hour may be made serviceable to knowledge and culture. What grand opportunities do our times offer for men who have the faculty for writing books! He who speaks out of five thousand volumes in the year has found a larger audience than he can ever hope to reach with his voice. Let such a one forget that he may acquire reputation and money in this field, and seek to touch the heart and conscience that he may lead men to Christ.

The grandest faculty and commission that God gives to man is to teach his fellow-men. The true wisdom is that of saving souls. The living word is first, but God has given us something more permanent—a book, a Holy Book. We may well seek a commission from him to write. There is then, we have no doubt, a glorious future for our Methodist press. Its past service and success should become an inspiration that shall supply all our needs.

VALUE OF THE PERIODICAL PRESS TO METHODISM.

O. P. FITZGERALD, D. D.

HAD Methodism failed to use the printing-press, it would thereby have shown that its birth was an anachronism. Its genius is thoroughly practical. Its mission is to enlighten and save the masses, and it took hold of this mighty agency at the start. To have done otherwise would have been a practical abdication of its God-appointed functions. It is wielding this agency to-day with a power that is one of the happiest auguries that kindle the hope of the Church as it nears the closing hours of the first century of its organic life in America.

John Wesley, whose brain and heart were the germ-cell from which has been evolved what is peculiar to Methodism as a polity and system of practical evangelization, was the founder of its periodical press. He was a writer and publisher of periodical Methodist literature as early as 1778,

while yet the new movement was taking form under conditions ordered by God, and the inspiration of the new Pentecost that came as the breath of the Lord upon a dying Church and a nation deeply sunk, and fast sinking more deeply in sin. Wesley was always quick to recognize and ready to employ every available agency to spread Scriptural holiness over the earth. Believing that he had recovered the doctrines of true New Testament Christianity, and exultant in the consciousness of pardon and the witness of the Spirit, he was eager not only to tell it to all within the sound of his voice, but to send the glad tidings of salvation to all the earth by the printed page, and were it possible on the wings of the wind. The periodical literature of Methodism was born of the same spirit that impelled Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John to testify the gospel of the grace of God, and moved Paul, Peter, John, and James to indite the radiant and glowing epistles that will illumine and warm the heart of the Church to the end of the world. Born of the great revival, it was baptized into its spirit. At first it was devoted mainly to religious experience and Christian culture. It throbbed with spiritual life. Fresh from the burning hearts of men and women born of God, and filled with his precious love, it entered the homes of the people as a breath from Heaven, fanning the fires of devotion that had been kindled by the mighty men whose preaching had produced the great awakening and renewal in the British Kingdom.

This first function of the periodical press of Methodism still is, and ought to be, its main function. The Church owns and runs its printingpresses for one supreme object. It is not to make money; not to advance science; not to promote culture in the current restricted sense of the word; not to build up a sect; not to pull down or raise up parties; not to wrangle over dead issues and trivialities as to mere forms and modes. It is to extend the knowledge of God and bring the world to Christ. When this object is lost sight of by Methodists, its periodical literature will have no good reason to exist any longer. God will have no use for it, and mankind should not tolerate it. It is a folly and a sin to blur and waste good white paper with irrelevancies and trifles. The dirtiest rag that ever was converted into pulp might feel that it was degraded by being put to such use. A "printer's-devil" might be ashamed for having any thing to do with a religious printing-press so perverted from its sacred purpose and made the ally of the real Devil who is the head of the kingdom of darkness.

The periodical press of Methodism started on the line of Christian experience and Christian culture, and if true to its mission will keep it to the end. The reading of the early Methodist periodicals was like attending a class-meeting or love-feast. In their pages the holiest and wisest men and women of Methodism told what the Lord had done for their souls, and discoursed of the deep things of God with wonderful clearness and force. Light and life were in their words. The soul-hungry were thus fed, and grew strong in the strength of the Lord. The Methodists of today will do well to watch, lest with all their Book Concerns, publishing houses, and vastly increased resources generally, the tendency toward secularity and side issues may not so prevail among us that hungry souls will have to go outside of our own periodical literature to find the spiritual aliment they need and crave. Woe be to us when the day comes that the spirit of the commercial exchange, the hustings and lyceum, rather than that of the prayer-meeting and the class-meeting, shall be reflected in our